Nanocrowd

Tech won't kill Hollywood (and shouldn't want to).

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:53:00 +0000

For several years there has been an increasing buzz that tech is going to kill Hollywood. The buzz reached a recent frenzy led by Y Combinator's call to action.

There are three reasons that I don't think tech will kill Hollywood:

3) "Hollywood" is more than a city or few big studios.
OK, I know there IS a city called Hollywood, but people in the tech world seem to imagine Hollywood is a few companies led by cigar-smoking, tuxedo'd fat cats.

In fact, Hollywood isn't an entity at all (and lots of the activity that we call Hollywood happens miles, states, and countries away). Hollywood is a sometimes collaborative, usually disunited, and often antagonistic worldwide collection of movie studios, TV studios (big and small), distribution companies, creative agencies, producers, and artists of all kinds. Leaders from each of these ranks routinely shift from one role to another.

Many of these people and companies already embrace tech. In his post titled An Accelerator for Entertainment, Nick DeMartino suggests that some of Hollywood's forward thinkers should fund an entertainment accelerator of their own. This is an interesting idea, and I know it will appeal to many tech companies.

Of course there are leaders in Hollywood who are trying to cling to rights and distribution models that are changing underneath them. This is nothing new -- TV, VCRs, DVDs, and now Streaming and YouTube all looked to some like Hollywood-killers. In every industry there are people who resist change and others who embrace it.

Just yesterday Techcrunch TV (which is itself an example of content distribution disruption!) published Greg Barto's interview with Brent Weinstein and Eric Kuhn of UTA, one of Hollywood's most powerful creative agencies. They talk about their excitement and enthusiasm for the opportunities new technology will bring. When disruptive tech arrives in Hollywood, it initially looks like a threat, but eventually the revenue from the new technology becomes too enticing and industry and power structure shifts until the people who embraced the shift become leaders. Maybe there's a movie idea in there: the sheep in wolf's clothing...

2) Technology will make Hollywood richer.
The issue that always gets in the way of change is fear. Fear of losing power. Fear of losing revenue. Of course, this fear is also always justified - change usually does mean a shift and the loss of revenue in one arena. However, once license and distribution rights have realigned, this fear changes to excitement as opportunities for new revenue are discovered. I don't have a crystal ball, but I believe that the future of Hollywood includes an exciting period where content producers and owners can close the gap between themselves and their customers, driven by technology like Nanocrowd's.

With new technology and a new distribution model, the studios could actually reach the business model they envisioned a century ago -- a much closer relationship between their content and their consumers. There will be lots of disruption along the way, with some individuals and companies failing and others succeeding, but once it settles out, there will be plenty of entertainment being consumed generating plenty of revenue for the people who can see where we are going.

1) We love quality, high-production-value entertainment!
And the number one reason Hollywood won't die is that we love it! Sure, entertainment attention spans are dropping and there will be more short content competing with traditional movie and TV formats. Of course, social networking will change the way we share and enjoy entertainment.

Even so, without the commercial mashup we call Hollywood, how would movies like Avatar or Inception be produced? How would parents and their children laugh together at Rio or Rango? Who would take us on adventures like Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean? From movies to TV and even advertising, we depend on the sophisticated, expensive production values of Hollywood. YouTube videos are wonderfully fun and funny, but they just don't transport us the way Hollywood can.

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd Movie Search App for iPad is now available (and free!) in the Apple App Store

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:18:00 +0000

We've just launched our first iPad app, and it's available free in the Apple App Store.

Easy to use
Using the new Nanocrowd Movie Search app is easy -- enter the name of a movie you love and we'll suggest several channels that capture why other people enjoyed that movie. Pick the channel that matches your interest (and your mood) and then click on any of the movies in the list to get more information or to watch it on your iPad.

Here's a short demo/how-to video (try fullscreen and HD for the best view).

To watch all the movies in our application, you'll need an iPad and a Netflix streaming account.

We know WHY people like things
The new app is built with Reaction Mapping® technology, which we developed to analyze viewer comments about movies. These comments capture people's reactions to movies, and analyzing them allows Nanocrowd to understand not only what movies people enjoy, but also why they enjoy them. Understanding why is crucial because movies evoke a variety of feelings and emotions that are complex and can’t be captured by ratings or rental histories. More about our Reaction Mapping tech can be found at a previous blog post.

Watching movies instantly is a click away
Every movie in the Nanocrowd movie search app is available to watch instantly on an iPad from sites like Netflix, YouTube, and Internet Archive (with more sites planned).

Of course, we want to do lots more than just help you search for a movie, so we're already working on the next update to our app, where you'll be able to save the channels you like and then we'll automatically alert you if there are new movies available in your favorite channels. If you'd like an invitation to become a beta tester for this update, you can click on the links in the search app or send us an email now.

I hope you have fun with our new app!

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd demo at APPNATIONIII

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:30:00 +0000

Nanocrowd was selected to demo at the APPNATIONIII conference on Wednesday 11/30/2011 in San Francisco. APPNATION is an executive conference and exposition focused on the consumer applications economy. Over 3000 developers, carriers, product/service providers, buyers and investors attended previous APPNATION conference and expos. We are excited to be going this year, because their theme is "Show me the money," and that is a core issue facing all mobile app developers today.

No, that's not me at the demo pod ;-)

We'll be demoing our search.nanocrowd.com webapp as well as previewing our upcoming myChannels application. I hope you can come by and see me or our CEO, Roderic March at our demo pod in the Mobile Monday Village.

posted by Laura Torres

Great time at SenchaCon2011

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 01:31:00 +0000

Doug Millasich and I wandered down to Austin this week to speak at SenchaCon2011, Sencha's annual US developer conference. It was a great conference, and not only did we get the latest news about Sencha and their products, we also met lots of other folks who are building their mobile applications with Sencha Touch.

Sencha looks like it's going to continue to be a great platform with lots to offer, and we remain pleased with our decision to build our products using their app framework. We're looking forward to enhancing upcoming products with the new features and improvements coming with Sencha Touch 2.0.

We also enjoyed what a great music-town Austin is. We wandered the street and hear some fabulous music at the Dia de los Muertes festival downtown, and Sencha invited all the conference attendees to Stubbs for barbecue and live music by Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears. It seemed like there was live music at every corner and in every restaurant. What a delight.

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd launches iPad movie search app

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:30:00 +0000

Before Nanocrowd
It’s Friday night after a long week. You just want to grab something to drink, sit down, and watch a movie. Nothing too deep. Nothing violent. Maybe a comedy. And so the thought process continues as you get online and start searching for something to watch. Simple. Then it happens. 10 minutes goes by, then 20. Frustrated you think, “There’s nothing to watch!” On to plan B: Checking e-mail, trolling the web, World of Warcraft, scrolling through your TV channels.

