I have just signed up for Amazon’s new DVD rental service. In South Africa we.ve never had options like Netflix, so I decided to try this here in the UK.

Amazon offers the first two weeks for free, so I thought I’d give it a try. Despite being quite a movie buff, I’ve always detested chosing a rental movie in store. It always takes longer than it should, I can never remember what I’ve seen before, it takes for ever to read through every single title and they’re never in the same place twice. It’s a nightmare to go to a video store myself, and it gets exponentially worse when you add friends or family.

That’s where technology comes in so darn handy. Some of the most successfull companies ever established have made vulgar amounts of money by cannecting user with what they’re looking for. That’s what computers do well: sort through data, organise data, crunch data.
And now a special award to Amazon. They have made the most mundane, unfriendly and unusable interface I have ever seen in 6 years of guiding student projects. It is the kind of interface I would summarily fail in a student project. I’d send them home. In fact, I would probably de-register them to save their parents’ money. It’s an embarrassment to think I’m the same species as these idiots.

It’s not even worth it to try and go into the details here. Don’t even try checking for yourself. It’s easier (and faster) to ftp AVI’s off the Internet onto multiple 1.4MB floppies.

So my Internet Idiot of the Week goes to Amazon’s DVD rental service.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 8th, 2006 at 4:29 @145 and is filed under IIotW, Media, Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.