My TiVo Nightmare Continues

Ah, TiVo, you have brought my so much happiness for years and so much pain in the past month. After my ridiculous saga of not properly installed CableCARDs, I've been successfully watching and recording HD TV for a couple of weeks now and taking advantage of Netflix Watch Instantly (the main reason I purchased this new TiVo in the first place). Unfortunately, that all came to a screeching halt today when my brand new TiVo's hard drive apparently failed.

So, now, I can't even watch live TV because I have no cable box thanks to the fact that I had to make the switch to a stupid CableCARD and, best of all, I get to go through the whole CableCARD pairing process with Comcast again once my replacement box arrives. Brilliant.

My Tivo HD/Comcast Saga comes to a Triumphant End!

About a week ago, I was in a pit of despair about the fact that I'd had 2 visits from Comcast installers and still my new TiVo HD was not hooked in to my cable. Comcast Customer Support kindly took notice of my blog rant and offered assistance. I was hoping that the "third time's a charm" and I wouldn't need it, but unfortunately that visit didn't go so well either. So, after a call to Comcast Support line, emails and calls with the Support reps who reached out to me via my blog, and a tag team effort by three technicians, everything is right with the world. My TiVo HD is now functioning as more than just a fancy Netflix Streaming receiver.

To be honest, I was hesitant about taking advantage of the Customer Service, especially when they said they would put a note on my upcoming Troubleshooting work order. I've seen that backfire with other companies who essentially mark you as a technological hypochondriac and give you worse service. But, fortunately, that wasn't the case here. Although one tech started to mention another call in which it was actually a faulty TiVo unit and not a problem with Comcast, they were true to their word and stayed for almost 60 minutes to ferret out the mistake made during my last installation attempt and make sure I was receiving all the channels in my package.

Snowstorm 2.0

What's better than a giant snowstorm where either you got to leave work early or you'll spend 5 hours crawling home along the Pike? Knowing every bit of data about that snowstorm thanks to Web 2.0 tools.



http://www.utterli.com/snow1219
http://www.cafepress.com/snowmageddon
http://www.hashtags.org/tag/snow1219
http://www.flickr.com/groups/937409@N24/pool/

Awesome Women: Molly Wood

I love Molly Wood. As an Executive Editor with CNet, I've been watching/listening to her on Buzz out Loud and my CNet TiVoCast for years. And she just rocks. Not only is she a woman who knows and loves all kinds of tech and gadgetry, but she's a woman who is very pretty but a) on TV (well, okay, the internets, but still) because of her brains, not her looks and b) not insanely TV perfect airbrushed like some tech shows and podcasts use to lure in the guy nerds. Also, she seems to strike a good mom-work balance. She tweets about her kid a lot, but not too much and not horrible tone-deaf parent stuff and she very publicly went through pregnancy, maternity leave and return to work. So, yay Molly Wood.

My TiVo HD/Comcast Saga Rant

I love TiVo. I love them irrationally in a way that a smart person like myself really shouldn't love a consumer brand. But, seriously, TiVo is awesome. Not only does it serve a technical function that makes me happy (time shift my television watching, allow me to skip commercials, help Suggest new shows I might like and connect me to content through Amazon), but it does it in a friendly, usable way. Even the remote control was thoroughly thought out.

I've had a TiVo Series 2 since about 2004 and have very little complaints. They even replaced the hardware when it started malfunctioning - twice! This last box had lasted through 3+ years and 3 different apartments and is still going strong. So, even though the USB 1.0 is a bit slow for downloading my shows or transferring to my PC and even though it can't handle HD, so my cable/TV/TiVo setup is needlessly complicated, I really wasn't tempted to upgrade to TiVo HD. That is, until they announced Netflix streaming would not be supported on the Series 2. I've been pretty satisfied with Amazon Video On Demand (formerly Unbox) and I may downgrade my cable package and get my TV shows there next year, but I've been frustrated with the lack of new releases to rent (many are available only for purchase for the first few weeks) and I missed the breadth of Netflix's selection.

