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Google Adds Movie Ratings, Times, Reviews
Mike Skweir writes " I was going to take my daughter to the movies this afternoon and I
wanted to find out more about the movie 'Kicking & Screaming'... so I Googled
it. To my surprise the following
response occurred . When I followed the
link, it actually gave me several reviews, movie ratings and the ability to
search for a theatre in my area." Once you've entered your zip code, it will also tell you what movies are playing in your area.
What I wonder is where Google gets its ratings from, most movie titles always give you results to the IMDB where reviews can be found anyway...
Next feature might be Music/Concert shows.
but will it let us know which ones to avoid?
Google's true genius might be the way they add new features...and let it all get advertised by users. Instead of the Yahoo model of cluttering up the main page so much that is unusable, Google just adds a feature--and people find out when they try it, or it ends up on a site like Slashdot
If google starts issuing IDs for each user, I wouldn't be suprised if it became more important than a social security number.
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
They could ask you what type of search you are doing - technical research, entertainment, etc. and sort your results accordingly.
And in doing so, Google would create a brand new business model:
1. Create a website that advertises having pictures of Britney Spears and Natalie Portman in compromising positions and completely uninhibited, but of course contains only seven thousand banner ads.
2. Create hundreds of spambots to report to Google that your website is *the best* place to find quality research on apache, linux, lemmings, the San Francisco earthquake, herpes simplex B, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Calvinism, and navel lint.
3. Profit (see, that time step two existed)
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Excellent! Time to get some Karma....
"It's been interesting over the last couple of months to see the new google services and how well they integrate with each other.
for instance, I use google local and at some point it squirreled away a cookie of my location. This information is used by google maps and also the movie reviews.
when I type movie: Hotel Rwanda it brings me to a listing of show times and links in my town. Another click on "7:40" brings me to the another site (movietickets.com, fandago.com, etc) where I can order a ticket. The point is: two clicks to getting movie tickets. Why would I go to any other site at this point? it's so easy with google, especially when I type it into the built in toolbar on my browser.
At this point it seems like any horizontal web app is a possible target for google"
"Just use booble!!!
You can get all sorts of information on movies from Booble. http://www.booble.com/"
(Note, not safe for work)
"Just wait for the next iteration...
And I quote, "Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to you. For now."
Here's hoping for the best with all of their future plans!"
I would expect a company like google to use Cinema Source since they are the #1 database clearinghouse of movietime information, that nearly every cinema in America communicates with.
Unfortunately, they seem to be using some other service which has incomplete records and doesn't even list some of my local theaters.
Compare for yourself by doing a search on moviefone or yahoo, and then check google.
1. Google is a totally great Linux / OSS / GPL success story. There is money to be made building great things for people to use on the OSS software stack.
2. I, for one am interested in new Google projects. Getting the most use out of an already very useful service is the powergeek thing to do. Heck, we are always talking about new things to do with hardware, software, etc... I don't see Google being any different.
2a. Where are the other cool projects coming from? MSN, Yahoo? (Well ok maybe the music thing, but we talked about that already.) Google is innovating in a big way, bringing lots of value to the net along for the ride. They have advanced the state of the art in web interfaces, scaleable file-systems, and search several times. Can't really say that about the others now can you?
3. Savvy? Are you sure you are reading the right site? The things that Google does are *hard*. --really hard. And they do it on OSS to boot! Remember #1, that is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
Blogging because I can...
Okay, so if you live in the New York, you might actually try the following:
Use google to find a movie that might be worth the money you will be spending.
Use google to find a movie theatre that has the movie on schedule.
Use google's orkut or google's newly aquired dodgeball to find someone to join your movie evening.
Use google ride to order a cab to the movie theatre.
Use google groups to discuss the result of the evening.
So, if google was smart, they would enhance their APIs to encourage people to combine different google applications. My first attempt would be something like a google timewaster/blinddate/"hey, I'm new in this town, are there real people around?"/... Or is this something labs.google.com will provide in the next six months? and so on... I'm tired of this "what if google did a, b, c" I would like to do it myself.
Without even referencing the book or the BBC series, the movie itself wasn't assembled very well. There was some individual talent in the movie, but it was drained by the audio sounding like it was recorded in a gymnasium and the combined actors had no chemistry at all. It was like watching a high school film project. If this was the intent of the director, then the initial big-budget dolphin musical and the first-rate hollywood effects failed entirely to set the mood. I also wonder how much the actors struggled with green screens, as was the case in the Star Wars prequels.
Average rating
3.8 / 5
Based on 40 reviews
My guess is that the ranking of those reviews are determined through PageRank. Higher ranked sites get higher placement in the list of reviews. As for Filthy's review, could it be that a) they don't have a clear rating system that Google can automatically pull from the page (the graphic is the only key, rather than a text "2 out of 5 fingers" or something) or b) that Google is a family-friendly service, and they don't want to include a page that starts "I'm beginning to think those grassfuckers in Hollywood aren't paying attention to me. All this time, I thought they gave a shit. Maybe not, though. I can't even count the number of times I've told those assholes that we want to be entertained by movies."