Just imagine: you own an Orlando Bloom fan site. You search for Mr Bloom on LocateTV, intending to embed one of our lovely widgets on your home page sidebar so that all your readers can instantly see which of his movies is next on TV, every time they visit your site. But the search result for Orlando shows… nothing. Surely not - that elfishly piratical Brit must have some blockbuster showing in the next couple of weeks! This was the dilemma of Sarah over at excellent siteThe Orlando Bloom Files and was proving something of a mystery… until she double-checked her region settings by clicking on the flag on the top right of LocateTV. She was set as an American, but her postcode and channels were wrong - once changed, they did indeed show all the great Bloom movies airing soon. So Sarah’s happy, her loyal Orlandophile readers are happy, we’re all happy.
Messsage of the fable: check your region, your postcode and your channels to ensure you’re getting the LocateTV data that’s relevant to you. Then enjoy the show.
With the newly released The Golden Compass getting mixed reviews - is it a spine-tingling spectacular or a politics-and-religion-shy disappointment compared to Philip Pullman’s books? - we’d like to ask you a provocative question.
Are today’s fantasy movies too CGI-slick? Was the rough-around-the-edges style of something like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth more spooky and magical than the glossy beauty of Lord of the Rings? Are epics bigger and better than ever, or do you pine for the old days of Willow, Legend and the like? Do amazing effects mean that our imaginations are redundant?
Your mission should you choose to accept it, has two stages:
We’ve received lots of feedback from people such as Mori at the After Ellen blog who have been introduced to LocateTV, love the concept, but would like to see coverage in regions other than the US and UK. One of the most common requests is for Canadian coverage, so as a direct upshot of this feedback we are currently doing a study to look at the logistics of incorporating Canada into LocateTV.
Expanding our global coverage has been an ambition from the outset, but presents a number of challenges for us. For each new country we must source the information for TV listings and online and DVD coverage in that country. Then we need to combine that information with the data we already have, ensure that we can automatically regionalise the results for the visitors when they come to the site, and allow them to further personalise their results by setting their local TV supplier.
The net result is that when someone is embedding their favourite show on their webpage, blog or forum, they know that the visitors to their site will automatically get the listings for where the show is available in the country they live in - for example, we need to be able to say that a given episode of Heroes to be shown on Channel A in America is the same as the one that will be shown on Channel B in the UK and Channel C in Canada.
It’s a lot of work! So no promises yet for the Canadians as to when LocateTV we will be ready for them, but rest assured that we’re listening to your comments and it’s on the roadmap.
A woman, looking tired and cold, talking about LocateTV in a field: magic. There’s so much going on with the site we thought you needed a snappy summary of our development updates, so I’ve decided to record a short weekly video blog. This week I focus on the Retro TV Classics theme page and the easier embedding facility. I’m happy to answer any questions or tackle any topics you like in the weekly vblog, and you can contact me via blog comments, email or my LocateTV MySpace page.
Don’t just listen to us about how the site is progressing, however. Bloggers at Trendhunter, After Ellen and Profy.com have all been giving their opinions on LocateTV so go and join the conversations out in the big wide web as well.Lottie
When life seems a little hard to bear (as is so often the case in late November), there’s much comfort to be had from regressing to the past and indulging in a little nostalgia.Thus LocateTV introduce this week’s theme page: Retro TV Classics.
Each of our theme pages acts as an example of how you can use LocateTV to watch a range of TV shows or films on a particular topical theme or genre by using our free embeddable widgets - previous ones include The World’s Sexiest Actors and Thanksgiving.
This week our page includes such old TV favourites The Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H and Dallas. Our selection has a US bias, but if you’re a UK TV fan why not take our example and use Locate to search for a handful of your childhood classics such as Mr Benn or The Prisoner?
The team over at Child of the 1980s have added LocateTV embeds to many of their retro pages such as Bagpuss. It’s a great site for nostalgic web users with articles on games, toys and sweets as well as UK and US 80s film and TV.
Never underestimate the bonding value of nostalgic programming. Share the retro TV theme page with friends and work colleagues to ensure misty-eyed conversations about quite how much Lassie made you cry. Come home, girl, come home!
It’s that time of the week when we update you on the improvements made to LocateTV - some obvious and cosmetic, some behind-the-scenes tweaks which make it run more smoothly.
