November 5, 2008

Platform upgrade: recommendations and bug fixes

We’ve deployed a new build containing a substantial update to our recommendations engine. The new engine includes

  • New content analysis algorithm provides recommendations based on content analysis
  • Completely re-worked engine provides more matches and a better quality of match
  • Recommendations of on demand and catch-up content from scheduled content
  • New user interface options
    • Inclusion of thumbnails and simulcast links
    • Newtag cloud style

Other items in the build include:

  • Other Enhancements
    • Enable tracking of simulcast links from show details page
    • Ability to select the number of hours to display in the small screen xml feed
    • Include new “maximum throughput” mode to handle spikes to traffic
  • Bug fixes
    • Now reset the page number when linking to multiple repeats or episodes of a show
    • Support for different regions across different broadcasters
    • Provide feeds for non-flagged channels
    • Now use short URLs when linking from email reminders
    • No longer open the page twice when opening a clip from the show detail component
    • Shows with an apostrophe at the beginning of the description were causing JavaScript errors
    • Improved gzip/deflate support
    • Updated search regex to support umlauts and other characters
    • Improved string trimming algorithm to prevent work breaking