Starting Thursday, however, there will be a new online service that aims to change all that. The service, called SnagFilms, allows anyone with a blog, a Web site, or even a page on a social-networking site, to open a virtual movie theater and show these documentaries, free. The virtual theater is a small widget that contains the film, and that can be embedded easily and quickly in a wide variety of popular social-networking services and blog platforms. No technical knowledge is needed.

Once a site or page owner “snags” a film in this way, visitors to the site can view it in a larger window that pops out from the widget. This window plays the film, displays some ads and provides links to charities or organizations related to the topic of the movie. The films can even be played in full-screen mode. Many also include links for buying a DVD of the film. All that’s missing is the popcorn.

These aren’t homemade, three-minute YouTube (GOOG) clips. Nearly all are feature-length, professionally produced documentaries, from both small independent filmmakers and well-known sources such as PBS and National Geographic.

The owner of the site or blog gets no direct revenue from posting the films. He or she is, in effect, donating space to support the film or the cause it highlights, a decision SnagFilms calls “filmanthropy.” But the filmmaker and SnagFilms do make money — splitting advertising revenue equally. And the charity or organization can make money, too, if viewers opt to donate. The filmmaker also can make money from DVD sales, paying SnagFilms an 8.5% commission.

I have been testing a prerelease version of the SnagFilms service and have posted SnagFilms widgets with no problems to Facebook, MySpace (News Corp), iGoogle, Netvibes, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces (MSFT) and Vox. Many more Web sites can house these widgets, including the vast number of blogs built on the popular WordPress and TypePad platforms.

Here’s how it works. You just go to the SnagFilms Web site at www.snagfilms.com, select one or more of the 250 or so films available at launch and click the snag button. A menu pops up that lists numerous popular networking services and platforms. Clicking one will automatically post the SnagFilms widget of your choice on your page or site at one of these services. You can also simply view the films at the SnagFilms site.

Each widget includes an “info” button that takes you to a page on the SnagFilms site giving the details and background on the film. You can also leave comments here, rate the film, order the DVD and see recommendations for related films.

The system is viral, so you don’t have to start at the SnagFilms site. A Web surfer who sees a SnagFilms movie anywhere on the Web can spread it around just by clicking the snag button on every widget. The snag button allows the viewer to either host the film or to email a link to the film that will bring friends to the SnagFilms site to view or snag it.

SnagFilms is the brainchild of Ted Leonsis, a former top executive at America Online (TWS), who in recent years has become a documentary-film producer. He became frustrated with the distribution bottleneck for such films and arranged to take over AOL’s documentary site, TrueStories, and turn it into SnagFilms. He also is chairman of the board of a company, Clearspring, which created the film widgets.

At launch, the SnagFilms catalog includes well-known documentaries like “Super Size Me,” but also lesser-known films on a wide variety of topics, including college football, AIDS in Africa, politics, profiles of average people and tales of the New York Fire Department. One of my favorites was “Paper Clips,” the story of how a school in Tennessee learned about the Holocaust.

Filmmakers can submit movies to the site by sending an email to: submissions@snagfilms.com. SnagFilms says it doesn’t censor or edit the films, but won’t accept pornography or films deemed to encourage hate. It does have a selection process, so not all films submitted will make it onto the site. The company hopes to add more films soon.

I had only two gripes about SnagFilms. First, the films should be able to play inside the widget itself, with an option inside to play at larger sizes. Having to open a separate browser window is a pain. The company says it’s working on this.

Second, the initial catalog is light on documentaries from a conservative or probusiness perspective. But the company says it is “actively seeking to offer differing viewpoints” and will soon add “a number of films that are quite conservative in philosophy.”

SnagFilms is a great idea for getting documentary films in front of more people. It’s another example of how the Web is changing media distribution for the better.

• Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Here are links to the posts I have done from BoomTown’s trip to Europe–with glamorous stops in England, France and Monaco (and all the videos are below too!)–in chronological order going backward:

Kara Visits the Royal Society in London

Kara Visits Cambridge University

Kara Visits a Feast!

Silicon Valley Loses to the Brits!

Kara Visits Dailymotion in Paris

Kara Visits Netvibes in Paris

Kara Visits the Monaco Media Forum: More Interviews on the French Riviera!

Kara Visits the Monaco Media Forum: Opening Dinner

Kara Visits Monte-Carlo

The company was founded by former journalist Tariq Krim in 2005, who ran it with longtime European entrepreneur Pierre Chappaz until he left this past summer to work on another company called Wikio.

Netvibes is funded by the European VCs of Accel Partners and Index Ventures , as well as a smattering of U.S Web players like Marc Andreessen and others, to the tune of about $16 million.

Using a customizable ecosystem that allows a user to include any Web app–such as widgets, feeds, email, videos, blogs and now social-networking apps too–its goal of creating the personalized home page puts it in competition with other sites like Pageflakes, iGoogle and, of course, MyYahoo.

The site has upward of 12,000 feeds of all kinds and about 10 million registered users, aiming to make money via revenue sharing on the various apps used.

The business plan and the whole space, of course, is still developing, as a variety of players compete to become your first stop on the Internet with hopes of finding new ways to monetize that experience.

