Couchville 
A new TV listing service came online this week called Couchville; it’s a pretty Ajaxy app, easy to set up, I’d use it if it were as functional as Titan TV or the old Yahoo TV, but they play the same game that Yahoo does, fetching stuff as you scroll so it isn’t fast enough for your eye to pan over the listings, and in Couchville (unlike the new Yahoo TV) you don’t even get a vertical scrollbar.
Net result, it’s not as fast as Titan, and speed wins over pretty in this app. It’s not about esthetics if that gets in the way of utility, as it does in Couchville.
Today’s links
NY Times on future-safing non-digital archives.
Ross Mayfield on explosive Twitter adoption.
One of my favorite recent discoveries is Overlawyered, a weblog that chronicles the excesses of lawyers.
Mark Glaser on programmers at newspapers.
Flickr OPML reading lists
From Marie Carnes, via email, a curious clue that Flickr now provides a list of feeds for groups you’re subscribed to in OPML.
She sent this link:
http://www.flickr.com/recent.gne
And sure enough, there’s a link, in the right margin, to an OPML file.
I clicked the link, it opened in my outliner, and it has feeds linked into each of the nodes. However, the feeds aren’t familiar to me, and don’t point to anything that Flickr could find.
A puzzle! Anyone know what’s going on??
Programming at newspapers
If I were younger, I’d jump at this job at the Washington Post.
I’m a programmer by necessity, when I was young, the software I wanted didn’t exist, people didn’t even understand what I was talking about, so if I wanted it, I had to become a programmer, otherwise (I felt) I’d never see it.
All the software I wanted when I was younger was about writing and reading news, it turns out, although I doubt if I could have explained this then.
So if you’re a tech hottie who reads this blog and says Yeah! out loud to what you read here, I’d say it’s a good bet you’d fit in as a programmer in a news room, so go for it.
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Marjolein Hoekstra on March 10, 2007 at 1:20 pm
With the hints from your blog post I was to view the OPML file from the Flickr Group feeds attached to my own Flickr account: http://grazr.com/gzpanel.html?theme=gloss_black&view=3p&addbar=on&file=http://www.flickr.com/recent_opml.gne?nsid=41894159191@N01&c=181518
Groups are dull and stale, I know, but that’s beside the point for the moment.
Imagine they’d turn on OPML auto-discovery next.
Posted by Marjolein Hoekstra on March 10, 2007 at 3:30 pm
See this, the Flickr OPML service has been around for about three years already. I should have checked the facts before I wrote the previous comment. Nobody on the Flickr forums seemed to know how to handle them though, so a bit of repeated attention for this seems justified.
More here: http://www.flickr.com/search/forums/?q=opml
Posted by robitaille on March 10, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Couchville wins hand down over TitanTV in this household for one single reason: TitanTV is US only, while Couchville also works for Canadian locations. Since my TV is located in Canada that automatically forces my decision when choosing between the two services.
Posted by Anton2000 on March 11, 2007 at 8:38 am
Hello Dave, would’nt be a Star Trek Captain’s Chair gif more appropriate for Couchville?
Posted by Klark on March 11, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Dave, here’s an idea.
Why don’t you sponsor a contest? Contestants would design the “perfect” TV listings web site. The winner would be chosen by scripting.com readers. You could host the service. There could be ads on the service. The winner would get a share of the revenue.
Posted by David Mercer on March 12, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Ooooohhhh, thank you sooooo much for pointing out TitanTV, our house had been stuck in Yahoo!TV Beta Hell….that progressive loading while you scroll drives my wife and I crazy, her even more than I, to the point that she won’t check what’s on ahead of time, and just channel surfs.
Which drives me insane, as I like to watch an entire program, not snippets.
Thanks again for the pointer!