Image: David Boyle/Flickr
Buried by the recent news about Yahoo spinning off the core elements of the company was the announcement of a new, small, useful Yahoo service to help you find fun things to watch.If you're a cord-cutter like me, or simply subscribe to a lot of streaming services, it can be hard to keep track of exactly what's offered by each service. Yahoo Video Guide is a free app available for both iOS and Android where you can select all the services you subscribe to, and the Guide will help show you what's new and where to find it. If you want to watch on your phone, one tap will take you right from the Video Guide to the appropriate app for viewing.
The most promising part of the Video Guide is the "Mood Picker." Netflix's suggestions have inspired me to watch something new approximately zero times, even though the desire to broaden my horizons is there. Mood Picker allows you to select a number of emotional descriptors (it uses evocative GIFs rather than typed adjectives) and makes suggestions based on your input. For example, combining "Tense" and "Dark" came up with a recent favorite of mine, The Guest, as well as several movies I've wanted to see but completely forgot about.It can be difficult to get inspired by the user interface of services like Netflix and Hulu. The options are so vast that exploration seems more overwhelming that exciting. Yahoo Video Guide is a helpful companion guide, like the paper TV Guides of yore.