Now, when searching for movies on their iPhones or Palm WebOS- or Android-powered devices, users can get not only theatres, showtimes, and films; they can also get trailers, ratings, and proximity-based information. This way, you can get in the car and peal out of the driveway before conducting a desktop search for movies, thus saving yourself another excruciating 5 minutes of "holiday cheer" with the family.

Users of the abovementioned devices can now go to google.com in their web browsers. After searching for the term "movies," users can then tap on the "More movies" link for a panoply of new features and aggregated data. Users can then browse through film titles or nearby theatres.

One of the most welcome features is the ability to play movie trailers in the mobile browser without having to navigate elsewhere. This eliminates the usual need for multiple browser tabs or frustrating cross-app navigation.

Here's a spiffy demo video from our friends at Google:

The new features also include ratings and categories, movie posters, and every other imaginable detail about the films listed. The information will also include upcoming showtimes for the nearest theaters, which are conveniently presented in a Google Maps interface.

"We keep information on this page succinct," said Fey, "so you can quickly browse through shows and showtimes to help you decide which movie to see. If you want more details about a specific movie, just touch the poster or movie title and you'll see our new movie details page that has a synopsis of the movie, a more detailed list of showtimes, the cast and crew, and pictures."

In a way, the features remind us a bit of SkinniPopcorn, a web and mobile app that integrates movie-related Twitter data, movie trailers, film reviews from the New York Times, and synopses. And that site is available on any mobile device with a web browser.

Still, for the map and showtime information, Google wins this round.

We got a chance to test the web site over the last week and the site, which will feature an exclusive Madonna concert to celebrate the launch this weekend, feels very similar to Hulu - just with a different kind of content. It's completely Flash-based, so users won't have to install any new plugins to use the service. This, Emil Rensing stressed when we talked to him today, was done on purpose to make the user experience frictionless.

The quality of the videos on the site, which scales up to 720p HD depending on your connection's speed, is exceptionally good. A user needs to have at least a 500kbps connection, though this shouldn't be an issue for FiOS subscribers who are watching at home.

The site currently features about 300 movies, including relatively recent releases like Iron Man and the latest Indiana Jones movie. Rensing told us that he expects to be able to offer over 3000 movies by the end of next year. Because of Epix's close connection to various movie studies, the site will be able to feature movies about 9 months after their theatrical release. Most premium channels like HBO have to wait about a year before they can show a movie.

More Than Just Movies: Extras & Sharing

If Epix was only a premium movie channel on the web, it would be interesting in its own right. The site, however, also offers a number of interesting additional features.

Epix, for example, features DVD-like extras like interviews and behind-the-scenes specials for almost every movie. Right now, most of these are produced by the studios, but Epix will add more original programming over time.

Another feature is the sites 'watch with a friend' functionality. This allows users to watch a movie together with up to 5 friends, no matter if they are FiOS subscribers or not. The host remains in full control over the video playback and can start and stop the video at any time. As Rensing told us, Epix wants to recreate the feeling of inviting your friends over to your house, so it doesn't care if your friends subscribe to the same channels you do.

Get Your Invites (Even if You Don't Have FiOS)

If you are interested in giving Epix a try, you can request an invite for a three-day pass here. These will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis. Epix also provided us with 180 30-day VIP passes. If you want to claim one of these, you have to follow these instructions:

• follow @epixHD on Twitter
• tweet "@epixHD Experience Epix #readwriteweb"

Although Netflix will try to make a streaming-only service work abroad, the company really doesn't think there's a demand for this type of offering within the U.S. In fact, when responding to a reporter's question regarding Netflix's plans for an a la carte option (there isn't one), Hastings said that while they're "open-minded to" an a la carte service that came without the DVD option, the company hasn't seen much interest in something of that nature in the States. "Everybody also wants to get DVDs," said Hastings. "All the new releases are on DVD, the vast catalog is on DVD. When there is demand, it will make sense for us to meet that demand for streaming only."

