That new blog smell...

I stumbled on some fresh produce: Brent Friedman, co-founder of Electric Farm Entertainment, has a new blog at the EFE website.

Having been a fan of EFE projects [Afterworld, Gemini Division] and having interviewed Mr. Friedman a few times in the past I am always impressed by his vision. In this new blog Brent spells out the building blocks of "New Media"

As I posted in my comments there;

the salient points of “Old Media” copycat success and the “New Media” symbiotic relationship between content and consumer are the meat of the paradigm that is “Internet Broadcasting”.

What I am going to be excited to learn about in future blogs is the transparency between portals and viewer immersion; being able to watch/play/immerse myself in a project through multiple portals seamlessly. Not just Enhanced Experience or ARG ancillary content, but truly seamless pathing between distribution platforms to allow viewers active [or passive] participation in a project.

At the bottom of the post was a must have for those new to serialized web projects: If you haven't watched all of those GO NOW!

Nanocrowd Movie Search: A New Recommendation Approach

I am excited to announce the launch of a project that I have been working on for some time at Nanocrowd (I am part of the founding team). We have been working hard in preparation of the launch. Well, that time has come!!!

Nanocrowd's Movie Search Engine is now up!

You now have a new tool at your disposal to help you find movies you will like. If you tell us a movie, we will return recommendations based on the one that you picked. The process may be familiar but the results are exceptional.

After you give us a movie, we return 40 movies most like it, 40 movies least like it, and small themed groupings of movies that contain movies like the one picked. These small themed groupings are called nanogenres.

Our approach is very exciting and efficient. We don't utilize editors and we don't require movie ratings. Instead, we have developed algorithms to analyze web commentary about movies. These algorithms figure out what movies are about, how those movies are related to one another, and what people think about them.

We feed in: User commentary.
We receive back: Movie summations and relationships.

Then, when you give us a movie, we are able to return recommendations and relationships for the movie you picked.

We also are planning to add some very cool features to our website. One of the features I am looking forward to is Netflix integration. This will allow you to add movies and manage your Netflix queue all without leaving our site. Other exciting features are planned as well. If you want us to send you updates as we add new features, remember to sign up over at our site.

A couple of helpful tips (for when you are at our site):

Don't know what a recommended movie is about? Hover over the link and a description will be retrieved from Amazon.

Want more information than what is obtained in the hover? Click the Tell Me More link in the hover and we will show you information from IMDb and Amazon with links to other sites like Netflix as well. The Tell Me More page also includes links to trailers for that movie, user comments, and more.

We aren't the only new approach when it comes to movies, (Jinni and Clerkdogs are two other new movie recommendation approaches), but I do think we are the best one. My Netflix queue has a ton more movies in it than it did before!

About Nanocrowd (from our blog)

"At Nanocrowd we are developing new technology for searching popular multimedia content. Our approach will make it much easier for users to find content that is of interest to them. Our first demonstration of this technology is theatrical-release movies, but the methods we are developing will apply to books, online videos, games, music, or even to art and architecture."