Clicker for Netflix Puts Netflix Controls on the Touch Bar

Clicker for Netflix is a cool Mac app that lets you control Netflix right from your Touch Bar. Launch Netflix right from the Dock, control it with the Touch Bar, use Picture-in-Picture to watch while multitasking, prevent trailers from auto-playing, auto-resume your last played video, automatically skip the video intro, automatically advance to the next episode, hide the “Who’s Watching?” popup, and remove the Netflix Originals row. The Touch Bar controls include play/pause, jump back 10 seconds, jump forward 10 seconds, go to the next episode, enable/disable closed captions, and launch Picture-in-Picture. It requires macOS 10.10 Yosemite or higher. Get the app for US$5.

Beyoncé's Coachella Performance Coming to Netflix

Over the weekend Netflix announced Beyoncé’s Coachella performance will be coming to the service on April 17.

…a trailer that dropped today promises the special, called Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé, will be “interspersed with candid footage and interviews detailing the preparation and powerful intent behind her vision, [the movie] traces the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement.”

Bandersnatch-Ing Data from Interactive Netflix Show

Bandersnatch, the interactive Black Mirror movie on Netflix, was something of a hit. Viewers could pick the narrative path they went down. However, the Register reported on research that showed the data about choices could be snooped on using network packet analysis. Indeed, the scientists behind the research claims that they successfully determined what choice users made 96% of the time.

When viewers watching the video choose one of the two narrative paths at various branch points in the story, that information gets sent back to Netflix to display the appropriate video segment. And it turns out to be possible to discern which branch each viewer took through network packet analysis. In a paper just released through pre-print service ArXiv, “White Mirror: Leaking Sensitive Information from Interactive Netflix Movies using Encrypted Traffic Analysis,” a handful of the institute’s computer scientists show that story choices – sent from the viewer’s browser to Netflix via a JSON file – can be inferred despite the encryption of network traffic.

With Roma, Netflix Could Become Hollywood Royalty

Netflix film Roma is hotly tipped in the best picture category Oscar at Sunday night’s Academy Awards. Were it to win, it would mark a significant moment for digital media in general, and Netflix in particular. Lucas Shaw wrote on Bloomberg News that it would be proof that the company has gone from being a techy outsider to Hollywood royalty. With increased investment in original content, it looks like a tech company will be winning an Oscar in the very near future.

“Roma” is the first nominee for best picture that was essentially a digital release — though it had a limited theatrical run — and Netflix would be the first technology company to clinch Hollywood’s top prize. Whether or not Netflix wins, an online movie will certainly be crowned best picture sooner or later, said Rich Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG LLC. Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. are both spending billions of dollars on programming, and even Walt Disney Co. plans to release digital movies that won’t appear in theaters.

How Netflix Makes the World Smaller With International Culture

An opinion piece by Farhad Manjoo caught my eye. He writes how, instead of Netflix exporting American culture, it shares international culture with everyone.

Despite a supposed surge in nationalism across the globe, many people like to watch movies and TV shows from other countries. “What we’re learning is that people have very diverse and eclectic tastes, and if you provide them with the world’s stories, they will be really adventurous, and they will find something unexpected,” Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vice president for original content, told me.

Mr. Manjoo also mentions the difference between Netflix and other tech companies. Netflix sells subscriptions, not advertising. I think this is an important difference, in case foreigners get a negative impression from our typically garish ads.

Remember Bandersnatch? Netflix Saved Your Choices

Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch is a choose-your-own-adventure game that went viral. As it turns out, Netflix saved the choices you made.

He found that Netflix is tracking the decisions its users make (which makes sense considering how the film works), and that it is keeping those decisions long after a user has finished the film. It is also stores aggregated forms of the users choice to “help [Netflix] determine how to improve this model of storytelling in the context of a show or movie.”

This doesn’t seem like a huge issue to me. This is standard analytics the platform keeps.

'Tidying up With Marie Kondo' - the New Best Thing on Netflix

A Netflix show about tidying up might not be an obvious hit, and yet, I’m hooked. So are millions of others. Marie Kondo, the author of a bestselling book on tidying, travels around America with the intention of “sparking joy” through cleaning up. In each episode, Ms. Kondo helped restore order in people’s lives and reignited family relationships through her KonMari method. Seriously. If readers are anything like me, you will have cupboards filled with old devices, cables, and boxes, along with everything else. This show gives great tips on how to sort it all, and, more importantly, explains why you should.

Netflix Releases Black Mirror Bandersnatch Trailer

Netflix has released the trailer for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and it’s as dystopian as ever. The movie will apparently be 90 minutes and fans think it will somehow be a Choose Your Own Adventure experience. The trailer description doesn’t say much:

In 1984, a young programmer begins to question reality as he adapts a sprawling fantasy novel into a video game and soon faces a mind-mangling challenge. Welcome back.

It stars Fionn Whitehead of Dunkirk.