Netflix is now using AJAX throughout the site to display a pop-up with information on individual movies on mouseover (see picture):

It’s a well-executed, clean use of the technology. Like it or not, AJAX is here to stay – at least until Microsoft bakes something like it into IE7 in their next big attempt to monopolize the web.

Fact is, end users don’t CARE about whether something’s a hack, whether it meets your exacting architecture standards. Programming may be art, but it isn’t museum art, it’s pop art. It’s Thomas Kinkade, non Picasso. It’s meant to be consumed in large quantities, and only looked at superficially. AJAX gives a site that extra flair and usefulness, and users care more about that than whether or not the developers think the design meets their exacting standards. Time to suck it up and get comfortable with AJAX.

Click here to see it for yourself.

They will use your money to destroy other things you like. I realized this today as I read how Bill Gates plans to launch Halo 3 for the next-gen Xbox the same day the PS3 launches, many months after the XBox 360’s launch. Bill says, “The day Sony launches [the new PlayStation], and they walk right into Halo 3”. He can’t even let the competition have 1 day in the sun, their opportunity to shine ever so briefly.

For EA’s history, just ask Take Two Interactive, the formerly Sega-owned game studio that makes sports games. The NFL2k series of football games had a good reputation the day it was launched on the Dreamcast, but had trouble competing with EA’s heavily entranched Madden series. Last year, Take Two not only put out one of their best efforts in the series, they undercut EA by pricing their game at $20 compared to EA’s $50 price tag. EA arrogantly ignored this difference at first, until sales data forced their hand and made them cut te price a bit to compete. Their reaction wasn’t to try and make a better game at a better price the next cycle, it was scorched earth. EA not only bought exclusive rights to NFL games, they bought exclusivity for college football and even Arena football, ensuring that competitors had NO game to produce that would allow them to maintain a high-quality football simulation engine. They could do it with made up players and teams, but the demand is for real players and people’s favorite teams. EA was out for blood.

For an example of Microsoft’s behavior in the gaming industry, ask Nintendo about Rare Ltd. Rare developed for all Nintendo systems from the original NES to the N64. They developed 8 of the top 25 games for the N64 – even Nintendo themselves, known for their quality first-party games, had only 8 in the top 25. They made 11 total games over the life of the system. Since Microsoft purchased them in 2002, they have released exactly 1 game for the Xbox. It’s apparent they didn’t buy Rare so they could have their games – they bought them so that Nintendo wouldn’t have those games. Embrace and extinguish.

Most companies seem content to compete for a bigger piece of the pie by improving their product and competing honestly. Most companies recognize that a rising tide lifts all ships – even if your slice of the pie shrinks, the pie keeps growing. Microsoft and EA want to be the only ship. They want to use the dollars you give them to sink those other companies whose products you also enjoy. In effect, when you give either company money, you’re funding a campaign to crush the other companies that make products that you like. You may like that game you just bought right now, but in the end, if these bullies have their way, you’ll have less to enjoy in the long run. Don’t do it. Don’t feed these aggressive beasts.

I’ve spent about a day toying with Yahoo’s new “Unlimited” music service. So far, not so bad. I’ve had my mind set on trying one of these music “rental” services ever since a friend played several hours of entertaining background music for a social gathering through the current Napster service. Yahoo’s $6.99/month price tag pushed me over the edge.

There’s plenty of goodness to be had. They claim to have over 1 million songs. There are a lot, and almost any music you can imagine. Getting all this music cleared with the labels MUST be a pain. The interface is pretty good. The search capabilities over both your personal collection of music and the content on their service is pretty good, which you’d hope, since Yahoo begin its life as a search engine. I have a broad taste in music, with many strange wrinkles to it, so their rating and recommendation engine is of particular interest to me. You can rate songs, albums, and artists, and they’ll recommend more music based on the preferences of others with common interests. You can then have your own LAUNCHcast station that will make a “radio station” out of music you’ve rated that you like and similar music. This should be useful once I get a broader base of rated music. I haven’t tried the part where you actually download the music in burnable format, but the full library of music is available for up to 3 PCs per account, and can be transferred to a WMA DRM capable player. We’ve found our RCA Lyras to be nice and compact, good battery life, and important to me – expandable. Paying through the nose for fixed-capacity players is a losing proposition. With this service, we can try them out with an unlimited library.

There are some definite down sides to the service. For one, they’re playing the Google game of taking a “Beta” product to the broad market, and it shows. The software’s a bit buggy. Yesterday, it wouldn’t let me leave the album page for a particular album, no matter what else I clicked on. The search bar doesn’t always work. Sometimes it just sends you back to the home page and you have to search again to get actual results. The back button often goes back further than you’d expect on a single click. The recommendations data isn’t very populated yet, and often simplistic. In spite of having rated 43 artists, 5 genres, 34 albums, and 157 songs, the bulk of my radio station playlist ends up being 80’s music, recommended because I like U2 or The Police. This will certainly get better as their total user base grows. Another glaring issue is some of the music that’s missing. I’m hoping Moby DOES get stomped by Obie, because half of his music isn’t available. Beck has apparently decided to pick and choose what gets released – his current single, E-Pro, is only available for purchase, not available to listen via streaming. His album “Mutations” isn’t available for streaming or download, and “Odelay!” is only half there, missing the gem “Devil’s Haircut”. Most blatant is the absence of Nine Inch Nails’ “Pretty Hate Machine”. This album is classic, seminal, central to the history of recent music, and still one of the defining records of a genre, and it’s curiously absent. I won’t dwell as much on the missing obscure music, such as Circle of Dust’s amazing “Disengage”, or decade-old Christian alternative. My criticisms center around the music that you’d expect to be there, and isn’t.

Overall, I’m gonna keep it for a month or two. The $7 price tag is half the price of the Napster and Rhapsody services, cheap enough to get my business. I’ll see how my wife likes the integration with our MP3 players, and go from there. Updates will come.