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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul



Thursday, August 26, 2004

Saving TiVo

Business 2.0 (registration required): "Obituaries for the nearly departed TiVo Inc. (TIVO) have been written up for months now, all ready to go when the sad day comes. They're poignant, these eulogies. There's the part about how feisty little TiVo created a beloved and revolutionary product -- the digital video recorder -- on a shoestring. The word TiVo, like Google and Xerox (XRX) and only a handful of other product names, went on to be used to describe what the gadget does -- in this case, learning what you like to watch, recording similar stuff for later viewing, and allowing you to pause or otherwise time-shift live action. TiVo promised to transform television, advertising -- hell, the culture itself, not least by sparing humanity from having to sit through commercials. Alas, it burned through $567 million between 1999 and mid-2004, and was run down by huge and ruthless competitors that mimicked its technology. But take heart, the eulogists conclude: TiVo will always be with us -- as a verb, if not a company. There's at least one problem with that scenario, however. His name is Arthur van Hoff. He's an obscure but revered high priest of software coding. And he thinks he's devised a way to pull TiVo back from death's door."
[ Posted at 3:03 PM | Permalink ]

 



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