As Netflix and other video services offer thousands of movies streamed over the Internet, all those choices are creating a dilemma: what to watch next.
A 2-year-old movie recommendation website called Clerkdogs is addressing the problem by offering online chats with former video store clerks,
film critics and other movie buffs.
The chat option debuted Thursday, just as some subscribers to Netflix Inc.’s rapidly growing video service might be settling in for an evening of entertainment.
Clerkdogs’ chat service initially will be available for a few hours a day, depending on the availability of the roughly 20 former video store clerks who will be providing most of the advice. Within a few months, “Clerks Live” is supposed be available around the clock and staffed by movie and TV critics, film professors and bloggers, as well as the former video store workers.
Netflix recommends movies to its estimated 19 million subscribers by drawing upon the billions of ratings that its customers have entered into its database since it began delivering DVDs through the mail in 1999. The service added Internet streaming to its service in 2007.
Computer-driven suggestions have always seemed inadequate to Clerkdogs founder, Stuart Skorman, because the technology doesn’t account for mood swings. He thinks many people miss the days when they could talk to a clerk at a video stores. The stores have been closing in the past few years due to competition from Netflix and Redbox’s DVD-rental kiosks.
Tablet sales continue to soar
The market for tablet computers is exploding — and almost entirely because of the iPad — research group IDC says.
During the third quarter of 2010 — the first complete one with Apple Inc.’s iPad on sale the entire time — manufacturers shipped 4.8 million tablets worldwide, up 45 percent from 3.3 million in the same period last year.
IDC said the vast majority of those — 87 percent — were iPads. Tablets running Google Inc.’s Android software, a fixture on smart phones, went on sale later and have yet to take off as the iPad has.
IDC only counted media tablets that run software designed for mobile devices. Excluded are devices that have touch screens but run the same software you’d find on a full-fledged PC — namely, Windows.
IDC suggested that as 2011 wears on, newer Android tablets, such as Motorola Mobility Inc.’s Xoom, could steal market share from the iPad, though Apple doesn’t seem likely to lose its stronghold in the category it created.
Meanwhile, sales of e-readers jumped 40 percent to 2.7 million during the quarter. Amazon.com Inc., maker of the Kindle, dominated the category, with 41.5 percent market share. Pandigital was a distant runner-up with 16.1 percent. Nook maker Barnes & Noble Inc., Sony Electronics Inc. and Chinese manufacturer Hanvon Technology Co. Ltd. round out the top five e-reader brands.
Associated Press
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