...But There is Demand for Streaming-Only

While that may be true - people do want the new releases - the demand for the physical media is arguably an artificial one created by the entertainment industry. Studios simply refuse to offer their movies and TV shows via Netflix's on-demand streaming library until they've been able to pull in a nice profit from disk sales first. This, in turn, forces consumers to not only purchase but also desire the DVD-by-mail part of the Netflix service as opposed to a separate, unbundled option of on-demand content only.

In other words, to say that the demand for streaming-only doesn't exist isn't exactly accurate. After all, Netflix reported that their streaming stats are now at an all-time high with 42% of subscribers having streamed at least 15 minutes of one TV show or movie during the last quarter. This number is up from 22% during the same period last year. Considering that Netflix's subscriber base itself has grown 28% over the past year, this figure means that the raw count of subscribers actively engaged in streaming has now more than doubled over last year. Hastings even said himself that the numbers were "a good marker of increasing streaming adoption."

Although the demand for new releases would probably have many subscribers sticking with the hybrid DVD/streaming service, by forgoing a streaming-only option it seems that the company is overlooking an opportunity to pick up a sizable group of more casual users. There are likely a number of people who would appreciate the option to pay a little less in order to to gain access to the on-demand content only - content which includes a much smaller catalog than what's available by mail. Given the company's integrations into game consoles, set-top boxes and even some TVs, there's actually no need to even own a DVD player anymore to watch Netflix movies. The content is on-demand.

Streaming media is the future, not physical disks. Hollywood knows this too, but as with the music industry, they're fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the old business model afloat for as long as possible. So far, it's working. As long as they control the method of distribution and keep it limited to physical media it will look like DVDs are what the people want. But the people really want streams. From music (Pandora, Spotify) to TV (Hulu, iPlayer) and yes, to movies via Netflix, streaming media is rapidly becoming the method of choice for many of today's consumers. The future is an on-demand world and Hollywood would do better to figure that out now than try to delay the inevitable.

The app lets you listen to the movie's sound track, see photos, watch trailers and best of all - interact with an on-screen image of the monster Carol. Carol can be tickled, hit, he'll throw things at you, you can put him to sleep at night and he'll eat photos of the contacts on your phone.

Either way, there's something I think all of us can enjoy about listening to Karen O sing in the background while watching a big cuddly monster eat photos of people we know from our phone.

Not only does the film embrace the mobile as the core piece of its release pattern - a pattern which also includes simultaneous launches on DVD and the web - it embraces the mobile platform as a way to tell the story, too. Instead of offering up a large video download, Rage was released in seven parts throughout the week through the streaming media application, Babelgum, which has now climbed to #16 on the list of top free Entertainment-based iPhone apps.

The film's style is also well suited to the mobile with a minimalist look and feel where the story is told through exclusively through close-up interviews of fourteen people who witnessed an event at a New York fashion show. There are no nuanced details or special effects here - it's a perfect fit for a mobile audience who often half-watches videos while killing time or driving to work.

According to filmmaker Potter, this experimental distribution for her new movie is actually an attempt to fight the digital piracy problem faced by the movie industry today. And yes, she's doing it by by offering up her film for free...albeit in a way that ensures the film can only be viewed, not recorded. However, after watching the iPhone release, those interested in owning the movie can immediately purchase a DVD which includes 21 unused scenes by way of the film's online site for $24.95. That, too, represents, a major change to the usual release pattern for films. Typically, the movie-DVD release window involves several months of waiting where the only way to watch the movie is through illegal means such as using the peer-to-peer technology known as BitTorrent. 

Will this rethinking of movie distribution pay off? It's too soon to tell, but industry insiders are watching with deep curiosity. Jim Shomos, an Australian writer-producer known for mobile video series, for example, thinks using the mobile platform is a more direct way of getting the film to the target market - that is, people under 35.

Others are more skeptical. After all, does anyone really want to watch a full-length film on their mobile phone? Oh that's right, they do. Apple's iTunes store is proof of that. Now if we could only get studios to release really good films this way...

NBC's Zucker also hinted at the company's interest in the matter. "Whether there are other ways to monetize Hulu down the road, it is something that we are open to, something we will explore," he said, but like Murdoch, reiterated "there are no plans at this time."

