If you are a Netflix customer with a family, you will likely have encountered some flaws in the service's design. When you visit your queue in order to locate a movie you added you will firstly need to scroll through everything your spouse has added, and if you have kids then the task becomes even tougher. After solving this problem earlier in the month with individual profiles, the company is turning to another problem in need of solving.

Today Netflix announces what is essentially an improvement on the queue, calling it "My List". Michael Spiegelman, director of product innovation at Netflix explains: "We’ve designed a better way to help you easily find and watch those titles you picked to watch on Netflix and are happy to introduce My List to all our streaming members globally. With My List you can now quickly go to your own row or gallery on Netflix and instantly find those titles you already picked to watch".

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It is the same old story in households consisting of more than one member. The Netflix account is a family thing, but not all members have the same tastes and can sometimes post vastly different reviews of the same flick. This is what Netflix describes as "Honey, you ruined my Netflix". Now the company aims to right this problem.

Eddy Wu, of Netflix tells us "many of you have had similar experiences, where you sat down to find something great to watch on Netflix, but it looks like your spouse has been binging on those teenage supernatural dramas you can’t stand, or your kids have filled your viewing history with animated sheep".

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The apartment was strangely silent last night and darker than usual. Gone was the flickering light filling the center room as one of us scanned the program guide. A year later than planned, we dismantled the TV shrine and took back the living room from the false idol. Henceforth, we will worship at a different altar. Finally, I cut cable's cord -- IPTV, really, but we all call it the other, eh?

I feel anxiety and elation at the dramatic change, which allowed us to rearrange the furniture such that the living room is more open, more inviting and more suited to entertaining real people. The television now resides in the bedroom, more for the benefit of my wife's sleepless nights (the thing is narcotic). We'll stream from Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix primarily -- haha, maybe even iTunes. I had planned Google Play by way of Nexus Q, but the search giant nixes that option.

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Want more numbers thrown at you? The Microsoft beta release of its next-generation operating system, Windows 8.1, debuted yesterday and stole the news cycle. The aftermath continues today, as Netflix joins the party, announcing its latest offering to keep pace with market rivals Amazon Prime and Redbox Instant.

The company has plans to roll out video as extensions to modern browsers. "These extensions are the future of premium video on the web, since they allow playback of premium video directly in the browser without the need to install plugins", says the company.

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Earnings season can be quite the roller coaster ride. You never know what investors will do. Today, in after-market trading they rewarded Netflix by driving up shares about 25 percent. As I write, the furor is calmer, with the stock only up by 24.39 percent, or $42.53, to $216.90. Netflix closed at $174.37 today.

The video service beat the Street and returned to profitability during first calendar quarter. Perhaps the excitement explains intermittent problems handling traffic, resulting in network errors late this afternoon at Netflix's website.

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With what I can only presume is wry sense of humor, Netflix's Anthony Park and Mark Watson post: "Since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years". Well, hell, that ought to be enough time. "We'd like to share some progress we've made towards our goal of moving to HTML5 video".

Last month, Netflix finally brought video streaming to the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I wondered if that might be the future for everything. Sure enough, Netflix confirms.

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What interesting timing. The same day Ericsson agrees to buy Mediaroom from Microsoft, Nielsen releases fascinating report "Free to Move Between Screens". The two things are strangely related. A decade ago, the IPTV division made more sense. Today, television habits are changing, something Microsoft brianiacs apparently recognize and others would be wise to do likewise. Nielsen hints at the future.

Consider where we are in just three years. Before iPad's launch in April 2010, few US television networks (I don't know that any) offered two-screen experiences. Now they're commonplace, under the presumption millions of Americans sit with tablets in front of their boob tubes (and they do). HBO Go launched two months earlier. Go back six years, you have Amazon, Apple and Netflix streaming and Hulu's launch. Along with the DVR's rise in popularity, how Americans consume television programming dramatically changes.

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Netflix, the popular DVD-by-mail and internet streaming service, today announced that it is bringing social sharing to your video experience with new Facebook integration -- a feature previously available elsewhere, but prevented here by U.S. law. Now you can no longer pretend to your friends that you really didn't watch that sappy love story last night.

Netflix's Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation, states that "Netflix members in the U.S. can share their favorite shows and movies on Netflix with friends by connecting to Facebook and agreeing to share".

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I wasn't going to write this as a separate story, resorting to Google+ and Twitter posts instead. But, hey, I'm Mr. Chromebook over here and would be remiss not informing the two people who somehow missed the news (You know who you are). Drum roll. Finally, four months after Samsung released the Arm Chromebook, you have Netflix. Stream it, baby, because you finally can.

"Today we launched HTML5 video playback for streaming content from Netflix for the ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, so you can now enjoy your favorite Netflix shows & movies", according to Google. There's not lots of fanfare in the statement, but I expect some from those of you who can finally couch-potato before your Chrome OS toy.

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Valentine's Day is all about romance, but whom -- or what -- do you really love? The stereotypical geek fawns over his or her gadgets and spends hours on PC (smartphone or tablet) instead of being with family or friends. Surely that describes you, and me, for that matter.

On this day of Cupid's arrows, I confess where they struck gadgets and other goodies and bound us in everlasting love. Take my wife, please, but leave my tech toys. She'll understand -- ah, right?

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UK supermarket chain Tesco is set to launch a free online video streaming service called Clubcard TV.

Currently being internally beta tested by employees and set to launch officially this spring, it will (as the name suggests) be available to all shoppers with a Tesco loyalty card. And the really good news is it will be entirely free. According to Tesco, the new service is a "thank you to our customers -- there are no charges, contracts or subscriptions". Rumors that

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Amazon has quietly rolled out a new pricing plan for its premium membership service Amazon Prime which finally allows customers to make monthly payments instead of annual lump sum fees. That's all good right? Not so fast...

With Amazon Prime, subscribers get a lot of benefits from the popular online retailer: Free Two-Day, Standard, and no-rush Shipping, access to the Prime Instant Video streaming service, and access to the Kindle Lending Library where subscribers can freely borrow and read Kindle books as often as they like.

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Amazon Instant Video, the little video service that could, has now moved into Apple territory. Starting August 1st, Amazon will be releasing an iOS iPad app for its Amazon Instant video service. The new app allows iPad users who are also Amazon Prime account members to access the 20,000+ title collection of videos available to them.

The new iPad app also allows viewing of Amazing Instant Videos not in the "free" Amazon Prime video section as well. The Amazon Instant Video App for iPad also offers access to "Your Watchlist," a list of all the movies and TV episodes Amazon members want to watch in the future, regardless of if they own the video or not. Also, the app provides access to a "Your Video Library" feature that gives iPad customers access to their previous purchases and rentals from Amazon Instant Video. Another nice feature is the option to either watch over a Wi-Fi connection or download the video for offline viewing mode.

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Users love Netflix, it's something of a cultural phenomenon in America. But slow subscriber growth in the United States, high content acquisition costs, and the high overall cost of rapid global expansion have kept the company from net profitability in the most recent quarters.

Tuesday evening, the company released its second quarter earnings, which triggered a massive 25 percent drop in stock value based upon the appearance that Netflix wasn't performing up to expectations. At the closing bell Wednesday, Netflix stock hovered at $60.28

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Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass announcement yesterday provided a shot of adrenaline in the aging leg of the Xbox 360. While Kinect was a way to extend the life of the console for a couple of years during the motion control craze, SmartGlass is a further push to open the console to unique gameplay elements in the future, and to advance the "settopboxification" of the Xbox 360 console.

This is a good thing.

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