Hi all, I haven’t posted much here since launching my free Trakt recommender/list manager, couchmoney, about 9 months ago.
Over the weekend, I made the first huge update to the recommendation engine, increasing the base database by a few million more ratings and adding a lot more film metadata. It now is even better at generating recommendations and more of them (some of my smaller lists, like specific language+genre recommendations, went up in size by 2-4x).
So for any couchmoney users here, you should notice an improvement in list quality and size in the next 24 hours. Please let me know if you see anything unexpected.
For those who haven’t used it, couchmoney.tv is a Trakt recommender service I built for myself during the lockdown, and made public April last year. It looks at your rated films in Trakt to generate lists of recommendations. You need to rate at least about 20 films to get good recommendations (the more the better). The lists automatically exclude films you have already watched/rated, and are updated every few hours if you have new Trakt activity.
Hi, first thank you for making this, I don’t watch many movies, but it is way easier to find something to watch when I want with this lists.
Any chance you one day make a version of this for TV Shows?
Yes, I want to do this with TV (and video games, and books!), but last I tried, I couldn’t find good enough available data sources for TV reviews that are needed to drive the recommendations. I think I can do something with Trakt watch histories, but needs quite a bit more work.
Out of curiosity, do you use Goodreads? If so, what is your opinion of its recommendations? What is good/bad about the recommendations it currently produces?
Not lifeiscrazy, but my two cents on Goodreads: Its recommendation engine is completely useless. Don’t know if it’s my preferences, my German language or just Goodreads itself. Not one single recommendation Goodreads ever made for me was useful.
So, as I like couchmoney: please do it for books, too!
Hm awesome. Hadn’t had it at the top of my list, but the data seems much more accessible than video games which had been the next one on my list. Will look into it further!
I’ve really enjoyed migrating recommendations across domains. I started in private big dollar studio contracts back in the day, then went to board games and back to films, and every domain I find new challenges. Pretty confident I could make an awesome book engine! And definitely one that supports specific languages!
Thanks Vassilis! It’s been a fun project, but like most of my projects kind of ballooned into a lot more work than I planned for Luckily this one has had the nice side effect of massively improving my ability to select which movie to watch!
I have written reviews in the past, but there are enough great reviewers out there! A few film recommendations that couchmoney put me onto: Vivarium (2020), Koma (2019), The Gauntlet (1977), Cooties (2014)
Yes, I do use Goodreads all the time! But, like Bene, I’m not a fan of their recommendation (if only for the fact it’s very hidden LOL) page. I assume you use goodreads too? Sometimes they have like suggestions on the “activity wall” (I don’t know what to call it) in the app too, like “because you read XXX you might like YYY” or something. Sometimes I do add a book like that to my list! But the recommendation page itself… nah.
That’s helpful, thanks! I used to use GR back in the day, but not much these days. I’ll definitely look more into a book recommender for one of my next projects!
If you just use 1900-2021, it’s basically the same! And it seems to auto-update the end-year. Because I had the default 2007-2020, and it’s now 2007-2021.
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