Subscription Services Already in Testing?

While that may be the official company line, other sites are reporting a slightly different variation on this story. The Business of Video blog, for example, says they've been in contact with sources who have confirmed that Hulu is already beta testing a subscription-based service internally and is working out the technical requirements. If that story is to be believed, the offering won't go live anytime this year as Hulu still needs to figure out the details of the business plan.

Whether or not that rumor is true, it wouldn't be surprising to hear that Hulu is working on such a project, given their obvious interest in adding more revenue-generating features to the site. Zucker himself even updated his ongoing conference comment about "analog dollars" being used to chase "digital dimes." (In 2008, it was "digital pennies.") "Certainly by next year the goal should be at least quarters," he joked.

What We Want to See: Premium Channels on Hulu

Subscription services would be a brilliant way to chase those quarters, indeed. Perhaps it could even convince cable-only paid channels like HBO and Showtime to get on board with the venture. They've already tentatively given iTunes a shot, but still seem reluctant to share current episodes in a timely fashion on that service. The reason for the networks' timidity is because their iTunes revenue simply doesn't compare to their cable TV subscription offerings or even their DVD sales. (Ironically, that's probably due to the fact that they don't offer current programs via iTunes!). Instead, they would rather entice consumers to subscribe by tempting them with their backcatalog of programming.

However, if the situation was to change and consumers could subscribe to these channels online for a comparable fee to what the companies generate through cable TV distribution, would they continue to put up such resistance? After all, money is money, who cares where it comes from?

These days, more and more consumers are pinching pennies by cancelling cable subscriptions thanks to the numerous alternatives available online. Obviously, premium channels are getting the boot, too. Imagine if they could have a chance to win back some of those penny-pinching former subscribers by way of an online subscription service. After all, what would you give for piecemeal plans that let you buy a 3-month pass to HBO instead of the all-or-nothing combo packages available via your cable TV provider?

Of course, all this is just wishful thinking on our part, but if Hulu does it right, the possibilities for their new TV distribution network are virtually endless.

Recent news from crimson hexagon, makers of an online conversation-monitoring platform called VoxTrot, reveals that the word of mouth circulating on Twitter over the weekend about "Inglorious Basterds" was largely positive. In fact, only 8% of the 4500 sampled tweets had anything negative to say about the movie. Not surprisingly, the movie ended up doing extremely well at the box office, pulling in $37.6 million in the U.S., with an additional $27.1 million overseas, during its opening weekend.

But was Twitter really the impetus behind the movie's success? According to Matt Atchity, editor in chief of News Corp.-owned review site Rotten Tomatoes, the answer is "no." He thinks Twitter's influence is overhyped and overrated. In a recent Forbes interview, Atchity is quoted as saying:

"It's an interesting word of mouth, but I think only for a certain part of the audience. For the younger, more connected audience that may be true but for older audiences, I don't know...Do I think Twitter is affecting my cousins in Kansas City and what they see? If it's a big enough movie, they are going to see it."

Tweets Don't Equal Ticket Sales

He may have a point. Despite the reports and charts attempting to prove the "Twitter Effect," what's being said on Twitter may not have as big an impact on real-world actions as is being implied by these numbers. For one thing, we know that the demographics on Twitter aren't representative of the demographics of the movie-goers. (Teens don't tweet, remember?) Plus, correlating the volume of tweets about a movie, as research service Trendrr recently did, only proves people are talking, not what they're saying nor whether their anticipatory tweets will lead to actual ticket sales. Besides, don't we all know by now that correlation is not the same as causation?

Online Buzz Doesn't Always Deliver

Finally, online chatter, even when positive, can't save a movie (or a TV show for that matter, as "Firefly" fans will be sure to remind you.) Case in point: 2006's "Snakes on a Plane." In what was one of the first cases of crowdsourcing movie production to fans, the filmmakers eventually reshot parts of the movie to meet fan expectations. They added in more snakes, more gore, and more death scenes, thus bumping the rating of the movie from PG-13 to R. And, of course, they added in the now-famous line "I want these mother####ing snakes off the mother####ing plane!"