But here’s Netvibes CEO Krim discussing the whole thing:

It was a fancy gold-leaf setting for the gathering of Silicon Valley and European digital media execs, investors and entrepreneurs, a kickoff to two days of discussion about the state of tech and media in this glam town on the Riviera.

Why am I here? (No, not a boondoggle!)

Actually, to learn more about the most interesting European players, as Walt Mossberg and I consider whether to take our successful D: All Things Digital conference to Dublin next fall.

On my way to the dinner, I ran smack into Facebook bigwig Owen Van Natta and PR head Brandee Barker in front of the conference hotel. They had just flown in, as Van Natta is being interviewed here.

Though they looked horrified to see me as their first greeter, the pair were too exhausted to flee screaming from BoomTown’s usual stalking–which has now gone international–and went off for some much-needed sleep after a busy few weeks of Microsoft-shaking-down and social-ads-launching.

Nonetheless, even without them, Facebook and social networking were Topic A at the dinner among the attendees.

Tomorrow: Barry Diller on why he sliced and diced his Net assets and more.

Until then, here’s some cogent thoughts from four attendees–ubiquitous Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, very sharp Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital, friendly Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim and charming FON founder Martin Varsavsky–in a video:

These technologies allow users to create highly personalized pages filled with just the information or tools they desire. If you’re interested in the car industry and college basketball, live in Toronto, love to view family photos and often use a calculator, you can fill your computer screen with small modules that display relevant information and necessary tools for all these interests. You won’t have to browse through the Web or launch a bunch of large programs.

These modules and miniapplications appear as small square or rectangular objects, with the content or functionality inside. You can arrange them as you like.

There are two broad categories of these personalized pages — those that appear as Web pages, and thus require you to be online to use them, and those that are on your local desktop. The latter don’t require an Internet connection, though some of their modules may work only if you’re online.

On the Web, the most familiar of these modular systems is My Yahoo, which allows you to combine page segments featuring Yahoo‘s own news and information with segments containing syndicated feeds of headlines from other sites, often called RSS feeds. Others have launched similar pages. One longstanding competitor is Microsoft‘s my.msn.com.

On the desktop, the best known miniapplication system is Apple‘s Dashboard, which allows Macintosh users to install tiny programs called Widgets that perform searches, display photo slide shows, track stocks, play music, and more. Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, out this week, has a comparable system called Sidebar.

Now, there’s a new free Web site that combines some of the best features of My Yahoo and Dashboard. It’s called Netvibes, it’s available at Netvibes.com, and it’s unusual because it’s from Paris, France — not Silicon Valley or Seattle.

Like My Yahoo’s system for displaying feeds from non-Yahoo sources, Netvibes allows you to fill your personal page with headlines from all over the Web. And like Apple’s Widgets, Netvibes’ modules are produced by a wide variety of users, who upload them and make them available free.

I’ve been a My Yahoo user for many years, mostly because it allows me to see a lot of information at a glance, and it’s mainly plain text so it loads fast. I also use Apple’s Widgets on my Macintosh machines. But I find myself using Netvibes more and more lately.

Netvibes isn’t the only new Web player in the personalized Web page space. A new entry called Pageflakes, run by an ex-Yahoo executive, promises a graphically richer approach than Netvibes that the company claims is easier for novices to customize. It’s at pageflakes.com.

And Yahoo is in the process of revamping My Yahoo to update its look and features. The details of the new design aren’t public yet.

Like My Yahoo, Netvibes is text-heavy and loads quickly. But depending on which module you use, it can have color and graphics.

A menu down the left-hand side of the screen lets you quickly add modules to Netvibes. Popular ones are listed in this menu, and you can browse or search for others by clicking a link called “Get more modules.” You can add feeds — headlines from regular Web sites that support them — by clicking “Add a feed.”

Among the modules you can add to your Netvibes page right from this menu, without navigating to any setup page, are weather forecasts, a notepad, a to-do list and calendar, and modules that perform searches for Web pages, blogs, pictures, videos and podcasts.

There are also email modules that will display your new messages from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL Mail or any regular old email account you configure. Others display content from eBay, MySpace, Fox Sports and more.

To add an unlisted feed, you just navigate to a Web page that offers feeds and copy the Web address into Netvibes’ ”Add a feed” feature. Or you can place a button on the toolbar in the Firefox Web browser that will add a new feed with one click.

On my Netvibes page, I have modules that show the weather, my latest emails, the most popular stories from the Journal’s Web site, and top headlines from various technology and sports Web sites. I have colorful modules displaying photos from Flickr and other photo sites, and modules for video searches.

One nice feature of Netvibes is that you can set up automatically updated searches for terms that may appear in blogs all over the Web. For instance, you could create a module that will constantly show any new blog entries featuring, say, “Microsoft Vista” or “Apple iPhone.”

There are some downsides to Netvibes. Some of its modules seem aimed at techies, not mainstream users, and others are in French, though a version customized for American users is in the works.

But Netvibes — and competitors like Pageflakes — will give My Yahoo a run for its money. They provide an easy way to cut through the clutter of information that confronts us all.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.