After Nanocrowd
Picking up your shiny new iPad, you point your browser to search.nanocrowd.com and type in “The Proposal” – a movie you loved. “Chemistry Sweet Adorable” sounds like what you’re in the mood for. You see a channel full of movies which include some of your all-time favorites. But then you notice one you haven't seen “One Fine Day” – Hmm… something you may not have thought of, but it sounds good. You watch the trailer and decide to watch it instantly. Nanocrowd launches the movie, available from Netflix, and off you go to enjoy your movie. No login. No hassle.

Available today
If you have an iPad and love to watch movies but hate the hassle of searching and finding one to watch, pull out your iPad, open Safari, and browse to our new movie-search application (search.nanocrowd.com). We currently link to movies from Netflix and YouTube, and we're working on linking to more sources.

At Nanocrowd, we actually understand why people like movies (for more details, see our earlier blog post) and because we understand why, we can make quick and accurate movie recommendations without the need for you to give us pages of profile data or provide us with movie ratings.

We know that on Friday night, after a long week, you’d rather be watching a movie than spending time looking for one. Try it out and tell us what you think.

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd at Mobile Monday event "HTML5: The next trend for mobile"

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:00:00 +0000

On Monday, August 8 Mobile Monday Silicon Valley is focusing their monthly meeting on HTML5 and its role in mobile computing. They have invited us to join several other entrepreneurs and experts to discuss how HTML5 is influencing our design and development plans.

In addition to a panel discussion and Q&A, Nanocrowd will give a sneak-peek demo of our upcoming HTML5 webapp designed for the iPad. Our new application uses the same Reaction Mapping(r) technology that drives our website, but turns it into a personalized channel application for watching movies.

Mobile Monday is a great group of tech professionals who get together to discuss important issues for mobile computing. This meeting will be at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (register here). It's free -- so come see what we've been up to. Our Lead Developer, Doug Millasich will be there too, so I hope you can make it!

posted by Roderic March

Movie Genres and Taste Maps (and why they remind me of choosing Waffles or Eggs Benedict for breakfast)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:55:00 +0000

A few days ago, I met a friend for breakfast at my favorite diner. While thinking about whether to order Belgian Waffles or Eggs Benedict, I suddenly had a flashback to elementary school science class. It was that lesson about the taste buds! You know – the taste map of your tongue with the salt, sweet, sour, bitter categories. I was confused by that map in elementary school and was still confused as I stared at the menu. I wasn't going to choose waffles or eggs just because one was sweet and one was salty.

It occurred to me that selecting a movie is a lot like deciding what you're going to eat for breakfast.

For me, genres like action, drama, or romance don't capture my movie taste any better than sweet and salty captures the difference between waffles and eggs Benedict. Movies are complex, and when I am trying to decide what movie to watch I am usually thinking something like: "Do I want an uplifting, happy-ending, formulaic Hollywood-type of movie or a car-chasing, high-energy thriller?"

At Nanocrowd, we've developed nanogenre™ movie categories – a method of describing movies in much more detail than simply drama or romance (you can find more information about our technology here). With nanogenre categories, people can choose movies the same way they choose breakfast. A "gangster, flashy, violence" movie or a "gripping, morality, fascinating" one?

Our website currently uses nanogenre categories for a one-at-a-time movie recommendation engine, but we are working on a new way to use these fine-tuned genres to create individual "taste maps" and suggest lots of movies all at once that that are automatically tailored to your taste.

Building Your Taste Map
To build your taste map, we begin with a list of the movies you have watched. Then we look into our collection of thousands and thousands of nanogenre categories and add a bunch of math to figure out why you watched those movies and which categories are right for you.

The result is a physical map of your taste, showing what types of movies you like and how they "cluster" around each other. Here is an example of "Rick's" taste map (the name has been changed to protect the innocent).

Click on the image (or here) to learn more.

For illustration, we circled the nanogenre categories that fall into more traditional genres like War and Romantic drama. The power of having Rick's taste map is that instead of just noticing that Rick likes Sci-fi action and Romantic comedies, we have broken those categories into much more specific groups of movies with descriptions like:

robbery, coolness, mastermind
future, humans, thought-provoking
comedy, touching, delight

Using these nanogenre categories, we can find lots of movies that are perfect for Rick.

At Nanocrowd, we are just starting to test an application that figures out viewers' taste maps and recommends collections of movies based on those maps. If you are feeling courageous and would like to join our Alpha testing program, let us know.

As for breakfast, I chose the waffles.

posted by Roderic March

A simple way to test your music recommendation engine (the results suggest that Pandora understands why people like songs)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:10:00 +0000

I spend a lot of time thinking about recommendation engines and evaluating results, so I thought I could suggest a simple test that you can do yourself in a minute or two. Here it is:

Simple test for music recommendation sites
(Do try this at home!)

For one of your favorite artists, think of two songs that are very different. You may enjoy them both (or not), but they are so different that you would play each at different times. One for dancing. One for a quiet evening. Perhaps one to soothe your broken heart.
Go to your music recommendation site and ask them to recommend songs for each.
Check the results to see if they could tell the difference between the two songs.

For example, I picked two songs by Lady Gaga that are both popular hits, but are very different:

Lady Gaga
	Eh Eh, (Nothing Else I can Say) is a bouncy, pure-pop lark
	Bad Romance is harder, with R&B influences, and oozing sensuality

I tested them out at 3 sites: Pandora, Amazon, and Last.fm. Ignoring songs by the same artist, here are the top two recommendations I got back from Pandora for each of my songs:

Lady Gaga Songs I like	Pandora recommends
Eh Eh, (Nothing Else I can Say) a bouncy, pure-pop lark	Miley Cyrus Party in the USA is as pure pop as pop can be.
Eh Eh, (Nothing Else I can Say) a bouncy, pure-pop lark	Shakira She Wolf did I say pure pop yet?
Bad Romance R&B influences and oozing sensuality	Beyonce Sweet Dreams fun R&B match
Bad Romance R&B influences and oozing sensuality	Taio Cruz Break Your Heart not much like Miley Cyrus!

Pandora

You can tell immediately that Pandora recognized the difference between these two songs. I admit that I'm not that fond of Eh Eh, because it is such pure pop, and Pandora's recommendations are in that same vein. However, I can't get enough of Bad Romance, and both of the songs Pandora recommended are now on my playlist.

I asked Last.fm and Amazon to recommend songs based on the same two songs, and you can compare their results to Pandora's below:

Lady Gaga Eh-Eh
Pandora	Miley Cyrus Party in the USA	Shakira She Wolf
Amazon	Katy Perry Teenage Dream	Ke$ha TiK ToK
Last.fm	Ke$ha Hungover	Britney Spears Radar

Amazon

Amazon bases their recommendations on purchase history ("people who bought this also bought"). You can see that they did a good job of finding pop songs to match Eh Eh.

