Actors get more movies

A change to the OData back end fixed an issues with Actors for Netflix. Previously only the first 20 movies were shown for each actor, the default for that query is now 500, which is enough that all movies are now shown for all actors. No change was needed to the application.

Next steps for this app are to add advanced search and save lists of favorite actors and movies. The advanced search feature will be shared with Instant Queue Add for Netflix as well.

Instant Queue Add V7 update

Apple approved V7 a few days ago, with iOS4 support, and more than 10,000 updates have happened in the first few days. Some glitches in the Netflix API on Monday prevented apps from authorizing, and this broke IQ+, and caused some one-star bad reviews.

The iPad compatible update for IQ+ is going to be a major re-write. There are a few simple changes to Actors for Netflix that will probably get done first.

Actors for Netflix on iPad is now available in the app store for free

You can launch the app store from this link.

Documentation and the source code is available at github.

[Fixed] IQ+ Problems reading Queue from Netflix

[Update - V7 is now available, with the fix and tested on iOS4]

Something changed in the Netflix API, and some API calls are now failing to go through, while others are working. For IQ+ the effect is that it can't read the queue.

The problem is due to a change in the Netflix API implementation that exposed a bug in IQ+, an updated version has been posted to the AppStore approval process.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Actors for Netflix on iPad is done

The first version has finally been finished, code posted to Github and app submitted to Apple. http://wiki.github.com/adrianco/Actors-for-Netflix-on-iPad/

It took a lot longer than expected due to other distractions, and as a first release, it doesn't have all the features that we would like, but it is fun to use, and I learned several new techniques that will now be applied to the next version of Instant Queue Add for Netflix.

IQ+ Version 6 is almost ready

Thanks to review feedback from customers, two features will be added. One is that the application can be rotated so that the lists are shown horizontally, and more text can be seen for each movie. This is useful for movies with long titles. The other is the re-instatement of the RSS feed of new instant choices as an additional list. There is less data per movie, so the RSS list display shows the synopsis in the sub-area under the title, and the only sort option is a title sort or the original sort, which is grouped by genre. Adding a movie from the RSS feed takes a little longer since the extra information is loaded at that point.

Some minor additional bug fixes and enhancements are that the number of movies in the Instant Queue is shown immediately on startup, and any lists that fail to load due to poor network connections will be retried without having to quit the app. The free trial button is changed to link via the new Netflix deal with the Google Affiliate Network program, as is the link in the blog border.

At present, I'm still working to debug sorting the queue and having it change at Netflix, and this feature may not make it into V6. Some of the views currently ignore rotation, so you have to rotate at the starting screen or go back to it to change from portrait to landscape mode. I may just leave rotation working this way...

I expect to submit V6 to Apple in the next week or so.