Circulation

Clicker – Helping you find free TV shows on the Web

Hulu will soon require moola in order to access content… What are some other options? Sure, Crackle is definitely one. Clicker, is another.

Clicker is much more than a video search engine. In fact, CEO and co-founder Jim Lanzone describes Clicker as “the first structured, comprehensive and unbiased programming guide for internet television.” Its content includes music, web originals, movies and much, much more.

How’s that? Like Yahoo Directory, Clicker indexes video. It also allows community involvement where users can annotate videos, add comments and point to related videos. Clicker relies on structured data to organize and present content, thus providing a better user experience rather than a search engine that relies on metadata.

You can create an account, create playlists, search, or browse alphabetically by show title, “what’s hot” or recommended by others. Clicker has a “trends” option where you can see what’s most popular by shows and episodes. Not sure what you want, but know you want a certain genre? Check out their categories page — browse by categories such as animation, drama, arts, business/finance, documentary, education, live programming and more. Clicker’s content is impressive — containing more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists!

What’s handy about Clicker is the various ways to search and the information provided from each. A search for “Glee” give a snapshot of information about the show, the episodes Clicker found, and then a handy sidebar suggesting similar shows. Having trouble finding what you need? Just start typing out the first few letters and Clicker will intuitively provide suggestions. I tried out a search for “maddow” and it not only suggested the actual show, but episodes of Meet the Press, Charlie Rose and American Microphone where she has made appearances. Clicker’s search is definitely user-friendly!

As more people go to their computers instead of TV, they will find sites such a Clicker (and Hulu and Crackle) as an essential part of their entertainment. The ease at which Clicker helps find, organize and present information make it a strong competitor with its fellow online video sites.

For more information on the subject:

Clicker Blog: Hi, We’re Clicker.

NPR’s all tech CONSIDERED: TV on the Web on the TV

Search Engine Land: Clicker: More Than Just a Video Search Engine

Tags: clicker, directory, free video, hulu, searching, video search, videos

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Heard of Crackle? It’s like Hulu: an online video service

Recently, I stumbled upon Crackle, a neat online video resource. Not sure how I missed Crackle – perhaps I was lost in the shadow of Hulu, another (fabulous) free online video service.  Owned by the Sony corporation, Crackle is much like Hulu, offering videos from television and full-length movies. Crackle houses many “minisodes” — where full-length selected TV shows are shortened into 4-5 minute episodes. Hulu has a minisode channel, but it is not as extensive as Crackle’s. Crackle also has original shows, where some are cross-shared via a channel on Hulu.

Some of Crackle’s Minisodes:

* Fat Albert
* The Partridge Family
* One Day at a Time
* Good Times
* Starsky and Hutch
* 227
* The Facts of Life
* Charlie’s Angels
* Party of Five

To view more of Crackle’s minisodes, go to this link and click on the drop-down filter on the right hand side of the screen to filter by minisodes. Unfortunately, I could not find a direct link to them (which would be a recommendation to Crackle for a mini-improvement to their website).

I’ll leave you with a minisode from The Facts of Life. (Take note of a very young Helen Hunt as a drug pusher!)

Tags: crackle, hulu, streaming video, video

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