Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

This is related to my series on driving traffic to your site, but it's not part of the series. I've mentioned my Netflix module before. Today I found that it now finally works in the Google sidebar.

You can see my Google sidebar in the image. The Netflix module is at the top (click the image to see a full-size view). The really cool thing is that I didn't do anything to make it work in the sidebar. I just built it for the homepage and the wizards over at Google somehow made it work.

So, now a plug for Netflix.com: Seriously, I think Netflix is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The choice of movies is amazing (they even have HD DVD and Blue Ray titles now), so you won't be disappointed like when you run to the movie rental place with something in mind only to find that it's not in stock or they've never heard of it. They arrive within days and you can keep them as long as you want. I know there's been some noise about DVDs going away with the recent improvements in video-on-demand (VOD) technologies, but until VOD has the selection and pricing of Netflix, I'm not going anywhere -- and I suspect that will be a while.

Finally a plug for the Google sidebar (or Google desktop). Just get it. It's cool, definitely, but it's SO useful. Searching for information on my own computer never worked for me until I started using the Google desktop. You know what I mean ... you wrote a letter to your grandma last year wherein you typed your one-of-a-kind recipe for Bacon Crunch Bars. Now you need that recipe, but you can't remember the name of the file or where you saved it. Well, just use Google desktop to search your computer for all files containing the word "Bacon" and you'll find it in no time! Gotta love that!

You can download the Google desktop as part of the Google Pack:

Update: My Netflix module only works with the Google sidebar beta. If you want to use it, you'll have to download the beta version.