Three more features nobody asked for, all of them in the catalog!

1) Tags: It’s now possible to search for movies you might want to request by those newfangled internot tags. What’s more, you can help your fellow cappers find movies of interest by adding tags yourself. Just follow the “now playing” links (where applicable) and add whatever you think might be relevant, whether it be “robots”, “cows”, or “clowns“. In short, do my cataloging for me! It’s the way of the web. (Though I do reserve the right to edit for accuracy/consistency). I’m not sure if making it easier to find all the Sherlock Holmes or Flash Gordon material in the catalog will make it more popular, but then, I’m just entertaining myself at this point.

2) Embedded videos: For most of the cataloged videos that are available at archive.org, you can now view them without clicking all the way through to the archive. I’m sort of on the fence about keeping this feature since (a) it’s not that much tougher to follow the link to the archive and play the movies there (from a wider variety of formats, no less) and (b) a lot more of the movies than I anticipated aren’t showing up properly; they require even more data than I have stored to embed properly. Unless there seems to be some enthusiasm for this feature, I’m tempted to just scrap the feature rather than convoluting the catalog further or leaving it broken.

3) $$$: That’s right, I’m yet again trying to wring a few cents out of the site by adding amazon links to the movies and their mstied / Film Crewed versions. It’s not that I need the money that badly or other capsite impresarios are making anthing for their efforts, it just seems like it’s worth a try.

I know these features may not be as attractive as on demand capping from the catalog instead of the one-day delay on requests. It’s a technical inertial issue. Storing the half gig or so of data would require migrating to a new webhost. That probably wouldn’t change my costs much, if any, but would be a pain in my hinder. I have considered just adding some of the more ‘popular’ items for instant capping.

On an unrelated note, there’s now a Vista sidebar version of the IS Google gadget available upon request. It’s a total hack and cheat without a proper installer, and since I don’t have Vista to test on, it’s not even guaranteed to work. But if enough people show an interest and I get an engaged beta tester or two, I’ll try to whip into shape.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Caption Sites, Inventing Situations. 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.