So, my shiny new TiVo HD arrived a week ago. I tore open the box, thinking I was less than 30 minutes away from my new media heaven only to find the very first paper on top informed me that TiVo HD does not work with my cable box. Rather, I needed to call my cable provider to come install a CableCARD directly into the TiVo. This was unpleasant news. I have had only disappointing interactions with Comcast and I wanted to set up my TiVo NOW. This was also unexpected news. There was no part in the order process that mentioned the CableCARD requirement. (In TiVo's defense, there was a teeny little link to an Installation video in my Welcome email, but a) I've installed 2 other SD TiVos and b) why would I watch the video before the TiVo arrived anyway?)

So, I called up Comcast and said "I just purchased a TiVo HD and the instructions say I need to get a CableCARD installed, can I make an appointment?" The operator put me on hold for a second and returned and gave me an appointment window on Friday. I worked from home and waited and waited. The installer knocked on my door about 10 minutes before the appointment window ended to tell me he was working in an apartment upstairs and would be down right after. I waited and waited for about 40 more minutes - what the heck were they installing up there?

Finally, Comcast guy returns and he has a giant box in his hand and says "So, we're going to remove your CableCARD and install a DVR?" and I stared at him and said, "No, exactly the opposite. I have a new TiVo DVR, I do not have any CableCARDS and I need one." He looks over the work order, which also lists all my current equipment and, sure enough, "See, there it says 'Remove CableCARD,' but here I can see you don't have any on the account." The tech was very nice and apologetic (even though it wasn't his fault), told me he had no CableCARDS with him, mumbled that they'd done the same thing to him at the last call, and called Comcast to schedule a new appointment for me on Monday.

Now it's Monday and a different technician shows up, with CableCARDS but, perplexingly, also with an Comcast DVR box. Anyhow, he starts the installation process and then gets to an error message. He calls in to wherever to report the error and I can hear pretty much all of both sides and it turns out my tech did a few things in the wrong order. There's lots of back and forth and a TiVo reboot and some other activities, but, essentially, the technician screwed up and has now been at my place for almost an hour so he tells me I'll need to reschedule because he can't manage to install 2 single stream cards so someone will need to come back on a day when a single multi-stream card is available (TiVo says either setup should work fine).

Most of this is really Comcast's fault, but I also found the Installation Guide poster provided by TiVo to be fairly confusing. Two points in particular:

• Step 1 says "Install CableCARD" but then the smaller print says to complete rest of the installation steps 48 hours before the cable guys arrives. So, shouldn't "Install CableCARD" be the last step?
• TiVo provides YPbpr cables, but also supports HDMI, you just have to buy it yourself. The installation instructions only reference the YPbpr cables through the first 8 steps. I actually began to wonder if TiVo needed to go through setup and either download and update or have me manually change a setting before I could use my HDMI cable. But then way down at step 8 or 9, the small print says "Oh yeah, by the way, you could have substituted an HDMI cable way back at Step 4"
  

So, now, I guess because Comcast disabled my box before the failed CARD installation, I have a Comcast HD DVR feeding into my still-working SD TiVO and a nearly useless HD TiVo just hanging out.

On the bright side, I got Netflix streaming hooked up and it's FANTASTIC.

Google actually IS changing the way I think

Periodically, there are arguments about how Google is making us all stupid by "thinking" for us - much the same way that no one knows how to spell anymore thanks to Microsoft Word and the advent of cellphones means no one actually remembers anyone's phone number. It's debatable as to whether this is actually dumbing us down. I suspect it's more like allowing students to use calculators so they can spend more time actually learning algebra and calculus and less time doing tedious multiplications and divisions.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I recently noticed a very fundamental way that Google changed my thinking. When I first downloaded Google Desktop Search some time back, there was some little happy markety type phrase about "Search, don't sort" and referring to some utopian future where I would never have to create a folder hierarchy on my computer again. I'd just dump it all in one place and use tagging and searching to immediately access what I was looking for. I laughed. I had a great system already, and I just kept on extending it, using GDS as more of a dynamic shortcut than a real search tool.

