Anyway, I don’t think they’re completely doomed just in need of a big change. In fact, when they decided to spin off their DVD business to Qwickster I was sure they were actively pursuing acquisition.  Now that they have closed Qwickster I am left confused and just curious if there is any strategy in place.    Anyway, let me explain my assessment.

Think about it this way.  Netflix was a pioneer and was surprisingly successful as a very small player in a huge market.  I don’t think Netflix purposefully targeted such a big industry, instead I think they were just jazzed about being innovative and forward thinking.   The fact that they offered a complete TV solution with DVD and streaming was a very attractive offering,.  When they broke the combo service apart I think they fundamentally undermined their own value proposition.

Regardless of their success their industry was/is attracting a lot of attention(as it should have). What they eventually found is that they’re were up against the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, ABC, FOX, CBS, TimeWarner, Cox, etc.  You get the idea, it’s a big player industry!

Being in the ring with such big players presents a lot of problems.  First, Netflix doesn’t have the cash (~330m) to go toe-to-toe with any of these companies.  In an industry were demands are increasing and studios are hiking prices up this is a huge disadvantage.  Secondly, if Netflix stock price continues to drop they might attract the attention of the hawks.  As these big players charge ahead into streaming TV their will be a lot of cash to play with which might mean goodbye Netflix (acquisition).

Well, all of that being said that, the announcement that they are killing Qwickster seems to contradict my assessment.  On the other hand, dropping the Qwickster brand may have been a defensive move to avoid the hawks.  Who knows what will happen from here?

I am continuously trying to see new boundaries we can push through, what features we can sell or offer and how we can be innovative to increase revenue.  While this typically comes easy to me because of my extensive background in this industry it is not really a repeatable process by the rest of the team members that I work with.

As such, we discussed how I need to continue to test the boundaries for new opportunities while keeping an eye out for areas that can be easily executed on by the rest of the team.  I was told that I am on the frontier and my job is to find the easiest way for everyone else to have the success that I have.

We put together a simple model to represent this approach.

Please excuse how crude the diagram is.  Simply put as someone who discovers new channels of innovation at the company, the breadth of my reach is much wider than what can be executed day in and day out by the remainder of the team.  I am not saying anything negative about the rest of the team, it is just a matter of individual focus.

My job, as an innovator, is to test the boundaries of new ideas and figure out what is the best and most appropriate for the rest of the team.  This, of course, only applies to my area of focus, not the company at large.

If I expect everything I figure out to be adopted I will not be able to continue the search for new innovations.  Instead I will be stuck supporting the tasks/duties that I have introduced.  From this, I become a bottleneck and instead of innovating I actually become more stationary in my job (very stationary).

In conclusion, it is best for someone who is on the forefront of ideas to find out what is the most sustainable and repeatable in the organization.  Once it can be adopted and supported by the rest of the organization I can move on to discover a new idea.

If I have ignored any comments it was not intentional and I will attempt to answer any outstanding questions.  There is a lot that has changed in the last year or so and I definitely have a lot of queued posts.

Damien

Here’s a nice JavaScript function that validates the domain of an email address against a list of predefined blacklisted domains. You add more domains simply add another item to domarray.   For instance you could have:

domarray[3] = “microsoft.”;

Additionally you can validate the domains as specific as possible:

domarray[3] = “gmail.jp”;
domarray[4] = “gmail.co.uk”;
domarray[5] = “gmail.kr”;

The Whole Script

function chckDomain(em) {
var emat = em.substring(0,em.lastIndexOf(‘@’)+1);
var emdom = em.substring(emat.length,em.length+1);
var emdom = emdom.toLowerCase();
var domarray = Array();
domarray[0] = “gmail.”;
domarray[1] = “hotmail.”;
domarray[2] = “yahoo.”;
for (i=0; i < domarray.length ; i++) {
if (emdom.indexOf(domarray[i]) != -1) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}

Enjoy

Damien
@DamienH

With jQuery it wasn’t too challenging and I was able to develop the ticker in no time at all. The script is flexible and adjusts to the number of digits in the number. It also adds commas to properly format the number. You can see how the ticker looks here displaying the number 786554 – .

The jQuery code creates and removes the digits as needed and of the css is responsible for positioning the digits. The ticker is animated with jQuery which adds a nice touch. I got the number comma formatting from mrededkj.com. You’ll also need the following image that I created.

View the live Demo here at http://developer.mindtouch.com/User:Howleyda/Plain_Ticker.

