Comments on: Tivo’s Pause Button http://www.happyinwater.com/life/archives/2005/08/01/tivos-pause-button/ It's quieter down here Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:39:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Josh Richau http://www.happyinwater.com/life/archives/2005/08/01/tivos-pause-button/comment-page-1/#comment-37 Josh Richau Wed, 10 Aug 2005 00:15:03 +0000 http://www.happyinwater.com/life/?p=57#comment-37 I don't know who frisbeememex is but I basically agree. Oddly, I am reminded of bplug saying "visibility and control" but I do think that's it. The idea that you can see what's going on and potentially react to it is so powerful. Workflow, Projects Management, and most the other features are to track the stuff that helps you figure out what is going right and what is going wrong. Then you react. That's powerful. Oh, and I disagree about the pause button. I think Tivo and NetFlix have the same "Pause Button" (to use a term I just said I disagreed with - really we shoudl call it a "killer feature"). A queue of stuff you actually want to watch waiting there for you. That's it. The power of both these services to me is to make the time I spend in front of the TV better. And the queue aspect helps make it so stuff doesn't slip through the cracks. I identify things I want to see and I put them in my tivo queue or my netflix queue then I know I will eventually get to those things I identified as worth seeing. Incidentally, I have found that more and more I also end up putting movies that have been in my netflix queue a long time into the tivo, then after the tivo grabs it off HBO and I watch it, I remove it from my netflix queue. When NetFlix and Tivo combine to make one interface for getting stuff I want to see, that will be sweet. Net-net the synergy makes me feel laser focused. I don’t know who frisbeememex is but I basically agree. Oddly, I am reminded of bplug saying “visibility and control” but I do think that’s it. The idea that you can see what’s going on and potentially react to it is so powerful. Workflow, Projects Management, and most the other features are to track the stuff that helps you figure out what is going right and what is going wrong. Then you react. That’s powerful.

Oh, and I disagree about the pause button. I think Tivo and NetFlix have the same “Pause Button” (to use a term I just said I disagreed with – really we shoudl call it a “killer feature”). A queue of stuff you actually want to watch waiting there for you. That’s it. The power of both these services to me is to make the time I spend in front of the TV better. And the queue aspect helps make it so stuff doesn’t slip through the cracks. I identify things I want to see and I put them in my tivo queue or my netflix queue then I know I will eventually get to those things I identified as worth seeing.

Incidentally, I have found that more and more I also end up putting movies that have been in my netflix queue a long time into the tivo, then after the tivo grabs it off HBO and I watch it, I remove it from my netflix queue. When NetFlix and Tivo combine to make one interface for getting stuff I want to see, that will be sweet.

Net-net the synergy makes me feel laser focused.

]]> By: frisbeememex http://www.happyinwater.com/life/archives/2005/08/01/tivos-pause-button/comment-page-1/#comment-34 frisbeememex Wed, 03 Aug 2005 20:26:43 +0000 http://www.happyinwater.com/life/?p=57#comment-34 I don't think it is our pause button. Unfortunately, I think the term "workflow" is now a commodity in the business community, even though the technology that drives it is not (yet). I'd say it's more like our "hard drive", which is the less sexy part of Tivo that really enables the whole thing and makes the pause button possible. Of course, consumers/execs don't buy because of the hard drive, they buy because of what the hard drive/workflow lets them do. I think our pause button is actually auditability. Along with maximizing monetary output per worker, I think auditability is the big driver of c-level thinking these days. Workflow puts names and timestamps next to decisions on IT processes that used to be free-for-alls, thus lessening the propects of underlings doing sketchy things that execs "knew nothing about, I swear your honor", since it's now all on the record. I don’t think it is our pause button. Unfortunately, I think the term “workflow” is now a commodity in the business community, even though the technology that drives it is not (yet). I’d say it’s more like our “hard drive”, which is the less sexy part of Tivo that really enables the whole thing and makes the pause button possible. Of course, consumers/execs don’t buy because of the hard drive, they buy because of what the hard drive/workflow lets them do. I think our pause button is actually auditability. Along with maximizing monetary output per worker, I think auditability is the big driver of c-level thinking these days. Workflow puts names and timestamps next to decisions on IT processes that used to be free-for-alls, thus lessening the propects of underlings doing sketchy things that execs “knew nothing about, I swear your honor”, since it’s now all on the record.

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