LocateTV, the TV Guide like service that I reviewed here, LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids has announced that they will be opening to the public on Monday, October 1st. The closed beta will be disabled and users from all over the world will now be able to give this service a try. Considering LocateTV Redesigned Their Embeddable Widgets, it will be interesting to see how many of them appear on various blogs within the blogosphere once LocateTV goes public.
LocateTV, the internet version of TV Guide which was covered here LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids, have redesigned their embeddable widgets based on user feedback. The new widgets now come in three flavors. Vanilla, Branded and Custom.
The Vanilla design is a plain and simple graphic with no bells or whistles attached. The Branded design is their standard widget design which features the colors of their website. Probably the most useful out of the bunch is the custom design. The custom widget contains adjustable color and sizing options so that blending it in with the design of your site is a piece of cake.
LocateTV is currently asking for feedback on these new widget designs. Please visit New embed designs: go on then and let them know what you think.
On a related note, LocateTV is showing one of the most powerful resources in an online companies arsenal, two-way communication. The end users provide valuable feedback, and within a moments notice, companies can fulfill the needs of users. I hope other companies are taking notes because this is the way it should be.
The idea behind LocateTV is simple – to let you find TV shows available where you live in the world, be they on broadcast TV, online or on recorded media (DVD, HD-DVD etc). In addition we provide tools to assist you, so that your readers can find where they can watch the TV content that you are talking about.
If I had to review this site in one sentence or less, I’d say it was your TV Guide on roids. LocateTV is a search engine that provides you with up to date results on when a particular actor, TV show or movie will appear on TV, DVD or WebTV. For instance, I used the search terms “Back To The Future“. The first result lets me know that Back To The Future, was a movie released in 1985. The result page gives you a brief description of the movie letting you know which actors appeared as well as the movie credits.
Below all of the information related to the movie itself are three tabs. One for Upcoming TV showings, another for DVD and another for WebTV. WebTV… Does anyone still use WebTV? At any rate, at the time of this writing, BTTF will be showing three seperate times on Sunday September 2nd on Cinemax. Each showing includes an embed link which allows you to embed the show time information into your blog or any other form that allows embeddable html. Let’s give it a shot.
I don’t think you’ll be able to place this in a blogs sidebar because of the size of this thing but, it’s a cool way to be able to tell your visitors when the next showing of your favorite show will be on.
Clicking on the DVD tab shows retailers who are currently selling the specific DVD or a DVD set containing the movie in question. Some of the retailers I’ve seen include Amazon, Deep Discount.com, Movies Unlimited and Barnes&Noble.com. LocateTV earns a small percentage of the DVD sale if you purchase the DVD through the LocateTV site. While I browsed around, I didn’t notice any ADs, so this could be the way they plan on monetizing the service.
One of the features I almost forgot to mention, is the ability to personalize your search results. In the top right corner of the LocateTV website, there is a button that you can press that gives you the ability to choose which country you live in (At the moment there are only three countries supported) type in your address, and then select your programming provider. In my case, it was Time Warner Cable. I recommend going through this process before you begin searching the site so the results are as accurate as possible.
While performing a search for Deadliest Catch, my favorite reality based TV show, I came across a 2007 entry that did not contain a synopsis. This struck me as odd but it gave me the oppurtunity to send LocateTV a feature request. I requested that users be able to submit a synopsis of a particular show for review by the LocateTV staff members or, that they configure the synopsis part of the search results as a wiki that can be edited only by registered members.
If your blogging about a particular television show that you watched or you have seen something worth recommending, chances are, other folks would also like to see it. You owe it to yourself and others to use the embed feature of LocateTV to tell others when the show will be appearing next. LocateTV is trying to solve a huge problem:
The problem we are continuously striving to solve is that legitimate TV content is available from an ever changing list of different places depending upon where you live – be that different TV channels, different online sources, or on different recorded media. The big challenge for us is to collate this information together, so that people from different geographic locations can find the same content. We are launching with coverage of the UK and US. We aim to broaden this coverage over time.
It’s my opinion that these guys are doing a good job thus far. They are actively fixing glitches in their search system as their change log points out and now, I don’t have to remember which channel the program was on, nor do I have to remember dates or times. I can do a quick search on LocateTV and then publish that information.
LocateTV is still in private beta. They have let me know that, they are aiming to have a public beta within the next few weeks, then they will go public. LocateTV was kind enough to provide me with three invitations to their service that I could give away to you, the readers. So if your interested in giving this service a test spin and think you can add some valuable feedback to the LocateTV team, let me know in the comments section and I’ll set you up with an invite. Be sure to use a real email address when leaving a comment since thats the address the invite will be sent to.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 