Although I have three of them scattered around the house, I’m really not a television person. Not that I don’t enjoy watching TV once in a while; but I just don’t have the time for such things. Most TV time on my part is spent watching the news with the television only about 8 inches to the left my iMac monitor. That way I can watch TV and work at the same time. Every now and then I do drop everything and just watch television. For that I usually go to the family room.
A few days ago, I was complaining to my son, Lee, about the high cost of cable – considering I watch so little. He told me that he dropped his cable a while back in favor of watching television on their computer. He then pointed out a half dozen sites where programs could be found – programs from the fifties right on down to yesterday. Not being tuned into such things, I had had no idea this stuff existed.
A website that’s said to have just come out of beta last week is clicker.com, with their official launch last Thursday. They are shooting to be the TV Guide of the Internet, although TV Guide has their own website. The service allow users to find programs, save them and click to them. Some programs can be watched from within Clicker and others are nothing more than links. Clicker.com allows searches for video, network & cable programming, as well as news.
By no means is the entire Internet being searched by Clicker currently. No video from RootsTelevision, or GenealogyGems can be found here, although a lot of content from YouTube, and hundreds of other websites is. The source listings at Clicker seem to go on forever however.
There’s a lot at stake here, as the company has $8 million in backing led by two venture capital firms, Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. That’s a lot of money – and you can be sure that competitors will appear – and soon… There are some websites that already compete. It just looks like Clicker may be taking the lead at the moment.
Searching on terms of interest to genealogists, I got the following:
- Genealogy – 10 show results + 13 video results
- Genealogical – 4 show results + 4 video results
- Genealogist –2 show results + 2 video results
- Family History – 268 show results + 1,691 video results
- History – 2,195 show results + 19,390 video results
- American History – 375 show results + 2,026 video results
- American Revolution – 95 show results + 5,047 video results
- Census – 36 show results + 66 video results
Searching on a few specific countries, I got the following:
- Germany – 359 show results + 1,616 video results
- France – 513 show results + 1,924 video results
- Sweden – 126 show results + 358 video results
- Switzerland – 128 show results + 2,285 video results
Included in the Genealogist results are an Adams Family episode (on Hulu) in which Pugsley and Wednesday are barred from a friend’s home due to an apparent “lack of breeding.” Gomez and Morticia hire a genealogist to prove otherwise. Click here to watch.
Found in the Census category is a Three Stooges film entitled “No Census, No Feeling (at Crackle.com).” Click here to watch.
Okay – enough foolishness… Check it out for yourselves. Enjoy!