Last.fm

Last.fm uses preference matching to make their recommendations ("people who listen to this also like"), and their matches were almost identical to Amazon's. Again I got two pop artists' songs as a match to Eh Eh (although Last.fm did swap out Katy Perry and replaced her with Britney Spears -- not sure what that means).

Now let's compare how the 3 sites did with Bad Romance:

Lady Gaga Bad Romance
Pandora	Beyonce Sweet Dreams	Taio Cruz Break Your Heart
Amazon	Ke$ha TiK ToK	Katy Perry Hot N Cold
Last.fm	Ke$ha TiK ToK	Britney Spears 3

Pandora's recommendations for Bad Romance were very different from the songs they suggested for Eh Eh, accurately reflecting the difference between the two songs.

Even though they didn't do as good a job as Pandora, to their credit, both Amazon and Last.fm recommended pop songs for Bad Romance by the same artists they recommended for Eh Eh. In fact, Amazon recommended the exact same song:TiK ToK for both. I like TiK ToK, and I thought it was a great match for Eh Eh, but even if I squint and tip my head, I have trouble considering it a good match for Bad Romance.

Perhaps Amazon and Last.fm are really recommending artists that are similar to artists you like. Katy Perry and Ke$ha are good artist suggestions for someone who likes Lady Gaga (in fact, Teenage Dream is one of my favorite songs), but if I want to base my listening on the unique qualities of either Eh Eh or Bad Romance, neither Amazon nor Last.fm recognized the difference between these two songs.

LeAnn Rimes

I did the test again with two songs by LeAnn Rimes and once again Pandora did much better. The first song is Blue, a lovely "old-school" country ballad intended for Patsy Cline in the early 1960s. The second, Can't Fight the Moonlight is a pop song that wasn't even officially released on country radio.

For Blue, all three sites recommended country music (who knew that Kid Rock did such a beautiful country ballad?).

LeAnn Rimes Blue
Pandora	Kid Rock Picture	Pam Tillis Cleopatra, Queen of Denial
Amazon	Patsy Cline Crazy	Ernest Tubb Waltz Across Texas
Last.fm	Reba McEntire Is There Life Out There?	Trisha Yearwood She's In Love With the Boy

When I asked for recommendations similar to Can't Fight The Moonlight, Pandora clearly recognized how different that song was from Blue. Both songs they recommended are pop songs by pop artists.

By contrast, the other two sites recommended country music for all.

LeAnn Rimes Can't Fight the Moonlight
Pandora	Britney Spears Oops, I did it Again	Jennifer Lopez Waiting for Tonight
Amazon	Reba McEntire Because of You	Tim McGraw Live Like You were Dying
Last.fm	Faith Hill This Kiss	Shania Twain That Don't Impress me Much

To their credit, both Amazon and Last.fm suggested more traditional country matches for Blue and more new-country matches for Can't Fight the Moonlight.

Why are Pandora's recommendations so much better?

Before making any recommendations, Pandora has already analyzed each of my songs using their Music Genome Project. This analysis unearthed the core elements of the songs and helped Pandora understand why people like each song so they can then recommend similar songs.

Understanding why is crucial, because music is complex and people like songs for different reasons. Pandora understands the subtle elements of the music I like and makes accurate recommendations. These subtle differences in why people like specific songs are not easily captured by ratings or purchase histories.

Pandora's approach makes them a great music discovery tool. I am frequently both surprised and delighted by the songs they recommend on my Bad Romance station. Most of the new artists I enjoy today were discovered by listening to Pandora.

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd makes movie recommendations by understanding why people like movies

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Movie recommendation engines are different. They deliver different suggestions because they use different methods. The two most common are:

Preference matching. Recommendations are based on comparing viewer ratings "Others who like this also liked."

Purchase history. Recommendations are based on comparing past purchases "People who bought this also bought."

Companies like Netflix and Amazon use these methods in developing their recommendations.

At Nanocrowd, our recommendations aren't based on ratings or purchases. We have developed a third approach:

Viewer reactions. Recommendations are based on people’s reactions to movies "These movies evoke similar reactions."

We analyze the words viewers use when they describe their reactions to movies. Analyzing these words allows us to understand not only what movies people enjoy, but why they enjoy them. We call this technology Reaction Mapping™.

Understanding why is crucial, because movies evoke a variety of feelings and emotions that are complex and are not captured by ratings or purchase histories. For example, when people describe Will Smith's I am Legend, they use words like "emotional, scary, mindless, zombies" and you quickly get a sense of the movie.

Nevertheless, viewers have very different reactions to I am Legend. Using our Reaction Mapping technology to create nanogenres™, we capture those differences to explain the reasons why people like this movie.

Below are three nanogenres we identified and a list of the movies we recommend in each nanogenre:

Notice how different the three lists of recommendations are. If you liked I am Legend because it's about surviving zombie attacks, then the first list is the one for you. If you like pondering the chaos of the end of mankind, then the movies in the middle list are better recommendations. You get the idea.

The movies listed for each nanogenre reflect a specific reason why people enjoy movies like I am Legend. Because the reasons are very different, so are the recommended movies.

I liked I am Legend (I've been known to enjoy a good zombie movie as much as the next guy). But most evenings I'm more of an "Intense Death Humanity" kinda guy. I was happy to see recommendations like The Green Mile and No Country for Old Men, which are perfect for me, but wouldn't show up in recommendations based on preference matching or my purchase history.

That is the reason we developed Reaction Mapping. We wanted to understand why people like movies in order to make better recommendations.

posted by Roderic March

The DVD Release Rewind (5-24-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New on DVD
Invictus (2009)
Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman star in this "championship, uplifting, determination" film. This brand new release is definitely one for the Netflix queue. The movie in a Nutshell is about sports, Africa, rugby and a team; to read more about it click here.

Re-release DVD
L.A. Story (1991)
Steve Martin comes to us in this "lovely, complicated, affair" that is most like "Annie Hall." In a nutshell this film is about romance, it's funny, and a wacky comedy. You can watch "L.A. Story" online now through our WatchNow! feature, click here.

Blu-ray DVD
Coming to America (1988)
This Blu-ray DVD comes in a set with "Trading Places". Eddie Murphy delivers a fantastic performance in both of these 80's flicks. "Coming to America" in a nutshell is a comedy, about a prince, Africa, and marriage, and is considered to be most like "Meet the Parents". For more, "riot, humorous, likable" films click here.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Release Rewind (4-28-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:00:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
This imaginative film stars Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, and is most like MirrorMask. This movie in a nutshell is imaginative, about death, the devil, and a daughter. For more "wondrous, surreal, wicked" films like it, check out this list.

