We just released website checkins as an additional way to track what you're watching right now. Automation via a media center is still king, but checkins have some great uses as well.

Last friday, I went to see The Hunger Games at a local theater with some friends. When I got there, I fired up trakt and checked into the movie from the website. I showed up as watching the movie throughout trakt, plus I'm accurately building my movie history.

Other good uses for checkins include watching live TV, using your HD DVD player (yes, I have one hooked up to my xbox 360 still!), when you're away from your house watching something, or if you use another media center to play media (you should request scrobbling support from your media center developers though!).

How does it work?

Each movie, show, and episode summary page has a new checkin button.

The checkin popup prefills using the localized watching text from your settings. This text is used if you share to twitter or tumblr. You can share to facebook too, but timeline doesn't support sending a custom message. Just click the social icons so they light up and it will be shared to that network.

Checking in from a show page gives you a little more control. If you are actively watching the show, it will select the next episode you need to watch by default. If you're not actively watching it (or you've completed it), the last aired episode will be selected.

You can easily change episodes by clicking the thumbnail, selecting the season, then selecting the episode. It will reload the popup with that episode and you can checkin. Checkins are supported on the individual episode pages too.

Mobile checkins

There are also several mobile apps that already support checking into the TV shows you're watching right from your phone. We have tvQ for iPhone plus SeriesGuide and Traktoid for Android. More apps are in the works (several in private beta already!) and some of those will support movie checkins too. In the meantime, use the trakt website to checkin to movies.

Checkins reflected throughout trakt

Checked in movies and episodes are reflected throughout trakt. They show up in the trending lists, count towards the watched stats, and can be filtered out in your history. You'll see a checkin detail item on the summary pages right next to your scrobbled and seen items.

Thanks…

Special thanks to the mobile developers who've already integrated and beta tested checkins for the past months. We also appreciate all the users beta testing website checkins for the last while. Bonus stat: we already have over 10k checkins :)