Then I got a new job and a brand new, absolutely blank computer. In the interim, I had also taken to Google Reader and Google Docs, both of which reinforced aspects of that non-hierarchical vision. It's been months and I still have less than a dozen folders (outside the default Pictures, Music, My Scans) and typically do use search as the primary method of finding and accessing documents. So, thanks Google!

See, Google Cares About Your Privacy.

...at least in the most practical and personal sense. Of course, I have often and loudly praised Google for farming and storing all my information, so that I never need to remember another address, flight reservation, or pretty much anything ever again. But some people are not so into it, due to privacy concerns, particularly after numerous actual Identities were ascertained from AOL's massive cache of anonymous data. I occasionally think of that when, say, Googling my latest hypochondriac fear or searching on something embarrassing, but it's a price I am still willing to pay because I get so much benefit.

That said, Google introduced a new feature today that will help with more immediate, logistical privacy concerns - do you wonder if your ex still remembers you use "fluffycakes" as the password for every account you have? Is the "keep me logged in" cookie still set at your old job, giving your replacement hours of entertainment while following your personal drama? Well, now you can find out and log them out remotely (and maybe think about changing that insecure password) with the new Activity Log and Remote Sign Out. Right on, Google.

The Resurrection of TripSense

Progressive Insurance announced today that it would expand its TripSense program - a program by which subscribers install a kind of "black box" data recorder in their car, agree to upload their data to Progressive, and receive discounts for good driving habits. I think that is awesome. I am a big fan of Big Brother technology that uses its data for good, rather than restrictive or penalizing ends.

I participated in a trial of TripSense back when I was a Progressive customer. This was merely a data collection phase and I received an incentive discount for participating, but not based on my actual driving habits. I'm very excited to see it put into action, especially now that Progressive has moved into the MA market.

Long Tail Economics Interpretation

The differing opinions of this TechCrunch article on Long Tail economics and the research to which it refers just shows another example of how context and interpretation are so important to Math. The original article analyzed movie and music purchases from online sources and concluded that most money is still spent on mainstream items, rather than obscure or specialized items and therefore, there is no money to be made in the Long Tail. TC disagrees and uses the hyper customization of Google AdSense as a counter-argument.

But, even more importantly, the statistics themselves don't necessarily bear out the conclusion. All they really tell us is a fairly self-evident fact - that, yes, popular music and moves are, in fact popular. And that there is more money to be made in selling widely popular items, because the volume is much higher.

What would be a more useful set of data would be to compare a Long Tail inclusive vs a Totally Mainstream service, offering the same items. For example, Blockbuster vs Netflix. Because then the availability of obscure and specialized items becomes a competitive differentiator. For example, if I find that Netflix has the Hungarian film Kontroll available while Blockbuster does not, I am more likely to sign up or stay with Netflix and to also use them to rent Indiana Jones or Sex and the City. So, while Netflix may not be making a ton of money thanks to a few dozen people renting Kontroll, they are making money as a result of their Long Tail offerings and coincidentally depriving a competitor of that money.

Bye Bye, Helio

I just got official word as a Helio customer of something that has been rumored for a while - Helio was acquired by Virgin Mobile. Kind of sad, part of why I signed on with Helio was the geek cred, the other part was the awesome dual slider device with a low cost unlimited data plan. But, I've been planning to defect when my contract comes up next year, anyway.

Sure, the device is sexy and my GPS-enabled Google Maps were far more accurate and speedy than a friend's AT&T BlackJack. Sure, I snap and share pictures and video easily and can quickly get my GMail on the go. But I would have to pay extra to synch with my corporate exchange server, it's doc viewing support is so-so, and the built in browser was so very, very bad that they threw their hands up and embraced Opera Mini. And now the same dual slider form is available on lots of phones, along with some even better options for a thumb typer like myself. And the iPhone helped launch a lower cost data plan structure at AT&T.

