A Netflix Subproject
Submitted by jim on Tue, 10/19/2004 - 03:01
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This isn't really a new Listology feature so much as it is a new sub-project that takes advantage of the Listology infrastructure. I've built a Netflix Tracker which you can use to log your rentals in gruesome detail. The idea is to either confirm or put to rest conspiracy theories regarding Netflix turnaround time. If you have a moment, give it a whirl, import your rental history, and let me know of any bugs before I ask a few Netflix bloggers (some of them also resident Listologists) to spread the word. Thanks!
I've posted about this on my blog.
Excellent, thanks!
How will I be able to get to the tracker outside of this post? Will it be in the My Menu or My content page?
I might put it in "Highlights", but probably the best bet would just be to bookmark it separately:
http://www.listology.com/NetflixTracker
Sound okay?
It should at least go on the Site Map page...
Done.
And, could you develop a way to import the ENTIRE Netflix history for an account (thru the email you can have them send you, if necessary).
Also, I don't understand the point of the current reports page, but I suppose that is being developed?
I can't, unfortunately. The e-mail rental history doesn't include links to the titles, and thus no internal movie IDs, which I use when I store the information locally.
The reports, when they are done, will analyze the data in a variety of ways. I'm going to wait to see if I get enough data to make this worthwhile before proceeding further. For now the only report just shows the total number of rentals being tracked by my tool so far, broken out by distribution center.
Okay.
It would be nice, though, if we could manually input how long we've been signed up ("Member Since"), how many DVDs we've rented that are earlier than the ones tracked by the cookie from the first time its data is imported (or total #, either way), and whether or not we've changed plans (3-out, 5-out, etc.). That way, Listology could fill out a report of the average turnaround simply by calculating the how long we've had Netflix service, how many we have out a time, and how many DVDs we've gotten total since we signed up.
Interesting ideas! Thoughts:
"Member since" would probably be a good addition.
"How many movies rented total" doesn't really accomplish much, I don't think. I can't calculate turnaround times well without knowing all four dates. Well, I suppose I could calculate how many movies you get a month, on average, but I can already do that pretty well without going back further than the existing data. If you want to calculate your own numbers, that's pretty easy to do yourself. I'm more interested in aggregate data rather than individual data (although I will provide an option for most reports to be run against your data alone rather than all data).
The "changed plans" issue is already covered. Each rental has a plan associated with it. So you can specify which movies were received under which plans.
What a fantastic idea! And, it may bring attention to Listology from a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't know of it.
But, my distribution center (the address on the envelope) is Minneapolis, MN, which doesn't appear on the drop-down list of dist. centers.
Thanks! And I added Minneapolis. Hey, what's the shipping center code (on your return envelope)?
19 CHI 0006
Anything else you need before I put it back in the mailbox?
Nope, that's great, thanks! Just keep an eye on that code if you're planning on tracking your rentals through this tool. While all your movies are returned to the same place, they don't all ship from the same place, and that'll be an important bit of info when we start analyzing turnaround time in various ways.