Ray Jezek’s Blog

I have been a long time subscriber / supporter of Netflix.  I absolutely hate the movie feeding frenzy that takes place at video stores.  Endless walls of replica boxes that takes forever to sift through; people rummaging through return bins in hope that the movie they want is in there; not finding what you came to store in the first place to rent.  Then you wait in a long line only to get to the counter to find out you have yet another late fee on your account.  The moment I heard about Netflix I signed up and haven’t been to a blockbuster since!  The efficiency of having a “rental queue” of movies just waiting to be sent to your doorstep is hard to beat.  But with any Internet startup you wonder how viable their business model is and if they are able to be successful.
Well I just noticed today (who knows how long they have offered this) that blockbuster now offers an almost identical service as netflix!  To me this pretty much validates their business model and proves that Blockbuster is feeling some of the effects of a superior rental company/methodology.  The interesting thing about the blockbuster deal is that they offer you 2 free in-store rentals per month with your subscription.  I guess they are trying to balance the fact that this new model will hurt their stores even more (I wonder if local blockbusters are franchised? – ouch). 
I will most likely stick with netflix because they were the pioneers here and I want to continue to keep my money far away from blockbuster.
I wonder if you could rent video games in this same way?…..

Misc

Very cool video on high tech shopping in Germany.  This is definately where the industry is going (or should go).  I just wonder how much overhead is associated with this stuff.  I mean, I think people (in the US anyway) still choose the store they shop at based on the quality/low price combo.  Not sure many people would go to a store for these reasons…. but it’s very cool to see it in action!
 

Misc

Pat Helland has struck gold yet again with a great paper on SOA data over at MSDN.  This time he goes into detail about how to manage data both inside and outside the service edge.  There is so much to un-learn when doing SOA development, and Pat seems to have a gift at walking you through the process of moving from monolith to messages. 

.NET, SOA