First up, we have the improved embedding pages. As always, you can search for any TV series, episode, film, actor or crew member and click on the embed button to the right of the result:
On the next screen you are taken through a simple two-step process which allows you to select the size of the embed and then the format - whether it is for a blog, webpage or MySpace profile, or for a forum, which often requires a different code:
Now you have no excuse not to share your favourite shows online. Go search.
Other developments include extending the list of our online content providers; including ABC, NBC and the BBC, creating clearer, bolder text throughout the site to make it easy to use for new visitors; and enabling an even better ‘fuzzy’ search so you can type in all manner of nonsense and LocateTV will still endeavour to find what you’re looking for.
Like it? Want us to improve something specific? Let us know.
With Thanksgiving tomorrow, households across America will be merrily bustling with preparations for the big day: turkey to be roasted, cornbread to be baked, families to be endured - sorry, enjoyed.
TV is a big part of the celebrations for most people, with dinner being digested throughout a long afternoon of NFL football, not to mention those classic movies and TV shows set on and around Thanksgiving that are perfect to get you in the mood or provide a bit of an escape from the over-fed family claustrophobia.
And so the next addition to LocateTV’s stable of theme pages is our Thanksgiving Special, which uses the embeds to show when and where you can catch a host of Thanksgiving-related movies and TV shows: some obvious (Home for the Holidays) and some a little more surprising - such as Brokeback Mountain, featuring the memorable holiday dinner where Alma chooses to confront Ennis.
Jenna from The Underwire loves the page, declaring that she’ll be using it to catch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Let us know if we’ve missed out your own favourite holiday viewing, and if any of our suggested programmes helped to make you feel all warm and twinkly inside.
ResearchBuzz marvels at the depth of the search results, whilst Media Morgue cites LocateTV as one to bookmark. ‘Cool tools’ directory, MakeUseOf.com, also dedicated some time to the web’s most effective way to find out when your favourite shows and actors are next of TV – posting a quick feature overview, as well as our two video guides. Many thanks to everybody who has written about us, later in the week we’ll pull together a mammoth post summarising the chatter.
In the meantime, we ponder on the words of Plasticboy who left a comment on Boing Boing, suggesting that LocateTV is an expedient way to test the Caine-Hackman theory. The Caine-Hackman theory states that there is a 100% statistical probability that at any given moment in time, a film starring either Michael Caine or Gene Hackman will be showing on television. We’ve included the respective actors’ embeds below, and we’ll be sure to check back often, but are there any other actors who invade your small screen with alarming regularity? If so, let us know!
“Where do I find all my Jessica Simpson facts and photos?” we hear you cry plaintively. Well now Locate TV can provide you with your answer. Just head over to SweetKisses , where the lovely Joanna has compiled everything you could possibly need to know about the blonde bombshell. A recent convert to Locate TV, Joanna from the Jessica Simpson fan site has already embedded the widget in her side panel, so now all her Jessica-mad visitors can see when their idol will next be appearing on the small screen.
As she is “in love” with the widget, which is “very helpful” we sleep easy tonight knowing that fans across the globe now know when they can next see their hero.
Basically quoting our very own blogging correspondent from the front line of TV and film search technology (er, me), they outline the basics: “LocateTV is a film and TV search engine that tells you when any show is next on air, on TV, online and on DVD, specific to your region and channels (US and UK). It’s slick and simple, with lovely widgets, which you can embed on your blog or post to share the scheduling info with your readers - which remains always dynamically updated and relevant to them.”
Too true, too true. They even think it looks ‘pretty good.’ Nice. We’re off for a beer.
With the newly released The Golden Compass getting mixed reviews - is it a spine-tingling spectacular or a politics-and-religion-shy disappointment compared to Philip Pullman’s books? - we’d like to ask you a provocative question.
We’ve received lots of feedback from people such as 
When life seems a little hard to bear (as is so often the case in late November), there’s much comfort to be had from regressing to the past and indulging in a little nostalgia.Thus LocateTV introduce this week’s theme page: 
With Thanksgiving tomorrow, households across America will be merrily bustling with preparations for the big day: turkey to be roasted, cornbread to be baked, families to be endured - sorry, enjoyed.
