Webware

There are dozens of movie recommendation engines on the Web. Some require little or no input before they give you titles, while others want to find out exactly what your interests are. I've been using 10 movie recommendation engines on both sides of the equation. They're all different, but some are definitely better than others.

The Top 10

10. Netflix Netflix asks you to rate movies to determine which films you'll want to see next. And although it does make it easy to rate movies and it does return huge lists, there's too much duplication in the results and the ideas it gives you aren't all that strong. It's easy to use, but it's not the best way to get movie recommendations.

9. Rotten Tomatoes Instead of telling Rotten Tomatoes which films you like, you can tell it what kind of films you enjoy, which actors you want to see, and other criteria to help it find the best movie for you. There's a lot of variability in the quality of Rotten Tomatoes recommendations but it's also a nice way to find the right film for any mood.

8. Movielens Movielens is ugly. But what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for with a great recommendation engine that evaluates your tastes based on ratings to films you've seen before. Once you rate 15 movies, it returns recommendations that, based on my testing, were quite accurate and certainly more relevant than results from Netflix.

7. Flixster Flixster is the pretty version of Movielens. The site allows you to rate films and it returns recommendations that are about as good as Movielens. Beyond beauty, Flixster beats out Movielens because it offers extras like film quizzes, the capability to monitor friends' ratings, and more. It's good for people who want more than just movie ideas.

6. IMDb Instead of asking you to input ratings or to tell it what movies you like, IMDb automatically recommends similar films to the movie you search for. At the bottom of the page, a "Recommendations" section explains that if you liked a respective film, you'll like the handful of other films being displayed, based on information gathered from an IMDb database, which examines films to find similarities and differences. It's a great way for people who don't have time to rate movies to find some films worth watching. Even better, the recommendations are solid.

5. Criticker Criticker is another one of those sites that places no stock in design, but it does a fine job of finding movies worth watching. Instead of just allowing you to rank films, the site compares your ratings to those of other users and employs something called the "Taste Compatibility Index" to see how closely your tastes match these other users. Once the service finds matches, you can view other users' profiles and see which movies they like. When I tried it, the other users' preferences were in line with my own on almost every film. Combining community and functionality, Criticker is a unique, yet worthwhile service to check out.

4. Clerkdogs Input the name of a film you like and Clerkdogs will return similar films. It's that simple. And it works. For both major movies and small films, it always found relevant recommendations when I gave it a starting point of a film I liked.

3. Nanocrowd At first glance, Nanocrowd looks like every other film search engine: you input the name of a film you like and it returns results. But the site goes well beyond a simple results page. Nanocrowd allows you to drill down into a more refined search with the help of a "three-word nanogenre." On the results page, you click which three-word category you prefer, based on keywords related to the movie you input into the search field, and Nanocrowd immediately refines your search to get the best film for you. Even better, the films it displays aren't always blockbusters.

2. Taste Kid If you want more than good movie recommendations, Taste Kid is the site for you. It's simple enough--you input a film you like and it returns results that offer similar action to your favorites. But it goes beyond just movies. If you really like "The Godfather," Taste Kid fills you in on what kind of bands you'll like to listen to, books you'll want to read, and "other stuff" that's related to that film. Taste Kid is a full entertainment recommendation engine.

1. Jinni Jinni is the best movie recommendation engine on the Web. Period. Whether you want to search for films in the search field or you want to find films based on your mood, time available, setting, or reviews, the site has it all. I searched for movies based on my mood and followed that with a search based on my plot preference. Each time, films that I've watched and loved in the past, or that I haven't watched but definitely want to see popped up.

But perhaps the most compelling feature that Jinni offers is its semantic search. You can input terms like, "movies that have gangsters" or "films that show Chris Farley yelling" and the site will return films that match your query. It's mind-blowing.

Go use Jinni. You won't regret it.

