Great WPF App

I was recently taking a look at the apps thirteen23 has been working on. The company specializes in designing and developing rich applications, primarily focused around .Net, whether it be for desktop, touch or mobile devices.

While perusing the experiences they offer, I stumbled on Drama. In short, it’s a desktop application that allows you to search and view Netflix movies. You can sign into your account, giving you access to your personalized queue, and allowing you to you re-organize it using intuitive drag & drop. You can also watch movies available for instant viewing.

Aside from the fact it’s visually stunning, I particularly liked the fact the app does a great job of seamlessly integrating with the publicly available Netflix API, resulting in a truly compelling desktop experience.

It goes to show that even if a company is primarily known for its web presence, there’s nothing preventing it from also getting a branded desktop presence. If you were to include a few premium features that can be done on the desktop but difficult to do in a web browser (multiple windows, minimizing, disk access, etc.), you could potentially increase the amount of time users spend actively interacting with your services. If you include some well-placed context-aware advertising (new movie releases in a theater near you, for example), you might even be generating a new revenue stream.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clean, well-designed Facebook app without having to use a web browser?