clerkdogs.com
I use and like Netflix. Their recommendations are not horrible, but based on the way they are presented to me, I think they must be doing it wrong. They'll show me something that says, in essence: "So, you liked this one particular 'gritty crime drama', so here's a bunch more of them you might like."
NO. I did not like the film because it was a "gritty crime drama." I liked it because it explored novel ideas that most movies won't touch, or because the people involved had the strength of their convictions and did not stoop to sensationalism and sloganeering, or because it wasn't full of car chases and gun fights and other insipid cliches, like 99 percent of films indulge in these days.
Personally, I couldn't care less about genres. I'll watch a sports film, or a kid's film, or a foreign film with subtitles, or anything else, so long as it's well-made.
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Hello Mr Skorman,
My name is Elly. I have been using Clerkdogs for more than a year now. It seems the service has been on autopilot and most of the time it is extremely slow.
I just wanted to note that I think you have the best recommendation engine for movies. CD is one of those few apps I would really love to see get bigger and better.
I hope this few words will reencourage the team to keep working on it, make it faster, faster and faster.
Great job, great site, great tech ... just slow :).
Cheers guys,
I think if you fix the UI and expand your repertoire, you'll have a useful, interesting, popular tool.
For what it's worth, I typed in Usual Suspects and I do like all the top 5 results. The "creative pick" for me was a movie called Unknown, which I've ironically never heard of before. I'm going to watch it tonight.
Also, I don't understand why you say "In association with Netflix" at the bottom, but all the results have a tag for Blockbuster-- am I missing something here?
One thing I did not like was that if I hover over white space in the results, it still displays the summary of the movie. I found that jarring, because I expect to actually be hovering over either the thumbnail or the link(s) for the item before seeing additional info.
I think the feature that shows you why you're recommending (e.g., "less complex") is really cool. However, one of them seemed kind of spoilerish, because it was recommended as "less double crosses"-- most of the time with a whodunit, part of the story is wondering who's going to get double crossed. So it may not be as specific as a complete spoiler, but it's still not preferable to me.
I do have to second hating the forced auto-complete clicking. I could tell by the way the UI was acting that it's how it worked, so I didn't have a problem, but I see how a lot of users would.
On the movie detail page, you don't need the three links to Related Movies, Movie DNA, and Details; they're all right there in plain sight. I'd also be interested in seeing a complete "Movie DNA" breakdown, since you're clearly only making the top 10 or so available. Maybe that's proprietary knowledge and you don't want to let go of it.
Not a big fan of the tag cloud for filtering results. When I look at that, I just see a big blob of text and my brain shuts off without processing it. I don't know what approach would be better off the top of my head, but the tag cloud is not working for me.
In general, there's a cluttered feel to the details page. I like the info, but the design could use some TLC.
Question: where did you get the movie data? I'm assuming based on the info at the bottom that you're using Muze, which I've never heard of until now. How does it compare to IMDB's web service? How do you use it? Are you happy with it or are there things that really bug you? Was it easy to integrate into your site?
I like the site, love the recommendation engine which is clearly where 95% of the effort probably went, and think it could be a really useful service. Make the changes I noted above and you may just have me hooked. :)
I do also like http://www.nanocrowd.com/ too...
Some things, in no particular order:
* The SuperMatch UI needs some more love! Just watch someone new to the site use it and you'll see what I mean.
* I think you should remove the footnote "Clerkdogs supports Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7". If you have requirements show a notice only when they aren't met.
* You need to fix the search field not working as expected as soon as possible. Seriously.
[edit] - just read the 'about us' page & it's not an algorithm. It's compiled by video store clerks, hence the name (doh).
Obscure, but that's kind of the point with this sort of app
On a sidenote: You can definitely resolve the speed issues people are talking / complaining about by pre-computing and storing everything, instead of doing it on the fly