Re-Release DVD
Ride With the Devil (1999)
This historical action flick is most like Gods and Generals and least like Night of the Ghouls. From the director of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee has merged four different characters into one great friendship. In a nutshell this movie is historical, about war, and fighting. For more "war, drama, courage" type movies click here.

New Release DVD
It's Complicated (2009)
When Meryl Streep is involved in a film, it usually has a way of being memorable. Throw in Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin and it promises to be non-stop comedy. This movie is said to be most like Something's Gotta Give and in a nutshell is funny, about kids, divorce, and an affair. For more movies that are "amusing, divorce, wife" involved check out these.

posted by Release Rewind

The Nanocrowd Sandbox: Mapping Movies and Nanogenres

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:26:00 +0000

We've gotten lots of email and requests for a way to navigate and select nanogenres. This is a little tricky, and we're still not sure exactly how to do it, so we decided to share a bit of our analysis and work-in-process.

If you want to take a peek under the covers at Nanocrowd, check out our new Sandbox, where we put two sets of reaction maps (more on Reaction Mapping here).

The Sandbox is an experiment for us where we share a "play" area. We haven't hooked these pages to our main application, nor is the interface polished or finished. We'd love to hear your ideas, but please be a little tolerant (and patient) with the unfinished look and feel of the Sandbox.

In the Sandbox, at the top of the page are two search boxes. The first lets you search directly for nanogenres. Start typing characters in the search box and check out the nanogenres you can choose. Select one and hit the "map genres" button, and you'll see a map of the nanogenres that are closest to the one you chose.

For example, if you look up the nanogenre comic-book, evil, silly, you'll find other fun nanogenres that might interest you, like "hero, vision, excitement" or "villain, avenge, justice." When you find a nanogenre you like, click on the "i" icon to get a list of the movies in that nanogenre. You can jump to one of those movies and see a map of all the movies that are similar to it.

If you click on the "i" for a movie, you can see its nanogenres or get more information about the movie on our website. Of course if you're a registered user, you can add the movie straight to your Netflix queue from there!

You can also search directly in the Sandbox for movies. If you search for The Dark Knight, you'll see the map of the movies that are similar to it. These movies are placed on the map not only based on how similar they are to The Dark Knight, but also based on how similar they are to each other. This means you can look for clusters of similar movies to find movies you particularly like.

Above is the map of The Dark Knight (the image is a little small, but you can see the real map here). On the image, I highlighted two clusters of movies: in the lower right are other comic-book-hero movies, while in the left are straight-up action movies like Terminator and Die Hard. Both types of movies are similar to The Dark Knight, but you are probably in the mood for one or the other.

At the very top of the map, you'll find No Country for Old Men. This may seem like a creative match for The Dark Knight, but they hook up because of the nanogenres "sadistic, morality, bold" and "gangster, story-telling, drama." If you click on No Country for Old Men in the map, you will find (not surprisingly) that The Dark Knight is the only comic-book hero movie that is on its map!

Wander around from nanogenre to movie to nanogenre and I hope you'll not only learn a bit about our technology, but also find some movies to watch!

In the future, we'll put other ideas into our Sandbox. Tell us what you think, and be sure to let us know if you think any of these ideas should be fixed up and moved from the sandbox to our real site.

posted by Roderic March

DVD Release Rewind (4-19-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:10:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

Re-Release DVD
Gone With the Wind (1939)
An incredibly famous and classic love and turmoil story, that is most like Cold Mountain, This historical movie in a nutshell is about America, romance, and war. This epic film stars Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable. For more "breathtaking, lush, profound" films like it, check out this list.

Re-Release DVD
The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
A classic 1980's animation that is most like Tarzan, it's a great one for some good old fashioned family fun. Interestingly, it is least like Into Great Silence. In a nutshell it's an animation about England, and a villain. For more "songs, pleasant, sad" type movies click here.

8-disk DVD Collection
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Nothing says "scary" quite like the iconic character of Freddy Kruger. For years he has haunted our dreams and turned them into nightmares. The release of this collection box set contains 8 DVDs full of horror. For more movies that are "frighten, screaming, thrills" types check out these.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Release Rewind (4-7-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:13:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

Blu-ray Release DVD
The Natural (1984)
Robert Redford stars in this classic film about baseball that is most like Field of Dreams. He's a natural in it! In a nutshell, it's about a team, sports, and a dream. For other films that are about "sports, baseball, loves" click here. You can also watch it right now through our Watch Now! option.

New Release DVD
The Collector (2009)
With a title like "The Collector" you almost know it's going to be scary. In a nutshell this movie is about torture, a trap, and horror. This film is most like Saw III and least like Silk Stockings. For more "squeamish, thriller, torture" movies check out this list.

New Release DVD
The Bad Lieutenant (2009)
This "gritty, drama, officer" film, starring Nicolas Cage, is about drugs, cops, and a girlfriend. On top of everything, it's a comedy! This film nets out to be most like Training Day. To find more like it click here. You can also add it to your Netflix by clicking the "Search Netflix" button now.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Release Rewind (4-4-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:13:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude law star in Sherlock Holmes. From director Guy Ritchie comes this 1890's London tale of mystery and "who done its." In a nutshell it has action, fighting, mystery, and more. For other films that are "investigate, chilling, stylish" types click here.

New Release DVD
An Education (2009)
In a nutshell this movie is about England, France, and school. This Academy Award nominated film is a tale of a schoolgirl seduced by an older man, who is a small time criminal. This film is considered to be most like The Graduate. For more "romance, emotion, rebellious" movies click here. To find more films directed by Lone Scherfig click here.

New Release DVD
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009)
This "compelling, hatred, anger" type of movie is about Germany in the 1970's, a story protests, bombs, and fascism. In a Nutshell it's a film about Germany and terrorism. This film is most like Sophie Scholl - The Final Days. To find more like it click here.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Relase Rewind (3-25-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:42:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
This "satire, irreverent, crazy" movie is most like Three Kings. This movie is about "The New Earth Army" and in a nutshell is a comedy, about war, and being psychic. This film stars George Clooney and Ewan McGregor. For more like it, check out this list.

New Release DVD
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
This visually stunning animation, is most like Chicken Run and good old family fun! It includes the voice of George Clooney. In a nutshell it's a family film about farm animals, and sure to occupy the kids. For more "animation, gag, witty" type movies, click here.

New Release DVD
Brothers (2009)
A movie about a solider on his fourth tour of duty, leaving behind his family. In a nutshell this emotional film is about war, Afghanistan, America, brothers, and a wife. This movie stars Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman. For more movies that are "battlefield, conflict, emotional" types check out these.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Release Rewind (3-12-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:06:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
This political movie in a nutshell is about government, America, greed, and corporations. The film is most like Sicko and Fahrenheit 9/11. For more "propaganda, greed, business" movies click here. To find more films directed by Michael Moore click here.

