How about tivo: links?
Here’s what I just did. I read a news article online about John Stewart on 60 Minutes this upcoming Sunday. I happen to be watching TV, so I went to the Tivo live TV guide, hit channel down a bunch of times to get to Sunday night, and hit record to Tivo 60 minutes at 7:00 on Sunday night. It was pretty easy, but it could be better.
There are mailto: links, and aim: links, and lots of other random custom types of links. And you can do things like change the default mailto: action so that it opens your Gmail. So here’s what should be on the CBS page right next to the “Email this story” and “Printable version” links — a “Tivo this program” link. Now that the Tivo Home Media features are free, the Tivo website can send recording instructions to my Tivo from the net (well, not my Tivo, because mine’s really old, but my parents’ Tivo). You’d need a “tivo:” type of link, and it should either just do the whole process to record something on my Tivo (one click!), or at least take me to the page on the Tivo website that lets me record a program and have the form filled out. Who wants to write a program to do that with me? And then we need to convince websites to add a tivo: link whenever they mention a specific TV show. Bloggers first, then zap2it, major networks, tvguide…
