Somewhat-reputable sources list the Minneapolis/St. Paul area as one of the "most liveable" cities in the country. I'm not sure if I believe that; I've seen many places that seem just as nice, although this is the only city I've lived in. Other places have listed the metro as a very "bike-able" area, and I'm starting to believe that. I know I've had some minor hostility from drivers on the road and some genuine hatred towards bikers from my friends who drive, so we probably still have a bit to go as well. However, a new development in the last year or two has shown that cycling is at least growing and somewhat popular and maybe even a sustainable business can be mad with it. This morning I got a chance to try Nice Ride for myself, and it seems like a valuable service to urban members of the Twin Cities.

Nice Ride is an organization heavily funded by local companies, including flagship sponsor, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, who spends a lot of money on marketing to encourage Minnesotans to stay active, and whose logo appears on each Nice Ride bike. Nice Ride currently operates 145 stations in and around both downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, including the six miles or so between downtowns. From any one of those stations, you can rent a bicycle and return it to that station or any other station when you are done.

For a one-time newcomer such as myself, a payment of $6 to my credit card will get me unlimited rides for the next 24 hours. Longer-term users of 30 days or the whole April-November bicycling season pay $30 or $65, respectively, which is much more reasonable. Additional trip fees are incurred if the bike is away from a station for more than 30 minutes, so the program is definitely geared towards folks who just need to take a short ride around town, not for long-term cyclers. Monthly or yearly subscribers also receive a small, plastic key with an RFID tag for their account which gives them immediate access to a bike from any station; less frequent users have to put a credit card into a card machine at one end of the station to gain access to a bike. Many other cities across the country and the world have similar programs, so you can get locations of stations and availability of bikes data from the SpotCycle app for your smartphone.

The bicycles themselves are simple but functional. The bike is rather heavy and well-built. It comes with only three gears, so don't expect going very fast. But you can get the bike going fast enough; there's just not that acceleration that you would get from a fancier bike. The bike does not have large treads on the wheels and is thus designed for the many trails of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the city streets. The bike does come with a rack on the handlebars with the potential to carry a bag, although it seems to me you would need to have a bit more tools with you to secure something on there. Overall, it's a functional bike, but nothing you'd want o own personally. After my ride, I did read on the Nice Ride FAQ page that I'm actually a bit over their maximum weight limit, but I'm not sure that this will stop me from using the service again.

This morning, I was able to take a city bus to a nearby Nice Ride station. From there, I biked 3-4 miles into downtown to run some errands. Since my bike is currently broken, it was nice to be able to just pick up a bike, go on a ride, and then just leave it at my destination and take the bus home. There are stations nearby many bus and train stops, and especially for downtown, there is a Nice Ride station within a block or two of any location. Since I am personally uncomfortable biking after dark due to my poor eyesight, I can see myself biking to a concert or other evening event and then being able to take the bus or light rail home that night. You don't have to worry about locking up a bicycle and it getting stolen, you just deposit the bike at a nearby station.

Yes, it's a helpful service, but will I be getting a yearly subscription? Not right now. I currently live in the Highland area, a couple miles from the nearest station. If there was a station only a short walk from my apartment, I would be very likely to purchase a subscription and use it for a bit of fresh air while heading around town. It definitely makes sense to start up a service like this in the downtowns and more populated neighboring areas, but I hope it continues to expand throughout the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Another question about this service is: Can it be profitable? Yes, it is organized as a non-profit right now and is heavily supported by local corporations, but is it profitable? Could it be profitable? A non-profit can be one way to kickstart a business, but but is this always something that will be around as usage grows and the donors dwindle? It seems that most other U.S. metros that have similar programs have them set up in a similar way, so only time may tell, I suppose.

My co-worker, Joe Tower, is a designer/developer who is just getting into coding his own Drupal modules. Over at his blog, earlier this weekend, he created a basic module. I thought it needed a couple more things, so I'm gonna pick up where he left off. You might learn a bit or two about how the innards of Drupal work if you keep reading.