New Release DVD
Up in the Air (2009)
With many 2010 Academy Award nominations, Up in the Air starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga from The Departed is now on DVD! The film is most like Elizabethtown and least like Breeders. For more "sensitive, complex, thoughtful" movies click here. To find more George Clooney films click here and more films directed by Jason Reitman here.

New Release DVD
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)
This "action-packed, comical, outrageous" movie, is most like The Boondock Saints and least like Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation. In a Nutshell it's a killing, action, murder, boys movie. To find more like it click here.

posted by Release Rewind

The DVD Release Rewind (3-5-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:12:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
Where The Wild Things Are (2009)
Maurice Sendak's well-known and celebrated children's story is finally brought to the big screen. It's a story of young Max who runs away and finds himself amongst a few wild things and faced with a choice: to stay wild or go home. In a Nutshell it's about a child, kids, monsters and a mother. For more movies that are "magic, sweet inspiring" click here.

New Release DVD
2012 (2009)
We've all heard of the theories of what 2012 might bring. This movie that is most like The Day After Tomorrow brings the to life. In a nutshell it's about the earth, death, destruction, and action. For more movies that are about "space, destruction, humanity" click here.

New Release DVD
Plenty (1985)

A new release of an old movie starring Academy Award winning actress and nominee for this year, Meryl Streep. Based on a Broadway play, this movie in a nutshell is about war, marriage, and post-war. For more movies that are "England, compelling, secret" like click here.

posted by Roderic March

Robin Wright Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Parker, and Ridley Scott are Overdue for Oscars According to Academy Awards Analysis by Nanocrowd

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:45:00 +0000

With so many newcomers on the Oscar Nom's list this year, we here at Nanocrowd were wondering which established stars have been overlooked and are overdue to win an Oscar. We also thought that the best people to answer this question would be the movie viewers who have left millions of movie reviews on the web. We added a few new enhancements to our Reaction Mapping™ technology and did a statistical analysis of movie viewers' reactions to the films of over 8,000 starring actors and directors with the goal of finding out which stars' body of work should put them in the hunt for an Academy Award.

Our analysis of all these actors' and directors' work suggested that many of the stars who are mathematically most likely to win an Oscar have actually never won. Artists like Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Robin Wright Penn, and Julianne Moore inspired us to create a "Most Overdue for an Oscar" list. This list is a striking contrast to the 2010 Oscar Nomination list that is crowded with budding talent like Anna Kendrick, Carey Muligan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeremy Renner and emerging character actors like Christoph Waltz.

Overdue Actors
According to this analysis, several actors and directors are mathematically way overdue for an academy award.

Most Overdue Actors
In the chart above, we show the top 10 "Overdue Actors." The scale at the bottom shows the weighted "Should-win" score for each actor.

To get to this score, we first calculate the likelihood that each of over 6,000 actors (who have starred in at least 2 popular movies) will win an Oscar. Then we calculate the average of all of those values. To get a "Should-win" score for each actor, we calculate a percentage score representing how much above or below the average each actor is. Finally we remove all the actors who have already won an Oscar.

Overdue Actresses
Among the top Overdue Actresses shown below, Robin Wright Penn is clearly the most overdue for an acting Oscar. The rest of the list has some expected and some surprising members. Remember that these are not Nanocrowd's picks, but the sum of the reactions of thousands of viewers to these actress' movies.

Most Overdue Actresses
Overdue Directors
The same calculation can be done for directors, and although the directors were a very close call, Alan Parker wins the coveted "Most Overdue Director" award for 2010 in a photo finish with Ridley Scott. Although Parker is certainly not as prolific or well-known as some of the others on the overlooked list, clearly his movies struck a chord with viewers.

Most Overdue Directors
How did we calculate these lists?
There are four steps to getting to the list above. First, we calculated the Reaction Map for all of the movies in three categories: Academy Award winners 2000-2009, Academy Award nominees 2005-2009, and Academy Award nominees 2000-2004. A Reaction Map is a mathematical abstraction of all the reactions to an object like a movie or a collection of movies.

Then we compared these three Reaction Maps to the Reaction Maps of each of over 8,000 actors and directors to see which of those artists body of work elicited similar reactions to the movies in each of our 3 Academy Award movie groups.

Third, for our overall "Should-win" score, we took a weighted average of the three comparisons and then calculated if each artist's score was above or below average. This above-average score becomes that actor's "Should-win score."

Finally, we remove anyone who has already won an acting or directing Oscar.

We thought you might want to see the Should-win scores for all of the top artists, whether or not they have already received an Oscar. Below are the 10 actors who were calculated as most "Deserving" to win an Oscar, based on viewer comments. This list includes actors who have already won an acting Academy Award alongside those that haven't.

Several of the people on this list have already won an Oscar (they are the actors with the green bars), while the actors with the blue bars are calculated to be Deserving of an award, but have never won one.

Most Deserving Actors
Below are the Should-win scores for actresses. You can see that Robin Wright Penn leads the Deserving field overall, even though she has no wins. That is why she ended up as the clear top of the Overdue Actresses list. Nicole Kidman, Kate Blanchet, and Kate Winslet, but are not on the Overdue list.

Most Deserving Actresses
As a final example of our calculations, below is the list of most Deserving directors. Again, you can see that our list of deserving directors includes a good mix of past winners (Coppola, Scorsese, and Eastwood sure seem deserving!) as well as the first of our "Overdue" directors.

Most Deserving Directors
If Boxoffice results are any clue, some recent releases suggest that in 2011 the Academy might honor some of these Overdue artists. Last weekend saw Shutter Island hold on to the top box office spot for the second week in a row. The psychological thriller marks the fourth teeming of Martin Scorsese (our #2 director who has already won an Oscar) and Leonardo DiCaprio (our #1 Overdue actor). We'll see...

Just in case this isn't enough data for you, below are the top 20 Most Overdue artists in each category.