Markup

<div class="counter-wrap">
<div class="counter-number">
&nbsp;
</div>
</div>

CSS

<style>
.counter-wrap {
height:18px;
overflow:hidden;
}
.counter-number {
height:198px;
width:12px;
position:relative;
background-image:url(http://developer.mindtouch.com/@api/deki/files/4548/=counter_ticker_bg.gif);
float:left;
}
</style>

Jquery Code

<script type="text/javascript">
$(".counter-number").each( function(i) {
$(this).attr('id','num'+i);
});
function loadinput() {
var newval = $("#numgo").val();
loadticker(newval);
}
function loadticker(ticnum) {
var fticnum = add_commas(ticnum);
var numheight=18;
addticker(fticnum);
if (ticnum && ticnum != 0) {

var s = String(fticnum);

for (i=s.length;i>=0; i–)
{
var onum=s.charAt(i);
$(“#num”+i).attr(‘value’,onum);
}

$(“.counter-number”).each( function() {
var nval=$(this).attr(“value”);
if (!isNaN(nval)) {
var nheight = Number(nval)*numheight*-1;
$(this).animate({ top: nheight+’px’}, 1500 );
}
if (nval==’,'){
$(this).animate({ top: ‘-180px’}, 1500 );
}
});
}
}
function addticker(newnum) {
var digitcnt = $(“.counter-number”).size();
var nnum = String(newnum).length;
var digitdiff = Number(nnum – Number(digitcnt));
if (digitdiff <0) {
var ltdig = (Number(nnum)-1);
$(“.counter-number:gt(” + ltdig + “)”).remove();
}

for(i=1;i<=digitdiff;i++) {
$(“.counter-wrap”).append(‘<div class=”counter-number” id=”num’ + (Number(digitcnt+i-1)) + ‘”>&nbsp;</div>’);
}
}
function add_commas(nStr) {
nStr += ”;
x = nStr.split(‘.’);
x1 = x[0];
x2 = x.length > 1 ? ‘.’ + x[1] : ”;
var rgx = /(\d+)(\d{3})/;
while (rgx.test(x1)) {
x1 = x1.replace(rgx, ‘$1′ + ‘,’ + ‘$2′);
}
return x1 + x2;
}
</script>

Call the function

<a href="#" onclick="loadticker(786554)">load ticker - 786554</a>
<a href="#" onclick="loadticker(1767697234789837)">load ticker - 1767697234789837</a>
<a href="#" onclick="loadticker(1988989)">load ticker - 1988989</a>

I hope you enjoy this code, feel free to post any improvements as this was simply a prototype.

Thanks

Damien
@DamienH

After riding about 14 miles throughout San Diego we arrived at the Fashion Valley Mall. As we rode our bikes through the parking garage I thought this would be end point. Instead all 400+ Critical Mass riders made their way through the food court, down the ramps and finally everyone got stuck as the escalators.

After reaching the mall Aaron and I decided to head back home. We took a shortcut from Mission Valley up to Hillcrest which was fairly steep. After the hill Aaron and I parted and I headed home. All in all it was a great time, extremely entertaining.

Damien

We woke up around 2AM and started the hike around 3AM which gave us about 3 hours of night hiking. All in all the uphill hike took about 10 hours and we only got to 13,000 ft. We didn’t go the rest of the way because of improper equipment. We didn’t have crampons and ice axes which apparently were critical in order to make it past the ice cliffs

I took plenty of other photographs(205) and took some movies(16) that you can see at http://www.flickr.com/photos/damienhowley/sets/72157620426196020/.

I hope you enjoy

Damien

Exercise
If you’re like me you spend the better part of 10 hours a day sitting in front of a computer.  Granted your fingers may be more chiseled than a 19 year old Schwarzenegger the rest of your body basically does nothing all day long.   Add to that a diet of sausage pizza, Chinese takeout, doner kababs, breakfast burritos, donuts, ice cream and the rest… and well you’re not exactly living healthy.  

Each day I ride approximately 3 miles to and from work.  My bike ride to work is downhill and is quite easy whereas my bike ride home is uphill and usually accounts for about a 20 minute  battle.  At first my legs would get sore, now I can race the entire hill.  I feel great when I get home and I physically can notice the difference.  

The kicker in this scenario is that once you get to work on your bike you must return home on your bike so you’re forced to exercise.  By the time I get home, I’m not tire! I feel great and am generally very productive due to a surge in energy.

