I have been using My Tv Shows to track the episodes I watch for some TV series. For movies, I am relying on this blog. Today I decided to search for a similar web application for movies. I found what it seems to be promising: I Check Movies.
Unfortunately, what seemed promising resulted in a big delusion. First, the website lacks on usability. How do you check a movie you have just watched? I searched for a menu option, but there wasn’t any for that operation. Finally, I decided that probably that option would show up if I searched the website for a specific movie. Note that the search entry is somewhere near the profile options, where you are not expecting a main feature to be present.
But hey, I tested it, and the result was that the movie I just searched was not available. That is just great. And there is no option to add it. This would mean that I just watched a movie that does not exist at all. Yes, they do not admit that they might have forgot some great movie. I confess it wasn’t a great movie. My search was Bikini Girls on Ice, just because it was the last movie I watched. But it wasn’t found.
I decided not to give up right ahead (but that was my will), and tried to search for Big Fish. It is in the 250 top list from IMDB so it should really be there. And, great, it was. I checked in the movie. The website took about two minutes to process that request. Great for an asynchronous AJAX call, huh?
Then, I got back to my dashboard, and saw my profile a shown above. Can you notice anything interesting? Note that I have 0 checks, but I have one Last Checked item. Great!
Deleted the bookmark. Will continue to use this blog and IMDB to rate movies.
For those saying: this guy is just stupid! I Check Movies is for the top movies on IMDB, and in some other lists.
Yes, I understand that. Now suppose that the movie I just searched for goes up, by some strange reason, to one of the lists, in one or two years. Later then, will I remember that I’ve watched it? Why I can’t have it checked already when I watched it and if it ever gets in one of the lists, I will have it already checked?
If you think that situation is not probable, check other: a new movie. Is Inception in any of those lists? Probably it is already. But was it in the first week on the cinemas? Probably not. If I watched it, why can’t I check it although it is not yet on the top?
I think this is bad design.