Top 20 Most Overdue Actors
1. Leonardo DiCaprio
2. Joaquin Phoenix
3. Christian Bale
4. Richard Gere
5. Ed Harris
6. Johnny Depp
7. Ewan McGregor
8. Edward Norton
9. John Malkovich
10. Colin Farrell
11. Brad Pitt
12. Bob Hoskins
13. Harvey Keitel
14. Laurence Fishburne
15. Nick Nolte
16. Samuel L. Jackson
17. John Travolta
18. David Morse
19. Jeff Bridges
20. Liam Neeson

Top 20 Most Overdue Actresses
1. Robin Wright Penn
2. Maria Bello
3. Julianne Moore
4. Michelle Pfeiffer
5. Claire Danes
6. Jennifer Lopez
7. Joan Allen
8. Natalie Portman
9. Diane Lane
10. Laura Linney
11. Naomi Watts
12. Uma Thurman
13. Glenn Close
14. Kate Beckinsale
15. Jennifer Jason Leigh
16. Annette Bening
17. Scarlett Johansson
18. Helena Bonham Carter
19. Keira Knightley
20. Deborah Kara Unger

Top 20 Most Overdue Directors
1. Alan Parker
2. Ridley Scott
3. Sidney Lumet
4. Gus Van Sant
5. Michael Mann
6. Joel Schumacher
7. Marc Forster
8. James Mangold
9. Brian De Palma
10. Spike Lee
11. Alfonso Cuaron
12. Paul Thomas Anderson
13. Neil Jordan
14. Norman Jewison
15. David Lynch
16. Robert Altman
17. Taylor Hackford
18. Richard Fleischer
19. David Fincher
20. Sean Penn

posted by Roderic March

The DVD Release Rewind (2-27-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:52:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

New Release DVD
The Informant! (2009)
Matt Damon is The Informant! and not so often do we get to catch him in a comedy. From the direct of Oscar® winners Erin Brockovich and Traffic, comes this story of corporate/criminal satire. In a Nutshell it's funny, about the FBI, an agent and crime. For more "humor, executive, business" type movies click here. To find more films directed by Steven Soderbergh click here.

New Release DVD
The Box (2009)
In a nutshell this movie is a mystery, about killing and aliens. Cameron Diaz stars in this film about a box with a button where in one push her financial troubles will disappear but in return someone else will die. This film is considered to be most like The Forgotten. For more "sinister, complicated, weird" movies click here. To find more Cameron Diaz films click here.

New Release DVD
Everybody's Fine (2009)
This "emotional, parent, unexpected" movie, stars Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, and Same Rockwell. In a Nutshell it's a story of a father, family, kids, and a son. To find more like it click here. To find more Robert DeNiro films click here.

posted by Release Rewind

Find out in advance if you are going to like the next movie you watch!

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Today, we announced Will I Like It?, an app for figuring out if you are going to like a movie before you have seen it. We created Will I Like It? when we realized that people were using the information on our site not only to find new movies to watch, but also to decide which movies they would enjoy.

With this new app, there are 3 steps to find out if you are going to like a movie. First, you fill in a form showing if you have seen or enjoyed the movies that are most like the one you are thinking about. Then you do the same thing for each of the movie's 3-word nanogenres and finally for its Movie in a nutshell. It will take you about a minute, and based on those answers we will let you know whether or not you are going to enjoy the movie.

We have already heard from users having fun with it:

“Will I Like It? is a very cool app…and spookily accurate. I used it on Facebook and whenever I put in a movie that I really liked, it just nailed it. Magic! I'll be back!”

“No more duds from Netflix! Now, I use Will I Like It? before I update my queue. And it’s easy to add to my Netflix queue right from Nanocrowd.”

“When I’m trying to choose a movie to rent, I just pull out my iPhone and use Will I Like It? to help me decide. Now I’m not disappointed when I get home to watch my movie.”

It works, because all of the questions are based on other people's reactions to the movie. The nanogenres, nutshell, and most-like lists come from our analysis of comments people have made about movies. Taking the Will I Like It? quiz is like being able to ask a thousand people what they liked about a movie so you can quickly tell if you will enjoy it.

I hope you will try it out and let us know if it works for you! Will I Like It? is available on our website at www.nanocrowd.com/quiz, on Facebook at apps.facebook.com/nanocrowd, and in a mobile version that you can play from your iPhone at www.nanocrowd.com/mobile. With the iPhone version, you can use it wherever you are to be sure that all the movies you watch are right for you!

posted by Roderic March

Personalized Recommendations Without Knowing Anything About You

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:35:00 +0000

Personalized search is a hot topic these days. OK, it's been a hot topic for years, and I admit that I've been working on it for most of my career across a couple of startups. Until Nanocrowd, I followed the same path as others: start the process by gathering information about you, the user -- your interests, preferences, ratings, and purchase history. Then, personalize the content I serve up by matching it to your profile.

This sounds like an obvious approach, and it's used by lots of companies. But, it has two obvious problems:

It requires you to tell us a lot about yourself before we can make recommendations, and

No matter how much we know about you, a preference-matching engine doesn't know about your moods, so it can't adapt recommendations to reflect your current mood.

At Nanocrowd, we want to offer you personalized results the very first time you visit our site. That means we have to deliver personalized recommendations without knowing anything about you.

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Personalized search results and recommendations without knowing you or your personal preferences.

New Approach
At Nanocrowd, we have developed a new approach: we personalize our recommendations for you by gathering and analyzing the comments written by other movie viewers. Thanks to our Reaction Mapping™ technology, we don't have to get inside your head. Instead we learn about the reactions of others and get inside their heads. We figure out how they reacted to movies and group those reactions into Nanogenres -- small groups of similar movies that share a common thread.

When you come to our site looking for a movie to watch, you tell us one of your favorite movies, actors, or directors. That’s all we need to know. We recommend movies you’ll like by understanding why other movie viewers liked what you liked. We don’t just look at their ratings or other movies they thought were similar; we analyze why they liked it.

For example, if you liked "A Very Long Engagement," we show you the 3-word Nanogenres that capture other movie viewers' varied reactions ranging from "War, Drama, Courage" to "Loves, Lover, Touching." You might like movies in both of these Nanogenres, but I bet you know immediately which one sounds fun to watch tonight. Your selection of a Nanogenre tells us exactly what movies to recommend to you. That is the first step in our personalized results. The second step is when you look at the list of movies in that Nanogenre. If you loved "A Very Long Engagement" and the things you loved about it were "War, Drama, Courage," then you will find other movies you love in that Nanogenre.

Put Us To The Test
Still skeptical? Go to nanocrowd.com and test us. Enter the name of one of your favorite movies. See if there's a Nanogenre that captures what you liked about your movie. Look at the list of movies in that Nanogenre -- did we find your favorites? Are you intrigued to check out the ones you haven't seen? That's one of the most fun and surprising experiences of using Nanocrowd -- we make personalized recommendations without knowing anything about you.

posted by Roderic March

DVD Release Rewind (2-17-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:47:00 +0000

What's been released this week on DVD?

Fellow Nanocrowders, it has been far too long! With all the new site features and releases and announcements, we have been slow getting you new release DVD titles. We apologize for the delay. Hopefully, this post will be worth the wait and surely our new changes to Nanocrowd have been. A very exciting new addition that launched last week was our "Will I Like this DVD?" Facebook Game! It's a smart and fun tool for anyone in search of a DVD to watch. Be sure to fan the page and check out the application here.

Ok, on with this week's DVD Release Rewind...

