TiVo Promotes Anna Brunelle To CFO

Posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by MegaZone

Shortly after the last CFO, Steve Sordello, left last June TiVo appointed Cal Hoagland as interim CFO while they searched for a permanent replacement. It seems that the replacement was under their nose the whole time as they’ve just promoted Anna Brunelle from Vice President of Finance, Controller & Treasurer to Chief Financial Officer. She’s been with TiVo for nearly four years in various finance related capacities. Prior to TiVo she worked for companies such as Broadvision, Adaptec, Roxio and Napster.

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Live Near Alviso, CA? Be A TiVo Usability Tester!

Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2008 by MegaZone

TiVo has posted to Craigslist looking for usability testers.

TiVo is looking for participants to help us make our products as user-friendly as possible!

If you are a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, and are available for an hour during the day, you might be eligible to participate in a usability test at TiVo! We usually pay participants $50 and up per session (depending on the length and the nature of the session).

If interested, please click here to fill out a quick survey. We will contact you if you are a good match for specific test. Please do not contact TiVo directly. Thanks!

The testing takes place at TiVo’s offices in Alviso, CA between 09:00 and 18:00, so you need to be local and able to spend some time at TiVo’s offices during the work day.

Usability testing is distinct from beta or functionality testing, which focus on making sure a product works as designed. Usability testing focuses on the, well, usability of the design itself. They’ll have people with different backgrounds – subscribers and new users, people with different types of jobs, etc – try a new feature and see if it is intuitive, easy to use, etc.

I’d love to know what they’re testing, but I’m sure any testers are under NDA.

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TiVo And Blackberry ‘Future Collaboration’ Revealed?

Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2008 by MegaZone

In an article on RIM’s new ‘Blackberry Lifestyle’ focus, PC World seems to have revealed what the ‘Future Collaboration’ with TiVo will entail. It comes at the end of the article:

Finally: the home television aspect of the “four converged screens” example.

“The trickiest part of the four screens is the sync between home video content and the mobile,” Balsillie said. “I believe the key enabler here is TiVo.”

RIM announced a new partnership with TiVo at CTIA, and the companies plan to release an application that will enable users to users to access television content via mobile device.

“(BlackBerrys) now work with TiVo desktop software that allows you to put (TV) shows on your BlackBerry, so that you can literally have your shows as a cache.”

It sounds like it is simply TiVoToGo supporting the Blackberry for video transfers. Which is what most of the speculation has been.

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An Interesting Statement About TiVo In The UK

Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2008 by MegaZone

The UK’s Times Online has an article today mainly about the recently announced TiVo-Amazon Product Purchase feature. Ho-hum. But the very last sentence caught my notice:

And after a failed debut in 2000-3, TiVo is talking about relaunching in the UK.

There has certainly been speculation about TiVo relaunching in the UK, and I’ve said I personally expect them to do so, but I don’t think TiVo has been talking about doing so. If they have I’d love to know just what they’ve said. I don’t think they’d mentioned any specific plans to relaunch in the UK. I suppose I’ll put this down to the writer being perhaps overzealous in his phrasing, but it sure caught my eye. Maybe he knows something?

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This Weekend’s Amazon Video On Demand Sale

Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 by MegaZone

This weekend Amazon Video On Demand, the service formerly known as Amazon Unbox, isn’t offering their usual style of sale with discount prices. Instead they’re offering a rent one, get one rental free deal on MGM titles. That’s 101 titles to choose from. Be absolutely sure you follow the instructions on the right of the page if you don’t want to end up paying for the second title. The offer expires 9/30/08, and the free title must be claimed by 10/14/08.

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