First of all, I took his basic my_menu_module_form_content_type_form_alter() function and made it a bit more general. This version of the function, using the less specific hook_form_alter() function, is defined as my_menu_module_form_alter(). This code below searches for any content add/edit form and sets the checkbox to default to checked:

function my_menu_module_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  if (substr($form_id, -10) == '_node_form') {
    $form['menu']['enabled']['#default_value'] = TRUE;
  }
]

I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what we want to do, though. This is where Drupal's built-in variable system is very helpful. Using the functions variable_set() and variable_get(), you can set/get small bits of data very easily. In this case, we're just setting "1" or "0", which is synonymous in this case to TRUE or FALSE. Therefore, this is the version of the above function where we get the content type name from the form id and then check a variable that is specific to that content type.

function my_menu_module_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  if (substr($form_id, -10) == '_node_form') {
    $content_type = substr($form_id, 0, -10);
    $form['menu']['enabled']['#default_value'] = variable_get('my_menu_module_' . $content_type . '_enabled', FALSE);
  }
}

Now, we need to create a checkbox on the Content Type edit page. To do that, we'll use another form_alter function:

function my_menu_module_form_node_type_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  $form['menu']['my_menu_module_enabled'] = array(
    '#type' => 'checkbox',
    '#title' => t('Default the "Provide a menu link" item to checked.'),
    '#default_value' => variable_get('my_menu_module_' . $form['#node_type']->type . '_enabled', FALSE),
  );
  $form['#submit'][] = 'my_menu_module_type_form_submit';
}
 
function my_menu_module_type_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
  variable_set('my_menu_module_' . $form_state['values']['type'] . '_enabled', $form_state['values']['my_menu_module_enabled']);
  return;
}

Also, as you can see, I added a submit function that saves our custom variable. You'll also notice that the variable_get() function always expects a second variable which is the default value if this variable is not set. So, now you should have a much more functional module that has a checkbox on each content type's admin interface to decide if this will be defaulting to true on your site's content types.

Update: My co-workers have created a Drupal module out of this idea. Check out the Default Menu Link module. It might just help you out.

A couple years ago, I watched the Pilot of "Chuck", a TV show where a common computer geek gets a supercomputer installed in his brain. It's got geek references, real spies, and lots of fun. It's equal parts drama, comedy, and action, sometimes even a couple of those in the same scene. I haven't seen a tone of television in my years, but it's easily my favorite show currently on television. But that won't last for long, because the show's finale is just over a week away. The finale is not coming as a surprise; the end of every season always contained the question of whether it would be renewed and this current season being the last season was announced over 6 months ago. However, this fifth and final season, while it's been lots of fun and looks like it will come to a great ending, has been less than impressive with viewership. In my opinion, it's clear that NBC and Warner Bros. (who produces/owns the show) did as much as they could to intentionally kill Chuck once and for all.

First, the show was moved from Mondays to Fridays on the weekly lineup. Friday, along with Saturday, are the weakest nights in TV viewing, excepting maybe sporting events. Geek TV fans know that shows like Dollhouse, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica have aired on Fridays and never did amazing in the ratings. It's just a fact that many folks go out on Friday and Saturday instead of staying home and watching TV. If I didn't have a DVR, I would've missed probably half of the episodes so far this season. Mondays worked much better for most viewers, I'm sure, because all folks want to do after a "case of the Mondays" at work is to sit at home, eat a pizza, and watch Chuck and then Castle.

Second, for the first four seasons of Chuck, there was plenty of content available online. Throughout the first four seasons, the show was available to stream on Hulu the next day, just like other NBC programs. Intermittently, the show was also available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon VOD as well. However, for unknown reasons, season five has not been available on Hulu or any other video providers online. This, combined with the Friday problem, means that anyone who misses an episode may just wait until the end of the season to rent it on DVD. Either that or the fan without a DVR is forced to pirate the show, such that this viewing is not counted in ratings nor any revenue is gained by the show. It seems that the folks at NBC/WB didn't want the fans to come back if they missed an episode because they gave them little choices. This is not what a show like this should do. Look at shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica: they made it easy for folks to catch up with episodes they missed online and even did promotional materials to get fans caught up with the major plot points quickly if they didn't have the time to watch all the episodes. These are things that NBC/WB should be doing to keep the casual Chuck fans watching if they wanted to coax decent ratings out of the end of the show.

