Jason Clarke

Looking for a pretty easy and usable web project?

How about using the TiVo website (where owners can view and schedule TiVo recordings online) and combining it with some kind of easily hackable online TV listings site (neither Yahoo!’s nor TVGuide.com’s had any kind of feed/API that I could find).

The result would be a simple site that allowed you to browse (or search, of course) upcoming TV listings. When you found one that a friend would like, the site would allow you to pop in their email address, which would then send your friend a link to the show, along with a link to the relevant listing on TiVo’s subscriber site. Your friend could then single-click to confirm, then schedule the recording on their TiVo.

To extend it a bit, also generate an RSS feed of a particular user’s suggestions, so that their aggregate suggestions to friends created a veritable “recommended” list of shows.

You could call the site “GuidemyTiVo.com” or something similar and include a TiVo-centric blog with it.

If you create it, let me know…I’d use it!

PS: HEY, TIVO! Developers are appreciating your HDK, but where’s the API?!?!

Okay, so some folks are suggesting that summer box office was down because the movies were bad. Bereft of proof until recently, they’re now claiming vindication because box office receipts are now up, in a time when “better” movies are traditionally released (the fall).

So…how to find out what’s really happening? There’s no absolute way to know without either polling every single American or perhaps qualifiying intangible factors such as theater quality, pricing, and etc. (again that may involve signifigantly complicated polling.)

But what about this if you’re looking for a way to see if movie quality really matters: Go to Rotten Tomatoes (or Metacritic) and tally up, then average the reviews of all movies released from May-August 2005. Then do the same for the same time period in 2004 (and perhaps even 2003). Then, compare the resulting years’ aggregate reviews with their box office numbers, and then you might have some fact to go with your conjecture.

My hypothesis? That movie quality and box office receipts are NOT corrollary. But hey, I could be wrong.

Considering the serious amount of blogjuice generated by Jeff Jarvis’ 520-part Dell Hell series is generating in (and out!) of the blogosphere, I thought it only fair to relate two extremely positive customer service experiences I’ve had lately, starting with most recent and going back through earlier this summer. Then, I’ll talk a bit about some ideas that can be gleaned from the experiences.

Positive experience #1: CafePress and being flexible in special circumstances

Date: August, 2005
Company: CafePress
Rating: 5 stars

At nearly the last minute, I decided to order a custom-made BBQ apron for my son’s 2nd birthday party. I jumped on to CafePress, created the apron effortlessly and with much help thanks to their excellent online creation and ordering tools. Prepping my image was equally as easy thanks to their superb templates and image-creating documentation. To get the apron in time, I opted to pay $18 for next day shipping.

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