Based on the online chatter and excitement surrounding the film, everyone was sure it would be a success. Interest in the film went viral, with fan-made trailers and scripts, lit-up message boards, and general frenzy. What happened at the box office? Did "Snakes" become a smashing success? No, quite the opposite. The movie managed to rake in only $15 million on its opening weekend and, in the end, grossed $34 million domestically - only $1 million more than the production budget alone. In other words, it bombed.

What this means for Twitter is that the online chatter taking place on the popular microblogging site, while still an important vector for studying sentiment, is not powerful enough on its own to truly impact the overall success or failure of a movie. As of now, only the movie-going audience can do that. And guess what? They're not all on Twitter... well, at least not yet.

A report on Bloomberg.com about the release of this movie highlights some of the frustrations with the current advertising situation among YouTube's executives. In an interview with the news service, YouTube's Anthony Zameczkowski argues that YouTube is a place where filmmakers can reach 350 million unique users a month, and that YouTube is "more than just dogs on skateboards." According to Bloomberg, YouTube's Zameczkowski also tried to encourage more studios and filmmakers to upload their films to the service at last month's Cannes Film Festival.

Interestingly, though, even some of the most popular movies on YouTube hardly ever have over 500,000 views, and some of the most popular films there look more like traditional YouTube videos than slick movie studio productions.

YouTube Still Tries to Make a Profit

As we have argued many times before, YouTube still has to find a better revenue model in order to become profitable. Short clips and home movies are not too popular with advertisers, even though most of us clearly love them. Brands, however, would probably be more than happy to support projects like this and other feature-length movies and TV shows, as the financial and popular success of sites like Hulu clearly shows. Currently, according to Bloomberg, YouTube only earns money from about 3% of all the videos it hosts.

Thanks to Barb Dybwad at Obsessable for alerting us to this story.

These nanogenres are generated by Nanocrowd's analysis of thousands of movie reviews and commentary from many different data sources. In fact, the three words in each nanogenre are chosen directly from the review data. We liked how easy it was to get in to this application, and its addictive ability to keep us clicking on movie after movie, creating new lists and discovering new movies. In fact, the last movie site that had us so distracted was the Internet Movie Database.

Of course, we couldn't end this post without mentioning some of Nanocrowd's competitors, applications like Clerk Dogs (Ars Technica review), Jinni (another Ars Technica review) and the big players, Amazon and IMDB (yes, they have a recommendation engine too!)

Each of these has some merits. For example, Clerk Dogs will recommend movies based on your movie suggestion in only one step. And they also have some really cool graphs showing match criteria. Jinni requires you to create a login before you can get started, but then you can search for just about anything, such as a genre, plot, mood, or actor name.

How does Nanocrowd stack up against the other guys?  Time will tell, and the site is still being actively developed (in fact logging in to save movie lists isn't supported quite yet), but so far, we like that we can dive in and have a list to take with us to Blockbuster (they have a recommendation engine too, by the way) in five minutes or less.

With Queued, you can quickly access and modify your Netflix queue from your desktop, search for movies to add to your queue, rate movies, and you can even use the app to launch and view Instant Watch movies.

Since Adobe AIR lets the app run in the background, you can leave it running until you need it and when you return, there's no need to launch a browser and sign into Netflix - it's all right there for you. The app also alerts you when Netflix ships one of your movies so you know what's coming. And with AIR's offline capabilities, Queued lets you interact with it even when you have no internet connection. When the connection returns, your data will be automatically synced back to Netflix.

The Technical Details

On the Dojo side, the app uses a single HTML file for the main window, dAIR for Dojo/AIR integration, dijit for layout, unobtrusive behavior implementation using dojo.behavior, dojox.dtl for most widget templating, drag and drop for queue re-ordering, various animations for polish, and Dojo's build system.

On the AIR side, the app implements some of Adobe AIR's newest features including a local database, encrypted local storage, view source capability, automatic updates, and offline capability.

Go Get It!

The source code is available on Google code and the app itself is available for download from SitePen's web site, as they were the creators of the software.