Third, a planned ending to a show should be an opportunity for the networks/producers to experiment and possibly gain new viewers. Many folks got into Lost just before the last season because the entire show was available for streaming on Hulu, Netflix, and other outlets. In fact, after hearing about Chuck and deciding to give it a chance two years ago, I found the pilot available on Hulu and then watched the next six episodes on WB.com. If I hadn't gotten the opportunity to watch those early episodes right away, I might not have gotten hooked. After watching those online episodes, I used my Netflix subscription to rent all the later episodes of Chuck to get up to what was currently available. What Warner Bros. and NBC should have done was put all four seasons on Netflix streaming this past summer. I have no doubt that there would be thousands of viewers that would watch all four seasons and would now be watching NBC every Friday, had NBC given them a chance. Just a couple months ago, CBS's hit sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" was put up on Netflix and there's been a small bump in ratings since then. Also, all my friends who watch most of their TV on Hulu and Netflix are watching "How I Met Your Mother" and talking about it for the first time despite the show having been on for seven seasons.

In the end, it seems that the folks at WB refuse to do these internet streaming things because they fear it will eat into their DVD/Blu-Ray sales. However, I don't believe it. I may not be the average customer, but I didn't buy the Blu-Rays of every season of Chuck until I had watched every episode available. If I cannot rent the disc or view the main feature content online, I will not purchase the product unless it is ridiculously cheap. For me, I see Chuck as something I may want to re-watch in a couple years or share with friends (and I have already), and that's why I want the Blu-Ray. But I would have never bought the discs if I had to search the show's back episodes out illegally. The show needs to be accessible in order to increase viewership and sales, and especially in the last six months, this seems to be the farthest from NBC and Warner's minds. If these ideas were better executed, the show would not be the only thing going out on a graceful note; the folks who own the content would be happy with a sound investment not squandered.

This morning, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings took what may possibly be the biggest gamble of his life. Netflix has been a successful company for over a decade, starting as a DVD-rental-by-mail service since 1998. Ten years later, they started offering streaming of movies and TV shows over the Internet, no longer requiring the DVD-by-mail. In the last six months or so, some Internet statistics companies (which are a bit spurious) claimed that as much as 40% of prime-time Internet traffic was Netflix Instant traffic. Netflix was a force to be reckoned with, but the last couple months, they've been struggling with that status and may be losing their footing.

Recently, many casual Netflix customers have been threatening to cancel their service due to Netflix's termination of their contract with Starz. Starz was providing access to a limited amount of new-release movies on Instant, but it was a drop in the bucket of the streaming content. But those of us who like quality in movie presentation were nonplussed with the Starz contract, as most of the content was not in HD and sometimes in a full-screen presentation instead of the original widescreen. Personally, I believe the cancellation of the Starz Play deal was a great move for Netflix because it allowed Netflix to spend that money to make deals directly with the studios.

The next big move was Netflix's announcement a couple months ago that September would bring two different feature sets to the service. Streaming, which started as a free bonus for DVD customers just over 3 years ago, was now to cost $7.99. If you wanted to keep the DVD service as well, that was an additional $7.99. From a business point of view, I think this made sense to some extent. As Hastings says, each of these products has their own business model and set of costs. But, while I was happy to pay $7.99 in August, I'm not happy to pay $15.98 in September. The Instant service has drastically increased in value to me with the inclusion of many more great TV shows and some movies, but to suddenly pay twice as much for Netflix service is a hard pill to swallow. And while there are days and days of content I want to watch on Instant, there's no way to watch that movie that I just recently missed while it was in theaters if I cancel the DVD-by-mail service. Long-time Netflix customers either have to choose to pay the big bucks or cancel one half of their services. This would have been easily mitigated by offering a discount of $3 or so when both services were included. And, honestly, when I got an e-mail from Netflix (which is much like this post from their official blog) this morning apologizing, I was expecting that kind of discount. But what we got was much more confusing.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings apologized not for the price hikes, but he apologized for not really telling us why the price hikes were happening. Funnily enough, that was not something I thought he needed to apologize for. I already explained why the pricing was separated; the services are really two separate products and should be treated as such. I was on board with that. In fact, just a few days ago I canceled the streaming service because I was worried I'd spend all winder watching every episode of Star Trek and getting nothing productive done while online. No, the real reason the price hikes were apparently happening was much more puzzling.

