The TechnoFile

Manage your Netflix queue via Twitter

So you're out having drinks with friends, and the topic turns to movies. Everyone has a favorite, and a lot of them sound really interesting. You want to get all these movies onto your Netflix queue, but you know you'll never remember all the titles by the time you get home. Is your only option to takes notes on a soggy bar napkin?

Not anymore. As with all of life's modern problems, Twitter can help you, via addNetFlix, though you'll have to do some one-time setup first. Go to the addNetFlix website and authorize it to talk to your Netflix account. Then follow the Twitter account addNetFlix, which should automatically follow you back. That's it, you're all set up!

Now when someone mentions a movie you need to see, whip out your cellphone and use Twitter to direct message the title to addNetflix (e.g. 'd addNetFlix Slumdog Millionaire') and in a few moments you'll get a direct message back saying 'Slumdog Millionaire (2008) added. [dm "undo" to undo].' Next time you're at a computer, check your Netflix queue and sure enough, there's Slumdog Millionaire at the bottom of your queue. If you want to place it elsewhere in your queue, you can add a modifier by using a hashtag. #top will put the movie at the top of your queue, and #pos will put it at a specific position (e.g. 'd addNetFlix Slumdog Millionaire #top'). And if you change your mind, or addNetFlix grabs the wrong movie, 'd addNetFlix undo' will remove the last title that addNetFlix added. Sending a second undo will remove the prior title; it will not 'redo' so be a little careful with that. If you haven't added any titles using addNetFlix, undo won't do anything; it can't touch the movies you've added by visiting the Netflix site.

I'm continually impressed by the clever ways people have found to use Twitter, even if I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with my "all of life's modern problems" comment. addNetFlix isn't affiliated with Twitter or Netflix; it's just a utility built by someone with a great imagination and coding skill, using the APIs that both services make available. Nicely done!

As always, I need to add that I haven't vetted the security of the site, and neither I nor ITWorld will accept any responsibility if anything bad happens as a result of your using addNetFlix. That's just cover-our-backsides boilerplate; addNetFlix doesn't need your Netflix password, but you do have to allow the service to modify your queue (obviously). I did get some PHP errors on the page at one point during the signup process but everything has worked as advertised.

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