By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Scheduling your TiVo online is a great feature, but let’s get real. The site is not the best when it comes to finding what to watch online. That’s where CosmoTV comes in. The took a fresh visual approach and really make TV and espeically TiVo pop online. And the tagging feature is very inetersting.

So how does today’s CozmoTV work? Well, the current beta version is pretty simple. If you are familiar with scheduling your TiVo today online through TiVo Central or Yahoo you basically get the same functionality with Cozmo. First off, you enter in your TiVo email address and Cozmo finds your TiVo. You can have more than one TiVo tied to your account and you might, for instance, have one labeled TiVo bedroom and another labeled TiVo living room. It only works with Series 2 TiVos of course.

Once you have your TiVos set up you can then begin browsing for TV to watch. Like TiVo Cozmo will offer a wide variety of categories to browse from: history, documentary, science fiction, etc. and have full search capability. But this is where it gets interesting. In addition to searching by category, you are going to be able to tag television. Using a free form tagging system at Cozmo they are going to have users generate far more meta data which then will be searchable for deeper richer searches where you can find great new broadcast content. Source: Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection

Try It Here

We Say: This is a no-brainer and what a smart compnay does. Takes the burden off TiVo’s shoulders and makes a nice little business out of it.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Hot on the heels of Google’s latest acquisition - the online word processor Writely comes an online spreadsheet called iRows. We Say: Wonder how long before Google snaps this one up and adds to the collection?

Features:
* Manage your data online, access it anywhere, anytime
* Share your data with friends, family or the entire world
* Display your data on any web site, change it here, and all sites change automatically
* Compute, chart, and analyze your data online
Plus
# Read and write Excel/CSV files?
# Draw bar/line/pie 2D/3D charts?
# Allow multiple people to view or edit the same data sheet?
# Display a data sheet on any web page?
# Generate HTML from data sheets?

Try iRows Here

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

The Google strategy (if there actually is one, some may argue) is to offer something for free and serve up a ton of ads. While this has been good for bloggers who use free blogging software and publish their pages with Google ads (like we do here.) This week, Google snapped up the free online word processor, Writely, putting Microsoft Word in the crosshairs.

The free service allows users with a Web browser to compose and save word processing documents online. Its acquisition by Google could raise the competitive stakes with Microsoft Corp., which makes the widely used Office software installed on many personal computers. Source: Marketwatch

We Say: Writely is cool and Open Office is giving the entire Microsoft Office suite a run for its money. (Read the shoot-Out here.) Microsoft has some major shape-shifting to do. Our Question: Would you switch?

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

They killed off Jeeves, the lantern-jawed bulter icon, and today Ask.com is getting even more serious with a new Ajax style mapping app that goes head to head with the latest from Google and Microsoft. The above picture is my office here in San Francisco.

We say: The current version is DOG-SLOW, and it looks like everyone is getting into the mapping business. The biggest crime: What fools they are for not making the little red “you are here” icon a little Jeeves icon instead. Could have made the application instantly more unique and friendly.

Try It Here

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

When was the last time you read something cool and cutting edge about Microsoft. But This little Ajax/Web 2.0 app called Sidestreet, lets you literally drive a car down a street and watch it live from three views - sports car, race car, or pedestrian. The building on the left is an old office I used to work at, and it was wild to suddenly see it coming up on the screen as I “drove” down the street. Verdict: too cool for words.

We Say: Enough talking - Try it Here
Source: Microsoft Windows Live

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Talk about minimal. No logo, no muss or fuss, but it’s free and it’s from Google. Not long ago we covered a free SMS text messaging platform called Teleflip that did the same thing, but it captured your message via an email address which made the exchange feel a little less private.

We Say: Google SMS doesn’t use your email but you need to know the carrier of the recipient to get your message through, so no big technical breakthrough here. Teleflip figures out the carrier for you, which is liberating, but you need to use a Teleflip email address.

–Try Google SMS Here
–More About Teleflip

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Can you see the abuse possibility a mile away? Personally, I think people who save their chats are weak and hate-filled but if that’s the case, here’s a little app that will help them make pictures out of a few badly chosen words. For the rest of us ChatFU is a little afternoon diversion before the weekend. Enjoy!

We Say: The title says it all: ChatFU. But if for non-paranoiacs, this is plain old fun.

Try It Here
Site’s been hosed all day, so bookmark and try again later if you can’t get in

Meanwhile: –Hands-On Preview: The New Nokia N70 Smartphone
–Microsoft Driver Bug Killing Core Duo Notebook Battery Life < --New

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Argghhh….that’s the sound of me screaming as I slap my forehead and wonder why I don’t think of these dumb but smart ideas. But there you have it. Some guy built a site called 1,000Tags.com. You can buy a shared tag for anywhere between $25 to $60 or an exclusive tag for an astounding $285 on the word “gadgets.” (I did not fork over the cash, but maybe that was dumb too, who knows.)

Our Take: Sounds like a money maker but will anyone click?