beeTV Serves Up Personalized TV Recommendations and Listings

When it comes to watching TV and movies, we've got more options than ever before. Hulu and network sites like ABC rule the (legal) internet streaming sphere; Netflix offers streaming movies; some sites even have mobile versions. Almost every TV show is available online in some form or another. And then there's your regular, reliable TV. Keeping up with all the options is sometimes a job in and of itself.

Enter beeTV, a personalized TV/movie recommendation engine. The beeTV app serves up recommendations for all platforms—TV, internet, and mobile—all tailored to your specific tastes. My favorite part by far is the TV listing directory, which is based on your local TV provider. (Especially useful to me, perhaps, because Mediacom stopped giving us the TV Guide channel. Sigh.) You can rate shows and movies, which further shapes beeTV's knowledge of your preferences, and you can also create a "queue" for what to watch, and when.

The selection of shows and movies is somewhat limited right now, but still solid. A large amount of the online content is drawn from Amazon.com and iTunes (i.e., you've got to pay for it!) and finding something to stream from the iPhone is tricky. (iPad users can take advantage of the Netflix listings.) However, beeTV also has a web version (bee.tv) which is better organized, and from a "real" browser you can take advantage of sites like Hulu while accessing the queue you built from the iPhone app.

Despite those small quirks, though, personal TV recommendations are great if you're just looking for something to watch.