New Release DVD
Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
This love story with a sci-fi twist stars, Rachel McAdams in this romantic film that is considered to be most like "The Lake House" and second most like (not surprisingly) "The Notebook". In a Nutshell it's about romance, travel, relationships, and sci-fi. For more "emotional, fascinating, breathtaking" movies click here.

New Release DVD
Coco Before Chanel (2009)
Pretty self-explanatory; it's Coco Chanel's life story (before she became a fashion icon). This biography film in a nutshell is about France, marriage, society, and (rightfully so) fashion. For more movies that are about "desire, loving, creativity" in their nature click here.

New Release DVD
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
This "psychological, implausible, mastermind" movie, stars Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. A brutal murder of a family ensues in this serial-killer vs. prosecutor thriller. In a Nutshell this movie is about killing, murder, and justice; to find more click here.

posted by Release Rewind

Magical Maps Demystify Movies: How Reaction Mapping Drives the Nanocrowd Movie Search Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:24:00 +0000

Since the movie Avatar was released, more than 6,000 comments have been left on IMDb and Yahoo! alone. That is more comments than there are for Star Wars (33 years since its release), and twice as many as there are for James Cameron's previous blockbuster Titanic. It has become impossible for movie viewers to keep up.

Nanocrowd developed Reaction Mapping™ technology to interpret these comments and turn them into an easy-to-use search and recommendation engine. By analyzing millions of comments, we can tell how people responded to movies, and our visitors can quickly decide which movie is right for them.

Our movie recommendations seem to be hitting the mark, because Tekzilla titled their video review of our site "Personalized movie recommendations" before we had any way for users to log in.

Think about that. We provide personalized recommendations without knowing anything about you!

Other bloggers have written about the potential of personalization based on understanding other people's reactions. AppScout wrote that our site "doesn't require human intervention like other similar sites," and TheNextWeb said "This is Web 3.0 folks."

OK, so what are Reaction Maps?

Reaction Maps are mathematical abstractions
of people's reactions to things.

A Reaction Map for a movie captures the insights and reactions contained in user commentary. Comparing Reaction Maps for different movies can answer questions like "Did people enjoy The Dark Knight?" and "What movie is most like The Dark Knight?" Reaction Maps also isolate and describe the varied reactions different people have to a single movie. Some viewers respond to "The Dark Knight" because it is an exciting movie about an action super-hero; others because it is gripping and thought-provoking. Reaction Maps understand these differences.

With the help of Reaction Maps, Nanocrowd can suggest movies you will love.

Here's how we build Reaction Maps

Step 1. We find reactions to movies.
Preferably lots of reactions. What do people think of this movie and that movie? How do they describe their favorite part? How did they feel when they watched it? Fortunately the Internet has no shortage of people's reactions to things. In fact, people seem almost possessed by a need to express their opinions. If you want to know what people thought of "The Dark Knight," there are over 15,000 reviews available for you to read on the top movie websites.

Suffice it to say, there is no shortage of reactions out there for Nanocrowd to analyze.

Step 2. Identify the cities and towns to put on our map.
We begin with linguistic and semantic analysis to understand what people mean by their comments. Read a few comments at your favorite site, and you will see why this can be a little tricky (see the examples in the box below).

What matters? What doesn't? What tells us if people liked a movie? What tells us which aspects of the movie they responded to?

Once we understand these things, we cluster reactions into logical groups we call nanogenres™ and we map them as though they were cities or towns. Each nanogenre captures a unique reaction. We name our cities with the 3 words that describe the gist of that nanogenre. They may be big bustling cities with lots of movies in them (for example, "Superhero, Exciting, Fighting" is a nanogenre that includes "The Dark Knight" and many other movies), or they may be small, unique towns with only a few movies ("Bittersweet, Comical, Confusion" including Fellini's film "I, Vitelloni").

Step 3. Place the cities and towns on the map.
Using statistical analysis, we can calculate the affinity that each nanogenre-city has to all the others cities and towns. Some cities belong together: "Superhero, Exciting, Fighting" has a bunch of suburbs, including "Comic-book, Vision, Alter-ego" and "Villain, Menace, Heroic". Other cities get placed very, very far away from these: "Broadway, Tune, Gorgeous" or "Poignant, Friendship, Aging." By figuring out how far each city and town is from every other city and town, we can create a 2-dimensional map.

Our map is already pretty interesting. What is your favorite vacation spot?

After spending some time in cities full of comic-book superheroes and villains, would you like to head south to "Gangster, Storytelling, Dramas" or go East to "Gripping, Complex, Thought-provoking?" One way leads to "Goodfellas," while the other will take you to "No Country for Old Men." Both are only a train stop away from "The Dark Knight," but they start to take you on different entertainment journeys. [In case you were wondering, yes, that is actually an outline of Australia]

Of course our real map has thousands and thousands of nanogenres, so it isn't as easy to display. Fortunately, we don't really need to show you the map, just use it to help you navigate to the right movie.

Step 4. Add the mountains and valleys.
Now that we have a map with nanogenres as cities, we know the relationship of each nanogenre to the others and we are ready to create a Reaction Map for a movie. To do that, we make our map 3-D by adding elevation to each city or town. The more a movie is like a nanogenre, the higher the mountain.

For "The Dark Knight," obviously all the nanogenre-cities that describe comic-book action movies will create a mountain range. There are some deep valleys for the nanogenres like musical comedies, and there are a few isolated mountains off in the distance like "Gangster, Storytelling, Drama."

This is a Reaction Map. Imagine the Reaction Map for several different movies, and you've got the idea. Reaction Maps are the secret sauce behind the Nanocrowd website.

Most-like movie lists
Using Reaction Maps, we overlay multiple movies and see how similar they are. We compare the Reaction Map for one movie (with all its mountains and valleys) to the Reaction Maps of others. We try to find as many overlapping mountains and valleys to find the movies that are most like each other. "Spanglish" is most like "Because I Said So" and "The Upside of Anger." "Minority Report" is most like "I, Robot" and "Blade Runner." We think our most-like lists are the best you will find, because they aren't ours at all -- they reflect the collected reactions of lots of people.

Nanogenres
Most-like lists can never really capture movies, however, because movies and people's reactions to movies are so complicated. If you tell us you want to watch a movie like "Minority Report," are you looking for an intriguing science-fiction movie like "Blade Runner" or an unpredictable thriller like "Memento?" You may enjoy "Minority Report" for both those reasons, but if you want to watch another movie like it, should we recommend "Gattaca" or "Deja vu?"

To make more accurate recommendations, we offer you 6 nanogenres that are "mountains" in the Reaction Map that describe unique reactions to that movie. Each nanogenre includes other movies that people reacted to in the same way. Now you can choose a movie that matches just exactly what you want to watch tonight.