As Hastings mentions in his blog post, he firmly believes that streaming movies and TV shows to your home via the Internet is the future. I believe he's right. Once the Internet is fast enough to deliver high-quality content to the masses on a just-in-time basis, the movie disc will disappear. (While the technology to deliver content this fast exists, it seems that most of the developed world is still years away from achieving this.) Also, as Hastings says, for five years, he has feared that he'd miss that point. He doesn't want Netflix to become the next AOL or Borders, where the business model died and they went down with it. For years I've heard him talk about this and thought he was on the right track, but today it has become apparent that Hastings is no longer healthily fearful of the future, he's foolishly obsessed with it.

The fact is, Hastings's Netflix is far from missing the trend. In reality, Netflix has done most of the work to make the trend happen. Before Netflix Instant appeared, almost no one was streaming movies online. YouTube had only been around for a couple years. Heck, Hulu had just started a year before. Netflix brought streaming video from a thing the computer nerds might do to millions of American households in the span of a couple years. Their streaming service is still built into thousands of different TVs, Blu-Ray players, and Internet-connected boxes and phones besides your computer, more than any other competitor. Without Netflix, Blockbuster would still be going strong and we'd still be going there every week to get the next disc of 30 Rock for a week. There would maybe not even be a streaming video market.

This morning, Hastings announced that the reason the pricing was changing was because the Netflix DVD service was being spun off into a subsidiary called Qwikster. Apparently it wasn't enough to have two separate products, but each product had to be under it's own brand and company in the name of bringing "simplicity for our members". (Speaking of which, I think many companies would like to have just two products -- many companies Netflix's size have hundreds of products.) For gamers, there was the addition of disc-by-mail game rentals via the new Qwikster product announced, so at least some customers may find a silver lining. But for the majority of Netflix users, it seems like the only result is more confusion and pain.

Netflix and Qwikster, for those who really enjoy movies, are not two separate products, they are two parts of the same whole. If I find a movie I want to watch, I add it to my Netflix Queue. It's my "what I want to watch" list. It's been great that Netflix says, for now, "Instead of waiting for you to get to this in your queue, you could watch it right now via Instant." But, as described now, a subscriber to both Netflix and Qwikster would have two separate queues with no interaction. If Qwikster offers a similar developer API to what Netflix offers, I"m sure someone will write an app to sync the queues, but it will inherently not work as well as a first-party solution. Two separate services do not provide as comprehensive a solution for their most devoted customer, I believe.

One unified company also seemed to be a good place to negotiate with studios. A streaming-only Netflix service is entirely dependent on the whims of the major studios. If the major studios pulled all their content off of streaming, Netflix wouldn't have much content to speak of. Netflix does give the studios substantial money for the rights to stream their content, but it's not as substantial per viewer as the studios selling it on iTunes or Amazon or via DVD or Blu-Ray. It's much less. Many content properties are worth more than the earnings the studios get from Netflix, and if they want to make more per viewer, they can cut Netflix off. In short, if the studios want to shut Netflix Instant down, they definitely can now because Qwikster is no longer a built-in bargaining chip. That doesn't seem like a better spot to be in to me.

In the long term, I think it makes sense to relegate Qwikster to a separate service, company and brand. Qwikster may thrive for a number of years, but it is a dog that has seen its day and will not grow. Netflix is where the exciting stuff is. But I think that Reed Hastings has, overcome with fear, split them off a couple years too soon. Even he admits in the blog: "It is possible we are moving too fast – it is hard to say." He's right, it is hard to say. I think the next few years will be tough for Netflix and its subsidiaries to regain the momentum that it has lost in the last couple months, but they may be able to keep the car running. Or, we may be witnessing Netflix flying through the air, about to crash into a concrete wall. Only time will tell.