Diddit, a site that allows users to share life experiences with others, announced Friday that its "diddits" and "wanna dos" can now be shared with other social networks. Users will be able to deploy new Diddit widgets, showing their lists of what they've done ("diddits") and would like to do ("wanna dos") on their blogs or personal Web sites. With the help of Twitter integration, Diddit users will be able to automatically tweet any of their "diddits" to their followers. Users will also be able to sign in through Facebook Connect.

Search Cloudlet, a Firefox add-on that adds tag clouds to Google results, announced Friday that it has launched the same feature for Twitter. Once installed in Firefox version 2.0 and up, the add-on inserts a tag cloud at the top of Twitter Search results, showing the most common keywords in the results. Users can click a particular tag and filter results based on that keyword. The same cloud feature is also available in individual user profiles.

Online discovery site StumbleUpon is set to launch a URL-shortening service called su.pr, TechCrunch is reporting. According to the report, StumbleUpon will be used to share links on Twitter and Facebook. So far, no launch date has been confirmed, but the service should be available in the next few weeks, the publication says.

Openfilm.com, a video-sharing network for independent filmmakers, announced Friday that it has launched an ad revenue-sharing program for all OpenFilm content providers. According to the company, it will share 50 percent of advertising revenue with filmmakers. Every filmmaker on the site is automatically eligible to participate in the revenue-sharing deal and users will be able to track their earnings through a new reporting interface on the site. All funds will be transferred through PayPal or accepted alternatives that were not disclosed. The revenue-sharing program is live now.

MySpace has launched its second annual MySpace Bracket Challenge, the company announced Friday. This year, MySpace users will able to "go head-to-head" predicting the outcome of the NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament. Users will need to create their own brackets and choose the winners in each round. The person with the most correct game outcomes will receive $10,000. To participate, MySpace users will need to "friend" the Bracket Challenge profile and create a bracket. They have until Game 1 on March 19 to participate.

Last week, I discussed five television shows that I would like added to Hulu, the online video-streaming service backed by NBC and Fox. Now it's time we shift our attention to film to find five classics that Hulu needs to add to its movies page.

Granted, movies are different. You need to invest more time if you want to watch some of your favorite films, and they don't have the ongoing sweep of a long television series. But there is a market for streaming movies online and because they are currently free on Hulu, users can start a film today and finish it tomorrow or skip to their favorite part of a film without much trouble.

But Hulu's current catalog of films is unsatisfactory. In fact, the majority of movies it now offers are titles that performed poorly at the box office. It's in desperate need of change.

Citizen Kane
No list of movies can be complete without mentioning Citizen Kane. Released in 1941, Citizen Kane was the first feature film directed by Orson Welles and is widely considered by film pundits the greatest movie of all time.

Although it doesn't top my list, I simply don't see how any film-streaming service can exist without Citizen Kane. It is a classic. It belongs on Hulu. And just in case the site's managers need justification for such a move, it should be noted that Citizen Kane is one of the most studied films in history. Film classes will jump at the chance to have easy access to the movie and since skipping from one point to another is easy with video streams, I'm sure it would make for a great (and simple) teaching tool for professors.

The Godfather
Say what you will about the Mafia and its glorification in film, but The Godfather is one of the greatest films ever made. And I'd love to see it on Hulu.

Adding The Godfather to Hulu lends the site's movie page credibility, a harder edge (which wouldn't be a bad thing), and the ability to open its doors to millions across the globe who would love to watch gangster films. The Godfather is one of the most celebrated films in history. It belongs on Hulu.

Goodfellas
Goodfellas is another classic gangster film that would lend the same credibility to Hulu as The Godfather. Much like The Godfather, it's one of the most respected films of the past few decades.

In order for Hulu to truly bring value to its movies page, it needs to add a movie like Goodfellas. There are so many memorable moments from the film that it would probably be a success if the site only offered the best clips from the movie. Goodfellas has become a cult classic thanks to those scenes and that's exactly what Hulu needs right now to coax more people to the movies page.