Jinni says that its video content is automatically indexed, using a mixture of metadata and reviews. It has a strong semantic technologies component, as it uses a proprietary Natural Language Processing solution to assign semantic tags to content and users. The company claims that this allows Jinni to "rapidly index more titles, becoming the universal catalog for professional video." When it launched in December, Jinni had 10,000 movie, TV and video titles. It also offers APIs for Internet and TV content providers.

In terms of its recommendations philosophy, Jinni believes that a mix of algorithms and human selection is the best solution. Although the initial data set comes from humans entering movie information into a computer, the actual recommendations come from its algorithm - which "can deeply analyze the type of content you like" and hence learn about your tastes in movies. Jinni gives you recommendations by "comparing your Taste Types and the genes of all the titles in our catalog".

Does it Work?

I took Jinni for a test drive, with a search on 'mood'. I quite like an "offbeat" movie on a Friday night, so it was an appropriate place to start. Also 'offbeat' movies like Napoleon Dynamite are the type of films that have caused the Netflix Prize contestants a lot of problems. So I clicked on that mood to see what came up.

The default video selections included ones like Twin Peaks, Donnie Darko, Hot Fuzz, Monty Python, and so on. It was a fairly predictable selection, but where Jinni promises to come into its own is when you filter down. There is a 'Story Tuner', which presented some interesting filter options.

I filtered based on the story tuners (little known, light, realistic, fast-ish) and got recommended a 1990 movie called 'Mr Destiny' starring James Belushi. I can't recall ever seeing it (little known? check!) and while I'm not really a James Belushi fan, it'd be worth a try. I tweaked the light/serious meter up to 'serious' and that gave me a neat selection of 9 films, few of which I'd seen - but they all looked interesting. This is what you want from a recommendation engine - to be told about products you didn't know about before. So Jinni appears to work quite well. There are many other filters other than mood; rating, date, length, plot, genres, and more.

In his review, Chris Gampat concluded that Jinni isn't quite Pandora for movies. That may be true, but we think Jinni is worth a try if you're a movie or tv show buff. It's also similar to ClerkDogs, which we reviewed recently. So if you've tried either or both, let us know in the comments what you thought.

ReadWriteWeb Resources for Recommendation Technologies

We will be profiling other recommendation companies in upcoming posts. We also invite you to explore using our custom ReadWriteWeb Resources:

• RWW Recommendation Industry Feed Favorites OPML file (save link)
• RWW Recommendation Industry Feeds - Best of Feed (copy and paste to your reader)
• Click to preview the above feeds before subscribing (pop-up window)
• RWW Recommendation Site Search (Visit and Bookmark)

When movies came to the online world, I always had hopes of rekindling that magic virtually, but more often than not, I wound up checking out the wrong video. Now, a new service proposes to change that, by bringing the video clerks back into the mix. Meet Clerk Dogs.

Users enter their favorite movie titles and receive a selection of recommended movies. But if users want to get more specific, they can opt to use the "mash it" feature. Mash it allows the user to work with a sliding scale of movie attributes like violence, character depth, suspense, offbeat, and action.

This allows users to select movies that are similar to original selection, but not exactly the same. Maybe they're looking for something with less violence, more character development, and a little bit offbeat. Clerk Dogs starts providing recommendations.

Where do the clerks come in? According to Clerk Dogs, "former clerks, who understand why customers like movies, have analyzed all the characteristics of movies to create a database that is much richer and deeper than the collaborative filtering engines." The underlying data for Clerk Dogs is provided by the Muze database.

Does Clerk Dogs have a chance? It might. The founder knows a thing or two about movies and movie database services. Clerk Dogs is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Stuart Skorman, who also founded Reel.com, a movie site from the dotcom era - which always seemed to be running neck and neck with IMDB - that was acquired by Hollywood Entertainment in the late 90s.

Does it work? It has potential. I spent a few minutes testing the system and came away with some incredibly interesting recommendations. Some that, like the tapes the video clerks used to plop in front of me, I'd be willing to try.

