May 22, 2000

The Case for Complete Data Accessibility:

We've got a TiVo -- a neat little box, the unholy union of a VCR and a computer.  It lets you do all sorts of keen things, many of which involve the information it downloads every night: record shows by name instead of time (it automatically picked up the fact that the "Law & Order" season finale is two hours, for instance), get a text description of what you're watching, even rate what you like, thumbs-up or thumbs-down.  This last bit is interesting, because after you've used it enough, the machine will take the information about what you enjoy and start grabbing similar shows that match your profile.

But, again, toddlers like to push buttons and Tom has seen fit to find great amusement in randomly pounding on the TiVo's remote, scoring Japanese-language newscasts and country music videos very highly.  This wouldn't be a problem if you could get a summery of everything the machine thinks you've rated, but TiVo's engineers apparently don't have children, so you can't.  And so while the box is able to pick "Life is Beautiful" as something we might enjoy, it also grabs "Sabado Gigante."

Which isn't half-bad, really.

 



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