End of an Era – WartVid

A Tech article with View Comments posted 1 July 2009.
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You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em… – Kenny Rogers

I’m shutting down WartVid. WartVid was a project to get the Wartburg Seminary community to save money on DVD rentals and Netflix subscriptions by listing each person’s collection online and making it easy to share. It had a lot of great accomplishments:

  • Over 1600 DVDs available, across a wide number of genres
  • More than 60 enrolled participants, representing nearly a third of Wartburg’s on-campus students and faculty
  • Written in fewer than 10 hours, total, by using the excellent Perl MVC framework Catalyst

Yet after the initial burst of enthusiasm, interest waned. I found that I didn’t even use it much myself, which is a bad sign for a hobby project. When the site starting turning up Internal Server Errors a few months ago, nobody even noticed, let alone complained.

So long, WartVid. It was fun, while it lasted.

WartVid updated

A Tech article with View Comments posted 30 October 2007.
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Just six weeks ago, I announced the open beta test of WartVid, a simple website to lend and borrow DVDs. Today I’m pleased to announce that there are over 1000 media items available to borrow and almost a quarter of the student body has signed up to use it.

There are two new features:

  • Quickly browse alphabetically by title with the new “letter cloud”.
  • TV shows and VHS tapes – everyone was entering these in anyway, so they are now searchable under the “Browse” tab.

Next up: allowing anyone to lend a DVD out to anyone else, whether they are a WartVid user or not, by typing their name in. Then maybe some Dojo.

WartVid launched

A Tech article with View Comments posted 16 September 2007.
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I created a system for lending and borrowing DVDs within the Wartburg community. The result: WartVid!

Here’s the announcement:

Greetings fellow students!

Realizing that many of us have prodigious DVD collections that often times collect dust, I have created WartVid, a simple website to coordinate lending and borrowing DVDs from other people in the Wartburg community.

It’s very easy to use – just create your account here: http://www.wartvid.com/signup and then (optionally) type in your DVD collection, one DVD per line (and try to capitalize correctly). Then you can browse other people’s movies, pick out ones you would like to borrow, and request them. It’s up to you to get in touch with the lender to get the DVDs, but the website coordinates the contact information for you.

When someone borrows your DVDs, you can keep track of who has what at all times. When you receive a DVD back, check it in to your library. The system sends emails to coordinate lending and borrowing, so please enter an email address you check regularly.

Best of all, WartVid is completely free. The service has been in alpha testing for a few weeks, and it has performed well. In fact, there are already 260 movies available for you to borrow for free right now.

I hope you enjoy WartVid. Please feel free to email me with questions, suggestions, or bug reports.

Peace,

Ted Carnahan, M.Div junior