So, goodbye sexy Ocean, hello conformity with my new iPhone or Windows Mobile SmartPhone.

Creepy Phone Ad

Didn't two college students just get arrested for doing this? (Thanks.. uh I guess, feministing)

My TIVo DRM Rabbit Hole

As I have said before, I love TiVo. It stands on its own as one of the best inventions in media in the past decade or so, and it has become an integral part of my media consumption experience.

However, since the introduction of TiVo To Go, I am often perplexed by the application of DRM technology. In some cases (TiVoCasts) it seems overly strict, in others (TiVo To Go for Portables) it seems like the easiest way to pirate I can think of.

I currently take advantage of the TiVo To Go feature in two ways - 1) I copy content over to my Desktop and external hard drive as just a cheap way of expanding my TiVo storage space. When I have more free time, I transfer them back to TiVo and I'm able to watch the season in order, at my own pace. 2) I convert to a portable format and watch on my Ocean on the T.

But yesterday, I stumbled upon the strangest thing of all. I previously lived in a household with two TiVo boxes under a single account. Now one of those boxes lives in Seattle and one came with me. We transferred account ownership of "Happy TiVo" to my name, to make sure everything was kosher. When that happened, my Media Access Key changed.
[In case you aren't a TiVo To Go User, the Media Access key establishes the trusted relationship between your TiVo and your computer. You can only transfer recordings to a computer with a matching Key. ] I thought that was weird and grudgingly dug through the TiVo menus to get to my new Key and enter it on my Desktop.
That was when I discovered that the two movies and the entire second season of Heroes I had stored on my Desktop were no longer considered valid files and could not be transferred back to the Happy TiVo from whence they came. Strange.
I ended up watching most of the second season of Heroes on my laptop while I was unpacking in my new apartment. By Monday, I had managed to set up all the components of my living room media center and was ready to watch the rest on my big screen.
But when I plugged in the external drive and tried to play them from my Desktop (I have a combo HDTV/giant monitor) Windows Media Player complained that it was an unrecognized format. After appropriate experimentation, I determined that the Media Access Key is not only required to transfer the recordings, but also to play them back! I had just lucked out in that I had not bothered to update the Key on my laptop, so it still matched the old recordings, allowing them to be played back there.

So, my situation is pretty unusual and it has a happy ending, but I think it's a great illustration of how convoluted things get when you try to apply fairly non-subtle forms of DRM to content. After all, I was actually using all the same hardware from start to finish, yet by the end, it was only by fluke that I had not been locked out of content I had every right to access.

A Tale of Two Booths

Coming from a background in Post-Production, I am used to doing two main exhibitions each year - NAB in Las Vegas and IBC in Amsterdam. In a given year, I would also participate in one or more smaller or regional exhibitions. These were grueling tradeshows, consisting of 4-5 9-hour days filled with nonstop talking, constantly on my feet. The audience was there to consume. Sure, they wanted to be educated on which tool to buy, but they wanted to buy a specific tool for a specific need - say a color corrector panel or a film restoration system.

Now that I work for an intranet portal company, I've been to a few smallish events, culminating in a booth at Enterprise 2.0. It was like falling through the looking glass. The Demo Pavilion was only open for two short sessions on two of the conference days. And most attendees were interested in consuming ideas, not products. People were there to be educated on concepts and technologies - What is microblogging? How can Wikis help my company? - not necessarily specific products.

All in all, very interesting. Though I don't think there's any judgment or lesson to be drawn, I find the comparison quite interesting.

Them's Fightin Words, Zoho

A couple of weeks ago, I read that online productivity suite Zoho now integrated with your Google ID. I thought that was pretty odd, since most people - like me - with a Google ID would probably already be using Google Docs. But as I read on, I saw this quote from Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna

One thing we noticed is, when users try both Zoho and Google, more than 70% of them prefer Zoho. It made sense for us to do this. We want more users to try our apps.

