Do You Watch Video on Your Computer? If You Do, Clicker Might Be For You
Do You Watch Video on Your Computer? If You Do, Clicker Might Be For You
by Gary Price, Senior Editor Note: The Founder and CEO of Clicker is my friend, Jim Lanzone. Jim was the CEO at Ask.com when I worked there. We haven't worked together in 20 months.
Until today, Clicker was a "closed beta." Today, the beta sign has been removed and everyone has access to the service.
For the past several months I've been using Clicker to find, access, and watch a very wide variety of video content (tv shows, music videos, etc.) from a large and growing catalog of content and providers. In fact, the company said today that their catalog of content has just increased with the addition of 30,000 on-demand streaming movies from Netflix and Amazon VOD. Excellent!
I'm very impressed with how comprehensive Clicker is and how easy it is to be watching, either something you've browsed for or a known program you've searched for, in just a few seconds. And talk about access points? Clicker has a lot of them and they are easy to find and use.
The Numbers
If you're a numbers person, here are few about the content in the Clicker catalog
+ Over 400,000 Full Episodes from over 1,200 Sources in More than 1,200 categories.
+ 30,000 Movies from Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD (New Today)
+ 50,000 Music Videos from Over 20,000 Sources
The Home Page
The home page is clean and easy to navigate.
You can:
+ Search for videos by program name or topic
+ Browse by title
+ Browse by category (note the link here to view all categories.)
+ Browse beginning with type of media (tv, movies, "web originals," and music)
Searching and a Search Results Page
Even before you click search, a box appears with direct links to what you might be searching for. A search for "SNL" immediately offered a direct link to complete programs and clips from Saturday Night Live. Again, this happens even before clicking the search button. Useful! In some cases this features offers "interesting" results that might not make sense until you visit the complete results page. For example, a search for "trains" shows a box for "Hogans Heroes" and CNBC's Power Lunch. Huh? However, when you click through to the actual results page, you'll see the words trains was in the title of a CNBC Power Lunch segment and also in the title of a Hogan's Heroes.
This is a good time to point out that when you're searching with Clicker, you're searching metadata, not the actual transcript of the segment or show.
+ At the top of the page a search box with direct links to category pages, a trends page (what are people watching), and a link to your playlist page (if you're registered and logged-in) where you can "store" videos you plan to view. You can also connect your Clicker account to Facebook.
Next you'll see page totals along with options to:
+ On what to display (all videos or online)
+ Filter by media
Moving to the right, options to sort your results list by relevance, popularity and airdate. The airdate option is useful when you have some idea of when a specific episode might have aired and need help flushing the video out of the results. The actual result list is what you would expect and also show logos for each program listed next to each entry or group of entries to make it identification easier.
Finally, on the right side of the page you'll see the sources for all of the results. Each source logo is hyperlinked to a page for the sources. Think of it as the "x network" home page. Here's the page for PBS. Very nice. In one location I can see all of the programs that Clicker has in its catalog from that network or other source. Of course, each show (e.g. Charlie Rose) also has its own page. Quick aside. Clicker has over 2300 episodes of the Charlie Rose show in its catalog. Wow!
On the right side of the page you'll also see a list of shows that the Clicker database says are related and might also be worth a look. Finally, right below the episode "header" you'll see a search box. This search option allows you to "search within" a show. Again, you're searching metadata but if you want to know if Bill Gates has been a guest on one or more of the 2300 episodes of Charlie Rose, just enter his name in the search box and click search. Btw, Bill Gates has been on Charlie Rose more than 15 times.
Browsing
Not much to say here. It's what you would expect. Browsing by category provides a bunch of data. Here's the category page for documentaries. You'll see sub-categories (in this case they are decades), featured programs, and a list of top episodes. If you begin browsing by media, the top-level page is what you've come to expect from Clicker--it's full of interesting data. Here's the movies page. Now, you can browse only movies by category, source, or title.
Viewing Content
So you've searched and browsed and now you're ready to view a video. Here's a page for the PBS program Frontline. Btw, notice how you can limit your search to the year the programmed aired on the left side of the page. This is available for many shows. Also, below and to the right of the search box you'll see two buttons. One is labeled "All Episodes" and the other "New Episodes." Again, if you're a registered these button will tell Clicker to add all or just new episodes to your playlist. Yes, it's a virtual DVR.
Now, select the specific program, click, and one of two things will happen. Either the program will begin playing or you'll be given a direct link to watch the program elsewhere. In many cases you'll be off to that network's web site or a service like Hulu. It takes just seconds and the link Clicker provides is specifically for the program you've requested. You will not have to browse or search again.
Things I Would Like to See (No Pun Intended)
+ Keep a close eye on categories. I found a number of shows that just didn't seem to fit in a category. For example, a TLC show about real estate being a documentary.
+ Content from C-SPAN. Even if it's only online for a short time I would like to be able to find it with Clicker.
+ A constantly updated and browsable list of content as it enters the database
+ Local news content, both live streams of newscasts and recorded segments. Perhaps Clicker should talk with Newsy.
+ The ability to browse one page of all sources and then see what they offer. You can sort of do this now but you first have to search and you're not getting a complete list of sources.
+ Transcript search would be great for all shows but for news, business news, public affairs, it's very important and makes Clicker not only an entertainment resource but also a research tool.
+ A mobile version of Clicker. There is already a lot of content that will play on various mobile device. In fact, I watched Saturday Night Live on my iPhone last night.
+ Integration with various devices. I'm thinking of Boxee at the moment.
Final Thoughts
One thing that's quite noticeable when browsing and searching Clicker is the amount of content that can be viewed online. Just a couple of years ago almost none of this content was available and this is just the beginning. In the next 5-10 years all material (say a new DVD) will be streamed directly to your home. You can see it with Netflix and others as the amount of on-demand streamed content grows. Networks will offer similar services. And of course, you'll be able to watch this streamed content on your tv. On top of this, we're going to see more content (including web only material) being made available by over-the-air networks, cable networks, and web only services.
Why am I mentioning this? Because Clicker is off to a great start to become the guide or perhaps better said, gateway, to all of this content. As I said earlier, the service offers numerous access points makes it easy (even for grandma) to watch her favorite shows on her computer (O.K., you have to give one lesson) but my point is that Clicker is easy to search, browse, find and perhaps the most difficult step, view the actual content, in just a few clicks.
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