Technical Articles, Software Reviews, and Howtos.

My wife and I were recently shopping at a Target store when I had an unpleasant experience when we were checking out. She was loading groceries into our cart and preparing to pay while I was on the cell phone dealing with issues at work when the elderly lady behind the cash register asked to see both of our I.D.s.

The first thing that bothered me about this is that I’m now comfortably in my 30′s and I’ve come to accept the fact that I no longer look like a spring chicken. Secondly, I was also being bothered while talking on a business call to deal with some asshat store policy. I was starting to feel myself tetter-totter on that edge where one is still calm but fixing to be pissed off. What pushed me over that edge was the fact that I had left my wallet at home and was now being told by someone’s grandma that the imported beer I was looking forward to drinking later that evening was not going home with me after all.

We left the store, the few groceries, and articles of clothing for our kids we had planned on purchasing right next to the 6 pack of beer. I’ll not shop at Target again out of principle alone. What principle you might ask? That of common sense. Because of their lack of that just lost a little bit more of their vanishing market share to other more efficient retail giants.

I’ve been using Netflix for a little over a year now and have been pleased with the service. After having used them for some time I’ll never go back to a rental store for 3 simple reasons:

1. I’d never have a chance to see some of the films I’ve found through Netflix. I might have never found “Das Boot” or Akira Kurosawa films.
2. I don’t have to ever goto a rental store again to rent a movie.
3. I don’t ever have to take a movie back to a rental store again.

Regardless of my satisfaction with Netflix I felt the need to play the field and give Blockbuster a try.

Pricing

The 2 are so close on this that I see no reason to switch. Here is a nice comparison of pricing for both sites.

Blockbuster does has a cool deal were you can take a movie into the store and get a free rental. This had actually been the reason I decided to take them up on the free trial. Shortly after doing so I remembered reason 2 and 3 for changing to an online service instead of a rental store and the deal wasn’t as appealing to me anymore. I do have a Blockbuster close by. I just don’t care to go get a movie bad enough to visit them. I’m spoiled I guess. As far as getting a game instead of a movie? I prefer PC games over consoles any day.

Selection

I have read other articles saying Netflix has the larger selection of the two.
While I don’t know if this is true it didn’t matter to me either way as
both sites have plenty of films for me to watch. There’s all the selection I need and all the selection I want.

Web Experience

The Blockbuster site has followed Netflix with it’s web site by incorporating Ajax goodness throughout. I commend them on a few of the sites features that make it a little bit more enjoyable compared to Netflix. For instance their is a little Queue Basket that follows you as you browse showing some of the top titles in your Queue. Another thing I liked about the Blockbuster site is that you can rate in half stars.

In comparison the Netflix site has always been, imo, good and easy to use since I’ve been a subscriber. I also felt like the Netflix site is a bit faster and that the Blockbuster site dragged a bit. Maybe it was the little floating queue box? Either way, while I liked some of it’s features, the Blockbuster site really wasn’t anything to make me switch.

Delivery Speed

Netflix rules here. At least for me they do. It takes them a day to deliver a movie to me and a day for them to receive a movie. Blockbuster takes 2 and even 3 days just to get movie. That was a strong vote for me to stay.

Conclusion

While I thought the Blockbuster service is a nice alternative I see no reason to change.

I’ve recently decided to really try out meebo, at meebo.com, to see if I can replace trillian. I mainly use instant messaging to talk to clients or potential clients. I’ve used it in the past but not in way it was meant; via a web page. I used trillian to connect to my meebo account and I used their web widget as an easy way for anyone to communicate with me online without having to resort to phone or email.

The main draw back I found with this method is that that every hit to the web page containing the widget will make trillian bark that I need to approve adding a contact to my contact list. This gets really annoying fast. Meebo seems to generate a new UID every time the page is reloaded. There is nothing wrong with this as that is what makes the whole thing so flexable. The problem is really, imo, a lack of functionality in trillian’s jabber plugin. I could switch to PSI as it has an option to auto approve but I loath it’s interface. I have seen a modified jabber.dll file for gaim here that will handle request from @meebo.org automatically  and this is probably the way I will go after I finish my meebo via web trial if the applications just doesn’t cut it.

It’s my first day using only meebo via the Web. I do have complaints but they really aren’t meant to speak badly of the software itself, just it’s maturity. Features I miss already are the ability to receive offline messages and to be able to broadcast mass messages. I also noticed that meebo doesn’t save your customized away messages so I put “available by cell 123-456-7890″ I’ll actually have to memorize my cell phone number. Another minor annoyance is the lack of configurations with the client compared to other messenger clients.  I’m unfortunately neurotic about simple things like how my contacts are arranged. Meebo has a strange interpretation of my contact list that slowly pecks away at my psyche.

Again I do hate to be negative as I really hope and believe web applications will take off. Web 2.0 is gnu-screen and ssh for the masses. I’m enthusiastic about meebo and similar application and look forward to someday seeing them catch up to desktop application. The software itself is awesome feat and I highly rate it from what I’ve seen so far it just lacks maturity compared to current desktop messengers. Honestly though, comparing the two right now is just not fair.