So, it seemed like a good time to try Zoho. I had been initially annoyed by the dearth of features on Google Docs when I started with them over a year ago. But when I came back to good old Google about 6 months later, I was pretty pleased. However, as with all shiny new toys, eventually the love started to fade a bit and I began to see the flaws. Most annoying was the horrific tables support. When I tried to nest tables, everything just went to hell. And importing DOC and DOCX files with tables in them always yielded unexpected results.

So I gave Zoho a go. I immediately saw that there were more buttons in the GUI, while Google hides all but the most common features behind menus. Unfortunately, two really important buttons appear to be missing (or very well hidden in the clutter) - Paste as Plain Text and Remove All Formatting. At first, I dismissed this as a little thing, but it has become more and more frustrating over the past two weeks.
However, two great features far outshone this minor glitch. First is Templates. The second is Tables support. Google Docs has really abysmal support for nested tables. I know I mentioned that about a paragraph ago, but it really bugs me.
What ultimately keeps me from making the switch is the unfathomable fact that Zoho does not auto-save as I work. Wha? That's just not right. Google Docs is constantly saving new versions that I can quickly revert to if I make a mistake. Why wouldn't Zoho do this, too?

For now, I am sticking with both - using the appropriate tool at the appropriate time. Zoho is good, but not so good that I am willing to completely jump ship.

PS I aspire to have the job title "evangelist" one of these days.

The Dangers of Blunt Force

If you are interested in the complex issues of ownership, IP rights and enforcement mechanisms, this detailed saga about the recent DDoS attack at Rev3 is a gripping read.

My hope is that incidents like this will prove to be so obviously ludicrous (and, quite frankly, illegal) that it will act as a watershed moment, like the Sony Rootkit did for music, and force visual media producers to wake up and start addressing their "problem" as an opportunity.

Another Tool for My External Extended Brain

Now, I used the singular Tool, but there are actually two tools - Delicious Library and Media Man. But they are really the same tool, nearly identical. Some have argued that Media Man is a total ripoff of Delicious Library, but, that's what happens when you refuse to build your tool on Windows - someone else will do it instead.

Both tools catalog your media library - books, music, movies, etc and cross-reference with Amazon for full details. Especially cool is using your webcam as a barcode scanner to avoid the tedium of data entry. Sadly, they don't quite reach my dream of being able to index and search actual content, but I suspect that's a pipe dream for now, anyway, given the IP dustup over Google Books. So, realistically speaking, pretty awesome.

Now if only it would integrate with my Evernote... :-)

Is Evite a Necessary Evil?

I'm starting to think there will never be an evite killer. Yeah, Evite is ugly - surpassed only by most MySpace pages, it's bloated, you have to become a member to use it and you always get stuck looking at those stupid Red Envelope ads after you reply. But is there anything better out there? So far, I've been stymied by the sparseness of mobaganda and my friends still hate me for the Renkoo spam they get from my one invitation on that service years ago. And a perusal of the other evite alternatives just appears to be lipstick on a pig.

My Dream Media Configuration is Nigh

Not too long ago, I told some friends that I envisioned television of the future as being more directly consumer-driven. Networks & cable would continue on for two reasons, but would not be the main viewing medium. The first reason to keep old-school television going is that most people don't like change. I know many people who have purchased TiVos for their parents, only to watch them use the minimal feature set that would be mostly analogous to a VCR. The second reason for TV to stick around in its current form is to provide a good combination of randomness and authority. There's a lot of content already out on YouTube, Veoh, FunnyOrDie, iTunes and so on, but a lot of it is BAD. Or it's great, but it's not really a series with things like long term plotting or character development. So I want some kind of gating function, some source that says "Yeah, we thought this was good enough to throw our money and our name behind."