The Shawshank Redemption
The prison film The Shawshank Redemption tops the user-generated list of the best movies of all time on IMDb. And although it's a long movie, it's an ideal film to add to Hulu.

Adding The Shawshank Redemption would transform Hulu's movie page. Undoubtedly, film schools and film buffs alike would study the film and take the chance to use the stream to quickly and effectively find their favorite scenes. And considering moviegoers have voted it the best of all time, isn't that enough justification to add it to Hulu?

The Dark Knight
The 2008 Batman blockbuster, The Dark Knight, should be added to Hulu as soon as possible. If that happens, Hulu could finally prove to its users (and especially its critics) that it too can start offering movies as they're made available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The film's surprisingly dark tone that, combined with fantastic acting, made it one of the most celebrated films of the past year. Simply put, it's an instant classic.

And that's precisely why it needs to be added to Hulu. Right now, the service is filled with old, barely known films that generally fail to captivate audiences. If The Dark Knight could make its way to the service, it would immediately show that Hulu is capable of offering major titles within a reasonable amount of time since its release. I think it would make Hulu's movie page more relevant.

Highbrow film company The Criterion Collection has launched Criterion.com, an "online cinematheque" for people who want to watch movies, delve into some editorial content, and socialize with other fans.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the new site is the fact that you can rent many Criterion films (a melange of old and newish, domestic and foreign) for $5 per stream, and that $5 will be deducted if you then choose to purchase the flick on DVD. Kind of a cool model that nobody seems to be using yet.

Criterion has also teamed up with a new film-centric social site, The Auteurs, to host a monthly "film festival" that makes a handful of Criterion films available for temporary free streaming and discussion. November's picks, sponsored by IFC, follow a "cruel stories of youth" theme and feature the World War II drama Au revoir les enfants as well as the quintessential nasty-kids story, Lord of the Flies, among others. No, there's no Mean Girls.

I know, I know, it's all a bit pretentious. Now go put on a scarf and down a few macchiatos and think about something deep.

No, this isn't that Aaron Sorkin thing.

Film on Facebook, a project that the social network first announced in conjunction with this spring's South by Southwest Festival, will be debuting its first film on Thursday.

The movie, called One Track Mind, is a surf-theme movie created by Woodshed Films, the production company behind a number of outdoors-focused productions, including several created by crunchy singer-songwriter Jack Johnson. It'll be available on Facebook Thursday and Friday, and a live-chat session with director Chris Malloy will take place on Thursday evening.

The film and video chat session will be broadcast using live-streaming platform Kyte. The whole project has been sponsored by apparel companies Patagonia and Etnies.

At SXSW, when it announced Film on Facebook as well as Music on Facebook, the company marketed its "Fan Pages" product toward the thousands of independent musicians and filmmakers who flood Austin, Texas, each year for the cultural festival.

Facebook, the company argued, is a great promotional platform; the One Track Mind premiere is consequently a demonstration of how an indie production company can spread buzz and gain fans through the social network.

Right now, the music and film communities are still more closely tied to Facebook's News Corp.-owned rival, MySpace, which recently launched its own music service and has a "MySpaceTV" site that shows original programming in addition to user-created videos.

Hollywood.com announced on Monday that it has officially completed its acquisition of Media By Numbers, a site that specializes in delivering box office numbers and analysis on the latest movies to hit theaters. Financial details were not disclosed.

"The synergies that exist within Hollywood.com and Media by Numbers create an extremely powerful combination that will allow us to realize our full potential and better showcase our services," Media by Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian said.

The Media By Numbers acquisition is part of a bigger plan on the part of Hollywood.com. Obviously feeling the heat from its competitors, the company wants to use Media By Numbers' box office performance and forecasting services to bolster its offerings and become a place where moviegoers will find well-researched information. More importantly, Hollywood.com hopes that the film industry itself will use the Media By Numbers data it now owns to forecast individual film performance before release.

