Netflix must be broken. In it's current suggestions for me it suggests documentary Helvetica. Here's the description.
"We use it every day on our computers, we see it on street signs -- and we take it for granted. Now, Gary Hustwit's unique documentary introduces us to Helvetica, whose readability has made it the most popular font in the world. Interviews with designers and artists offer insight into the development, use and universal acceptance of Helvetica as the typeface of choice for everything from writing letters to creating corporate logos."
Ok, now I might actually be interested in that film, but here's the odd part. On the main page it lists this saying "Because you enjoyed: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Amadeus, and Annie Hall". On the detailed page it adds: City of God, Seven Samurai, Dr. Strangelove, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. Now those are all great films, but what do they have to do with a font?!?
5 comments:
Interesting...what does it mean if Helvetica was already on my Netflix list? Actually the recommendation for me is Hacking Democracy, because I enjoyed Supersize Me and Fahrenheit 911. So, it's not broken...maybe you've seen too many movies and it's running out of suggestions?
BTW I watched the TED special in Netflix's Watch Now library. Very cool stuff. It makes me feel very...untapped.
It's rankings are based on renting patterns, so it's saying that people who rented Helvetica also rented those other movies which you also rented.
Yeah I know, but still. I find it hard to believe that it's suggesting this documentary because of several dramas and no documentaries. There are certainly other films I've ranked that would suggest Helvetica. And if they were satisfied with their ranking methodology, they wouldn't be offering $1 million for a 10% improvement.
Oh and I have broken previous suggestion systems by rating too many films. It was the first one out of the media lab at MIT called firefly. It worked by email, they sent a list of hundreds of films asking you to rate several of them. I rated most all of them and they suggested 3 films included my predicted rating. It said for one of the predictions I'd give it a 4/10 and I wrote back asking why it was suggesting a film it didn't think I would like. They wrote back shortly saying I had uncovered a bug by rating too many films. As a result of their suggestions I saw The Name of the Rose and liked it.
Perhaps it suggested Helvetica to you because you have seen and rated highly one of the other "font" movies?
The musical Tahoma! The Disney movie Arial, The Mermaid, Evita. Niagra. Or Fried Green Papyrus.
Or maybe it is because you like the TV show America's Most Fonted? Or music by Vivaldi?
A bold blog entry this was. And I think you are certainly underlining something worth kerning more about.
I marveled myself at their bases for recommendations.
I think Grahams is right but maybe the algorythm is a bit more refined at the very top - first find the users with as similar tastes as possible(they think they know how to do it), then proceed with Grahams' steps.
The generous Anonymous person above is not a programmer or else he/she could not help but wonder how the heck Netflix writes its code.
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