But I don't want to watch TV on cable anymore. Even lovely, beautify digital HD cable. I want to buy my shows directly. It eliminates commercials, it eliminates (or augments) inaccurate Nielsen ratings (well, once networks take downloading seriously), and it should allow for the same long-tail phenomenon seen on Netflix to give indie and critical hits a fighting chance of surviving.

Now, you may be saying "iTunes does that, already, silly" and this is true, but I am a) just generally opposed to iTunes for their stupid DRM and b) I want to veg on my couch while I watch TV, not sit at my desk. The answer to my prayers was inside my TiVo for a long time now - hello, Amazon Unbox!

I had only been using Unbox on my TiVo for the freebies and extras, since I was already paying Comcast to bring me TV and Netflix to bring me movies. But a series of events led me to use Unbox to watch the first season of "Heroes" and the last few episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" and I am sold. Even SD shows look great. It does feel weird to go through the fade out/fade in with no commercials (hey, maybe it's the beginning of modernist abstract TV!) and I do miss the approximately 10% of commercials that are actually good. But, hey, I can always go to my Mom's house for that.

Do I Want Evernote?

I often tell people I am waiting for Google Brain to come to the market. I want all my objects RFID-tagged so I can find them; I want to be able to scan the ISBN of every book I read and make it full-text searchable and tagged so I can go back and find that great point that was made... uh... somewhere while I was reading on the T on Tuesday; and well, I'd just like the real world to be as helpful and responsive as my digital life is.

One of only two products I have ever heard of coming close to this is Evernote. The other is some project by a guy at Microsoft, and since Google Brain does not yet exist, I can't seem to track the info down. But the last time I looked at Evernote, I wasn't sure it was what I was looking for (well, okay, nothing that exists is really what I am looking for). I think it was, in part, because I had yet to discover how comfortable I was relying on GPS to tell me the nearest Dunkin Donuts or letting Google Maps be my lazy addressbook. I was reminded of Evernote's existence again recently by Salon, but the review didn't really inspire technolust. I mean, woo hoo, pictures of wine lables, so?

And then, today, I needed Evernote. At work, I realized I needed to call in a perscription refill, but did not have the Rx number is on the label at my home. If only I had taken a snap of this with Evernote when I first got the perscription, I'd be all set now. Serendipidously, Marc Hustvedt posted a review of the new version of Evernote today, stamping it "up to snuff."

Of course, my specific example raises the obvious concern with any service of this nature - privacy. After all, what's more personal than a medication? It did give me pause, but I have generally surrendered willingly into the All Your Data Are Belong to Google world, as long as I see some ROI.

My Twitter Resistance.. and why it may be at an end

Ever since attending the Boston KM Forum's event KM 2.0: Real of Hype? I've been thinking quite a bit about my resistance to certain new technologies, specifically Twitter. Most of the attendees whose background was more in modern, applied KM than old-school theoretical praised Twitter over and over. But it still wasn't enough to convince me.

First, I don't have a critical mass of friends on Twitter. I think I have one. Meanwhile, most of my friends and acquaintances are on Facebook, so I can use that (for now) as my passive "keeping in touch" mechanism.

Second, I'm not sure who I would opt to follow and I think it would be a not-so-small blow to my ego that there's no real reason for anyone to follow me professionally. Clearly, I am already intellectually aware of this information, but the tangible evidence is just not something I want to sign up for at this point.

But then I read this great post - Claim Your Brand Name Or Suffer (linked via KM Forum attendee Doug Cornelius' blog) - and it has given me plenty of motivation. After all, I've already ceded the top billion or so Google search results for my name to Middle East expert Amy Hawthorne. Why let her have my Twitter presence (*gasp* maybe she already does!)?

And I'm sure after about a week, I'll wonder why I ever thought Twitter wouldn't be useful. After all, I only jumped ship from Yahoo to GMail because I got in during the first few waves and secured my good name. Now, I have relegated Yahoo to my "spam account" and curse its clunkiness and non-Googleness every time I log in to clean it up.