Monday, November 8, 2004

TiVo has permalinks

Ernie and Ernest note that TiVo now has permalinks, allowing me to link directly to a show. TiVo owners can click those permalinks through to TiVo Central Online, the “home base” for Internet-based programming of your TiVo recorder.



Very cool. How’s it work? Let’s say that you read Dana Stevens’ article at Slate today about Andrew Sullivan’s appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night, and Andrew’s curious behavior. If, like me, you missed it, you might want to tell TiVo to record the next episode. Now you can — just click here and you’re all set.



Things are getting very interesting. TV shows have permalinks (courtesy of TiVo). Songs have permalinks (courtesy of iTunes). Books have permalinks (courtesy of Amazon.com). You know what I really want? Backlinks for all those permalinks. This is like Technorati on steroids: tell me all the people out there who are talking about Andrew Sullivan rubbing himself on Maher’s show; show me all the sites that reference the latest REM album; let me read my own reviews of Jon Stewart’s America: Democracy Inaction.



Do you see the beauty here? Links, as Google so presciently figured out, say a lot about both the destination and the point of origin. Sites that link to the same destination may very well be related. There’s less and less need for sites like Amazon.com to centralize the reviews; the content can be pushed out, where Google, Technorati and other services can contextualize the links and yield some fascinating information.



Think of it! Next to the “Link to this” button at TiVo Central Online, visitors could click a “Conversations” link and see all the blogs and news sites that have linked through to the episode…

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