Netflix has launched in the UK with a catalogue of streaming movies and TV shows. On the surface that catalogue isn’t massively exciting, what with it not being particularly big or filled with a great amount of very new things.

But then most new things are shit, and quality doesn’t need company. For whatever reason, the current Netflix collection has plenty of ‘90s US independent movies (well, Miramax) and a few choice picks from United Artists and ‘70s New Hollywood.

The service is currently offering a 30 day free trial, so here are 30 things that I would describe as “amazing” without too much thought. That’s one a day! If you’re useless enough not to have seen any of them so far.

After keen debate at the Guardian's books desk, this is our list of the very best factual writing, organised by category, and then by date.

(I tried to write this list like a haiku—one swift stroke, top to bot tom, no revi sion. I’m sure that, upon reflec tion, there will be other books I want to include here. But aren’t the truly impor tant books the ones that don’t require reflec tion to sum mon up?—the ones that are sim ply… there?)

If I have a criterion for choosing the greatest films, it's an emotional one. These are films that moved me deeply in one way or another. The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).

You should, however, be sweating the Western. Because not least among their virtues is that Joel and Ethan Coen care and care deeply about genre. Virtually all of their movies are a loving pastiche of one genre form or another, whether playful (like Hudsucker’s newspaper comedy or The Big Lebowski’s skewed take on the hardboiled detective), not so playful (No Country For Old Men) or both somehow at once (Miller’s Crossing, Fargo). And the Western is fickle. You’ve got to contend with books, movies, radio, and TV, all with their own assumptions, all alternating giddy hats-and-badges-and-guns-and-horses entertainment and stone-serious edge-of-civilization Greek-tragedy-meets-American-origin-stories primal rites.

So don't view this as a definitive list of the best episodes. It's not meant to be! Instead, it's a collection of people talking about specific episodes that meant a lot to them. I know that there are dozens of episodes that have criminally been left out, and I had to stop myself from writing up more than one myself. But it's a testament to this show that there are just so many Best Episodes Ever, isn't it?

Tim Carmody's answer to Frank Chimero's question: Looking to do some sort of survey on film history. Any sort of open curriculum out there like this that runs in tandem with Netflix Instant? 

From Abba to Zamballarana, and from Mozart to Eminem, one of rock's finest talents has identified 500 albums essential to a happy life. It was a long, tortuous undertaking, but the man knows music - and his aim is true

Editors Kevin Nguyen and Nick Martens talk with fellow bloggers about favorite new additions to their RSS readers.

At the height of my obsession with David Foster Wallace, garnered after reading ‘Infinite Jest’ over several weeks in 2001, an act which literally changed my life, I began going after any and every piece of writing not only of his, but that he had recommended, blurbed, mentioned in interviews, taught, etc. Many of these books also had a profound influence on my brain, including Gass’s ‘Omensetter’s Luck,’ McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’ and ‘Suttree,’ Donald Barthelme, and countless others.

RT @TheAtlanticTech: The Atlantic tech canon is now complete. 50 works about technology you need to know: http://bit.ly/9m8ayv

This is a list of planned cities (sometimes known as planned communities or new towns) by country. Additions to this list should be cities whose overall form (as opposed to individual neighborhoods or expansions) has been determined in large part in advance on a drawing board, or which were planned to a degree which is unusual for their time and place.

I gave a version of my “Dark secrets of the blogging superstars” preso to a group of news directors from public radio stations (including a couple of our Argo stations). The Knight Digital Media Center has posted a video of the session online. Feel free to take a look. Slides used during the session are below.

Beach reads don’t have to be new best sellers or formulaic romances. In fact, summer is the perfect time to dig deep into books, classics and otherwise, you’ve missed. We asked exemplary authors in particular fields to recommend the books that matter most to them—the ones they keep going back to and, in many cases, that made them want to write. Their literary mix tapes, of a sort.

As I write, I keep coming across these important tips and saying to myself, "Man, this is what people REALLY need to know. I should pull them out into a special list at the back of the book called, 'The Best Photography Tricks of All Time,' so people can't miss it."

So that's exactly what I'm doing. Thought I'd send you the list as it stands today, so you'd have it when you unwrap that shiny new digital camera that you get as a gift. (Most of these apply to consumer cameras, not S.L.R.'s.)

"These are my 75 favourite songs of 2009: songs I love more than peaches & pears. I follow one arbitrary rule: that no artist may be listed twice."