Need a remote for web video?

Co-founder Patrick Koppula of iLike conceived Ffwd, a video aggregation site that launches today.

The company manifesto is "your personal remote control for channel-surfing video on the web." Its job is to find videos users will like from a panoply of web options: Hulu, YouTube, Comedy Central, and even news sources like The New York Times.

Videos are categorized by topic (TV shows, certain sports, niches like shoes) and personality (rebel, super fan, class clown). Ffwd then creates a "smart" profile for individual users based on interests, videos they've seen, how they rated them, and what they skipped.

Ffwd also accounts for a user's "favorites" across other sites like YouTube, drawing comparisons to music recommendation sites like Last.fm, which automatically tracks the songs users listen to on iTunes; or StumbleUpon, a Firefox app that selects websites users might like.

While there appears to be a market for "smart" recommendation sites (that is, sites that learn individual preferences over time), Silicon Alley Insider points out users visit sites like Hulu and YouTube for different reasons: they watch movie or TV programming on one, and typically watch short-form amateur video on the other. It isn't clear users will want both dishes on the same plate.