But the main issue Hollywood.com faces is that it's fighting in a fiercely competitive space. Although billed as one of the best sources to find the best movies and TV shows to watch, it has competition in sites such as Hollywood Reporter, CNET's TV.com, and countless others that provide the same basic service. That has proven troublesome for the company. Evidently, Hollywood.com believes that Media By Numbers will help it buck that trend.

Media By Numbers data and services will remain a separate entity, and so far, Hollywood.com has no plans to integrate it into its site.

Quickly filling up Netflix's rearview mirror is a sight that no tech company wants to see: Apple.

Apple announced on Tuesday that the company has cut licensing deals with every top film studio--deals that will enable iTunes to offer first-run movies a month after they are released on DVD.

This means that Apple has won a major advantage in the Web movie-rental business. One of the biggest complaints customers have with online movie services is that none offer first-run features. The same is true with some of the video-on-demand services operated by the cable companies.

Moreover, Netflix offerings don't work on anything but computers running Microsoft's operating system.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the audience during his Macworld 2008 keynote address on Tuesday that movies offered by the service, iTunes Movie Rentals, will play on PCs, Macs, iPods, and iPhones.

Apple also one-upped most competitors by offering films in high definition (HD). Jobs told the Macworld audience that customers can watch the streaming movies instantly. They will have 30 days to start watching the moves and once they begin streaming the film and will then be allowed 24 hours to finish viewing.

Apple will charge $3.99 for newer releases and $2.99 for older titles. Customers can pay $1 extra to obtain movies in HD. The company expects to offer 1,000 films by the end of February.

"The big surprise is that they're doing HD," said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Apple nailed this because HD is what consumers want."

Apple's new rental service isn't likely to threaten Netflix's core mail-order business, according to McQuivey. Apple is charging on a per-film basis while Netflix business allows users to watch what they want for a monthly fee.

But the future of movie rentals is supposed to be providing customers access to any film with a push of a button. Nobody offers that--yet. But in the race to deliver instant gratification, Apple just zoomed past Netflix.

Still, the Web rental business as a whole has many shortcomings. Some are technological and some are the annoying restrictions imposed by the studios.

Transmitting movies over the Web, especially in massive HD-quality files, is known for taking multiple hours. The viewing experience, meanwhile, is often marked by stalling and jerky video.

Among Apple's competitors is Microsoft's Xbox. The company launched a movie and TV download store for Net-connected Xbox 360s in November and some users have complained about hours-long delays in getting their films. What Apple fans will be interested to see is what kind of viewing experience Apple can deliver.

One thing that is bound to annoy them is the viewing deadline. That isn't Apple's fault, according to McQuivey.

The reason for the deadline, he said, is that the studios insist on it because they don't want movies sitting on people's hard drives for too long.

"Their worry is that this would discourage people from picking up the DVD at Wal-Mart," McQuivey said. "The DVD market is $23 billion a year, twice as big as the annual box office revenue. The studios don't want to mess with that if they can help it. At least for now."

To avoid having to turn over user information to the motion picture industry, the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy cut off access to its site in the United States. Apparently, that wasn't enough to satisfy Hollywood.

According to documents filed with the court last week and reviewed by CNET News.com on Wednesday, the studios still want information on the site's visitors. Lawyers representing the studios--armed with a court order--say TorrentSpy has refused to hand over the data. Because of that, the movie sector wants the judge to throw the book at the company.

"(TorrentSpy) took steps to make the Server Log Data unavailable for the express purpose of avoiding compliance with the (court) order," the movie studios said in documents filed with the court last week. "This claim should be seen for what it is: another illegitimate attempt by defendants to evade authority of this court and the May 29 order."

TorrentSpy was ordered in May to begin tracking visitors' activity and collect information, such as what BitTorrent files users requested as well as the time and date of those requests. This would show whether TorrentSpy users were on the site for legal purposes or whether the service existed to enable piracy.

During the time a judge was reviewing TorrentSpy's appeal to overturn the order, company executives made some adjustments to the site.