If you liked "The Dark Knight," among the nanogenres and movies you will find "Superhero, Exciting, Fighting" and "Gangster, Storytelling, Drama" and "Gripping, Complex, Thought-Provoking"

Your evening will take a very different turn depending on which one you choose (and I bet you already know which one you would pick).

This is all very interesting (I hope it is, anyway), but how does it help you find a movie?
Reaction Mapping drives the Nanocrowd movie search engine and gives you great movie recommendations. Think back on movie suggestions you have gotten from friends. At the end of watching the movie, how often did you ask "What were they thinking?"

The problem with recommendations based on someone else's rating of a movie is that when they rate or recommend a movie, they are remembering their unique reaction. When a friend recommends "Spanglish," they may think they saw an adorable, loving, comedy-drama. They left the movie smiling and feeling uplifted. Then you go watch it and see a movie about dysfunctional relationships and marital affairs.

Everyone's reaction is unique
Everyone reacts to movies based on their mood and how they feel that moment. If you go into the theater already laughing, movies like "About Schmidt" or "The Royal Tenenbaums" will seem heartwarming or even laugh-out-loud funny. But if you are feeling discouraged, these movies will take you down a notch and you may describe them as poignant, but depressing.

Movies are complicated. People are complicated (and moody!). Not surprisingly, people's reactions to movies are complicated and unpredictable.

So, when you ask for a recommendation, how can a movie website tell you what movie you are going to enjoy? How can the website know which parts of which movies you might like, and also know what mood you are in right now? Reaction Mapping makes it all possible.

Matching your interest and mood
By displaying and letting you choose nanogenres, we help you pick a movie that matches your mood. If you are feeling giddy, you will want to watch different things than if you are feeling distraught. You may remember how much you enjoyed "The Whole Nine Yards," but depending on your mood you may want to avoid the movies in the nanogenre "Hit-man, Quirky, Cold-blooded" and prefer "Humor, Unexpected, Delight" instead. Each nanogenre contains movies that have something in common with "The Whole Nine Yards," but they are from very different mountains in its Reaction Map.

At their core, Reaction Maps are complex mathematical abstractions of people's reactions to movies. People's reactions are unpredictable and inconsistent. The commentary they write is all over the map. Building a Reaction Map that can describe how people respond to something as complex as a movie would seem an impossible task, but visit our site and see the results for yourself. Try it out. I think you will enjoy how quickly we get inside your head to recommend movies.

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd Launches Movie Search Engine with New Features and Announces Reaction Mapping Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Nanocrowd) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Today we came out of beta and launched our site! We added lots of new movies and new features, including searching based on your favorite actors and directors (in addition to movies), adding movies to your Netflix account, keeping track of movies in your own myMovies list, and using Watch Now! to watch full-length movies instantly on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and more. And, we're announcing our Reaction Mapping™ technology. Using this technology, we analyze how other people reacted to movies so we can make movie recommendations that match your unique interests and mood.

Reaction Mapping
Reaction Mapping is an innovative technology that captures insights and reactions contained in the millions of movie viewers' comments on the Web and exposes the reasons why viewers liked a movie. Understanding why movie viewers liked a movie is critical to providing accurate recommendations. Reaction Mapping uses mathematical modeling to analyze and summarize the complex emotions found in movie viewers' comments and makes sense of the varied reactions individuals have to a particular movie. Get all of the details on Reaction Mapping in an upcoming blog post.

Find Movies Like Your Favorite Movie, Actor, or Director
You can now search for movies based on a favorite actor or director, in addition to your favorite movie. For example, when you enter an actor, in addition to a list of their popular movies, you see the list of "Actors Who Star in Similar Movies." Hover over those actors to get a snapshot of their movies and more information or click on an actor to find more movie recommendations. Click on "Get movie suggestions for this actor" to check out the typical nanogenres for that actor and find more movies you'll like.

Of course, you can also enter a favorite movie and with a click you have a list of recommendations. The "Movies Most Like" list gives you lots of good matches and usually some unexpected ones. The "Movies Least Like" list gives you a good laugh. And, the "Movie in a nutshell" gives you a snapshot of how viewers describe the movie.

If you want to zoom in on one aspect of your favorite movie, check out the six Nanogenres: pick from 3-word descriptions like "supernatural, creepy, unpredictable" or "enchanted, wondrous, whimsical." You can click on any of the Nanogenres to get a list of recommendations that match what you loved about your favorite movie. Nanogenres let you fine-tune your movie selections much more than traditional genres like action, drama, or comedy.

Add Movies Directly to Your Netflix Queue
When you find movies you want to watch, you can add them directly to your Netflix queue with one click. Just sign up with Nanocrowd to connect to your Netflix queue.

Watch Movies Instantly
Once you find a movie you like, if it is available for online viewing, you can simply click on a link to Watch Now! on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and more.

Keep Track of Your New Favorites Using myMovies
You can keep track of the movies you want to watch by adding them to your own myMovies list. You simply sign up with Nanocrowd and then you can add movies and make notes on what you liked, who recommended it, or anything else that interests you.

Enjoy all of the new features and let us know what you think!

posted by Roderic March

Nanocrowd

Tech won't kill Hollywood (and shouldn't want to).

Nanocrowd Movie Search App for iPad is now available (and free!) in the Apple App Store

Nanocrowd demo at APPNATIONIII

Great time at SenchaCon2011

Nanocrowd launches iPad movie search app

Nanocrowd at Mobile Monday event "HTML5: The next trend for mobile"

Movie Genres and Taste Maps (and why they remind me of choosing Waffles or Eggs Benedict for breakfast)

A simple way to test your music recommendation engine (the results suggest that Pandora understands why people like songs)

Lady Gaga

Eh-Eh

Lady Gaga

Bad Romance

LeAnn Rimes

Blue

LeAnn Rimes

Can't Fight the Moonlight

Nanocrowd makes movie recommendations by understanding why people like movies

The DVD Release Rewind (5-24-2010)

The DVD Release Rewind (4-28-2010)

The Nanocrowd Sandbox: Mapping Movies and Nanogenres

DVD Release Rewind (4-19-2010)

The DVD Release Rewind (4-7-2010)

The DVD Release Rewind (4-4-2010)

The DVD Relase Rewind (3-25-2010)

The DVD Release Rewind (3-12-2010)

The DVD Release Rewind (3-5-2010)

Robin Wright Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Parker, and Ridley Scott are Overdue for Oscars According to Academy Awards Analysis by Nanocrowd

The DVD Release Rewind (2-27-2010)

Find out in advance if you are going to like the next movie you watch!

Personalized Recommendations Without Knowing Anything About You

DVD Release Rewind (2-17-2010)

Magical Maps Demystify Movies: How Reaction Mapping Drives the Nanocrowd Movie Search Engine

Nanocrowd Launches Movie Search Engine with New Features and Announces Reaction Mapping Technology