Environment
We all know that when you don’t drive you save gas but there’s also another environmentally friendly result of riding your bike to work and it works exponentially.  When you remove your car from the roads there is one less car congesting the roads.  One car probably won’t make a difference but multiply that by 1000 or even 10,000 and all of a sudden the roads are much less congested.  Less congestion results in less time on the road which ultimately burns less fuel.

This concept is typically not apparent to most people but one of the most energy inefficient activities is traffic.  Thousands of cars waiting, burning oil and not getting to point B.

Vehicle Depreciation
Cars aren’t cheap and everyone always says that they “loose 20% the day they drive off the lot.”  Not only that every year your car depreciates in value.  Think about it, would you pay more for a 2006 car with 20,000 miles or 200,000 miles.  Basically, as you run up the odometer on your car it looses value and biking to work keeps your mileage low, way low.

When I moved to San Diego 3 years ago I had 28,000 miles on my car.  At the time I thought… not to bad for a 2 year old car.  Well, I went to get my oil changed yesterday(5/10/09) and my mileage checked in at 32,221.  So, in three years I have put just over 4,000 miles on my car.  Consider this now, my girlfriend who’s car is two years newer than mine has over 64,000 miles on it and she didn’t drive from Cincinnati to San Diego three times (almost 7,000 miles).

Insurance Savings
This is another very overlooked area of savings when people look to alternative methods for commuting to work.  Granted that getting rid of your car would save you the most money, it is usually not an option for most people.  So, since you’ve decided to keep your car for emergencies and road trips why not get some more savings for your good-willed effort of riding your bike to work.  Call up your insurance and tell them “I’m a good citizen, I’m riding my bike to work.  Can you change my vehicle to a recreational vehicle?”  Also let them know that you now will be driving less than 10,000 miles per year.  This should save you anywhere from 15% to 40% on your insurance.  For instance my insurance dropped from $105/month to $72/month.

Enjoyment of Riding your bike
How many times during your commute to work do you get cut-off, stuck in traffic or  get yelled by another driver?  I’m not a pleasant driver and I constantly was frustrated with my 15 minute commute to work.  I’d always try to rush to get there faster and I would never sit back and relax.  Now that I ride my bike to work I am much more relaxed.  My bike ride goes past Balboa Park, down into the city and through our Little Italy district.  It’s very peaceful and quite calming.  I no longer have the stress associated with driving and it’s really nice.  Not only that, I occasionally take different routes just to see different things.  

So there you have it, 5 reason why riding your bike to work can give you peace of mind and save you money.  Give it a shot, I think you’ll enjoy it!

Damien Howley
@DamienH

Just two days ago a series of new taxes began in California.  The new taxes include things like increased sales tax, increased gas tax, increased sin taxes and others.  Well what is the problem with that you may ask?  The state is broke and the economy is crashing and the only solution to this entire mess is to get more money from the california tax payers. Great huh!

So what happens now?  In the short term it makes sense; if everyone used to pay X dollars for an item now they pay X plus an additional 2.5% thus giving the state more money.  Wow what an easy concept!  However, in time this increase in tax will ultimately lead to an change in the average livestyle consumption throughout California.  Thus the real equation is not what I stated previously, instead it is; if everyone used to buy X amount of items they now by X minus 2.5%.

So if you used to buy 100 widgets per month now you only buy 97.5.  Wait, I thought the economy need stimulating?  How can the economy be stimulated if consumers are buying less?  This doesn’t make sense.  The worse news is that California didn’t have the highest sales tax increase.  For instance Illinois apparantly doubled their sales tax to somehwere around 15% (please comment if you know the real numbers).

The question I now have is “where does this stop?”  If the government is pumping billions of dollars into the economy and then taxing billions of dollars out of the economy are we any better of?  That’s not even considering the affects of deflation.

This just doesn’t make sense to me but I am not an economist, so I just hope that somewhere out there someone has considered this scenario more than I have.

Thanks

Damien
@DamienH

The new apartment is huge, almost 1300 square feet and we have a balcony with a gorgeous view.  We have a small glimpse of the ocean and San Diego Bay, a nice view of Cabrillo State park and Point Loma.  Also we’re not disturbed by the planes, trains and fire sirens anymore.

We have ran into one problem, the lady below us is old and cranky.  Before we moved in the landlord installed all new hardwood floors throughout the place and I suppose our neighbor below doesn’t like the sound of us walking around.  I personally believe the hardwood floors are worth it!

Here are some of the pictures I took this past weekend:

Map of my move

Thanks

Damien
@DamienH