Sometime in July, TorrentSpy stopped providing users with cached downloads of BitTorrent files, the technology favored by many for distributing large files over the Web and a favorite of the file-sharing community, according to court documents. This meant that searches for BitTorrent files at TorrentSpy would return only links to third-party sites.

Clicking on those links wouldn't ping TorrentSpy's servers, and as a result, none of the data that the film companies sought would be stored on TorrentSpy's RAM.

Was this an attempt by the company to evade the judge's order?

"The primary reason for the changes was to protect end-user privacy worldwide," said Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney. "Web sites are allowed to evolve their technology during litigation especially if they evolve to protect user privacy. The irony here is that studios are blowing hot and cold. On one hand they asked in their lawsuit for TorrentSpy in essence to shut down U.S. traffic. When the company did, the plaintiffs complained that TorrentSpy is in violation for not supplying information under the log file order. They're never satisfied."

The studios first filed their copyright lawsuit against TorrentSpy last year.

On May 29, Jacqueline Chooljian, a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles, ordered TorrentSpy to hand over information about user activity.

TorrentSpy executives told the judge that they never tracked visitors' activity. She responded by telling them to retrieve the information from their servers' random-access memory, or RAM.

In an unprecedented decision, the judge ruled that data found in RAM is a tangible document that can be stored and must be turned over in civil litigation. TorrentSpy argued that RAM is far too ephemeral to be considered "stored data."

In August, TorrentSpy appealed the decision but lost. The company then shut down access to U.S. residents. If TorrentSpy had no U.S. users, then there wouldn't be any information stored in the company's RAM under the judge's purview, legal experts said. Only data on International users would be logged and U.S. courts don't have authority over them.

But the studios didn't go away.

For not complying with the court order, Hollywood has asked the judge to impose evidentiary sanctions against the company, documents show. As part of the sanctions, the studios want the judge to rule that the movies belonging to the studios found on TorrentSpy's site infringed on their copyright. They also want the judge to find that the site has no "substantial noninfringing uses."

This would effectively label TorrentSpy a pirate site and make it very difficult for the company to prevail in its civil trial against the film industry.

Just how long it will take for the judge to rule on the studios' application for sanctions is unclear. Rothken said he expects that she will call for more briefings soon.

FixMyMovie is a new service that takes your pixelated digital video clips and does its best to fix them. The technology stems from MotionDSP's processing technology, which is similar to what's used in government intelligence operations to improve those dark and grainy security films--like you see in movies.

The entire process is fairly straightforward: Just upload and tag a supported movie file, and the service will crunch it on its servers. You get a note by e-mail when it's done. Once it's finished you can preview the first 10 seconds of the enhanced version, as well as compare before and after results live, by pressing the "compare" button. What's even cooler is a stills mode that lets you compare the before and after with an easy-to-use slider that follows your mouse. Whatever's on the left of the slider is the old, with the new on the right.

To grab the improved film, there are download options for multiple formats, including iPod-formatted H.264, Adobe Flash, and Windows Media. You can also grab quick embed code to stick it in any blog, which I've done after the break.

I tried out the service on several video clips this morning and got improved results on every single one of them. The most dramatic improvement of all was with text, which managed to turn almost unreadable pixelated words into legible sentences. Just be wary, though: The service can only handle clips up to 352x288 in resolution, which means the VGA videos from your digital camera aren't going to cut it. Older cameras, on the other hand, are fine.

FixMyMovie is launching in beta at this morning's DEMOfall conference in San Diego with $25 worth of free processing for everyone while still in its beta period. Eventually, FixMyMovie plans to charge users for the option to enhance video and still images, which can also be captured manually by users within the Flash player. I can see this service being hugely popular, as everyone wants better looking video clips, and ways to improve older, lower resolution clips.

Update: It's worth noting you need the latest beta of Adobe Flash 9 to view videos on the service (which makes the neat, live before and after feature possible). You can pick it up here, or just get a feel for what it can do with the screenshot below.

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