Of course, if I want to see them, I'll have to go to Netflix or some other service to rent them. There's no rental service at Clerk Dogs. That's a bit of an extra step. But if it's a step that means I'll get a movie that I actually like, I'd be willing to do that.

Clerk Dogs is currently in beta. As such, its selections are constrained to crime and suspense genres, with other genres being added in the coming months. To test drive the selection process for yourself, visit Clerk Dogs and start testing it against some of your favorite movies.

Judging from the tentative language used by Keith Morrow, it is hard to pinpoint when (or even if) Blockbuster will release any consumer products based on Live Mesh. However, Live Mesh is clearly on the radar of a lot of corporate IT departments and hopefully we will see some 'real' products very soon.

It is, of course, no secret that Google is having a very hard time monetizing YouTube. While it is one of Google's most successful acquisitions in terms of its userbase (more people now perform searches on YouTube than on Yahoo), it has at best been a loss leader for Google so far.

It is also interesting that YouTube would be trying to woo the film industry. After all, Google has had a rocky relationship with the movie industry for years and has been regularly sued because of film and TV clips its users shared on the service. However, having premium, licensed content on YouTube would allow Google to circumvent the potential copyright issues which have kept it from rolling out advertising on a wider scale so far.

One option for Google would also be to buy a blanket license from the studios that would give its users a safe harbor for sharing clips from these studies, while allowing Google to sell advertising against it.

Would You Watch Movies on YouTube?

It's also worth noting that most users only watch relatively short video clips online. So while there is a potential market for the film industry and Google here, it would seem that monetizing this content won't be easy on YouTube.

Affordable Film Distribution On Any Site, Any Social Network

MeDeploy is a new digital media distribution platform that just launched last week at DEMO. With this solution in place, any filmmaker, whether a big Hollywood studio or small indie artist, can get access to all the tools needed to manage and distribute their content to any web site, social network, or mobile device. The platform offers features like media transcoding, content management, media storage, delivery, anti-piracy tools, and secure credit card processing. Films can be sold as digital rentals, download-to-own videos, or video-on-demand sales.

Instead of offering pre-made templates or store-widgets, MeDeploy offers a white label solution for sales, marketing, and distribution on any web site anywhere on the web. It provides the necessary tools for doing so in the form of widgetized bits of code. These aren't just simple "blog widgets" functioning as ads, either. The site provides cut-and-paste code for several different types of functions from "add to cart" to "watch trailer" to something called a "balloon widget," which pops up additional info about a title when you hover your mouse over an item, like an image for example.

A Balloon Widget In Action:

The code samples can be pasted into any web site, blog, or social network, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Imeem, and other networks on the OpenSocial platform.

Why This Matters

Although some filmmakers may be technical, they shouldn't have to be advanced web developers in order to market their movies on their own sites or social network pages. (Of course, if they are technical, the developer API and documentation are available). By offering a white label solution, customers don't have to leave their current location in order to buy or view the films - the media can come to them instead, no matter which site or social network they're on at the time.

A Social Network Widget for Brain Damage Films

Who knows how many indie films are sitting out there unseen and unknown simply because the filmmakers can't afford to market them. Similar to how blogging CMS platforms leveled the playing field for online publishing, tools like this one from MeDeploy can do the same for filmmakers.

Pricing

Prior to MeDeploy, the only options for distributing paid video content like movie downloads were very expensive enterprise digital solutions that only large studios and TV networks could afford.

MeDeploy's Dashboard

Although MeDeploy was designed to help the indie filmmaker, that's not to say that it can't cater to the large studios, too. The company offers two pricing tiers: MeDeploy Indie ($19.95/mo) and MeDeploy Professional ($199.95/mo). With the Indie account, a filmmaker has everything needed to get started with online distribution. When their catalog and distribution needs change, they can then upgrade to Professional, which is a more customizable and scalable solution ideal for larger distributors, studios, and broadcast networks.

Any filmmakers out there who want to test the waters prior to signing up can get started with a free 30-day trial: just visit www.medeploy.com.

For more information, check out their presentation from DEMO, embedded below: