There's a historical reason in tech for products with camel case, like QuickTime or WordPerfect, as Crain, channeling New Scientist lays out: Often, spaces had to be dropped in programming languages, so capital letters were used in compound words to make them easier to read. That's fine, but in today's world, I agree very much with this sentiment:

In my considered opinion, the juxtaposition of majuscule and minuscule in a personal name may be safely indulged as a prerogative of the human being, with all his individual strangeness, but to extend the same license to the fruits, literal and figurative, of human labor is another matter.

Now, we have brands and products like TiVo, NVIDIA*, iEverythingapplemakes, BlackBerry, eXpo, eBook, eMachines, iRiver (it's iriver, oops), PlayStation and way, way more that insist on being special through forcing you to stretch your pinky finger over to the shift key at odd intervals, following their rhythm, dancing to their tune. It's a form of control.

Historically, Crain says, word spacing didn't really become standard for the modern world until the 13th century, after disappearing for a millennium. So camel case, he says, "is regressive — in fact medieval. It harks back to an era when reading was effortful, public and loud - like a visit to a contemporary shopping mall." Yep, that's the point. [NYT]

*I hate all caps, too, unless it's an acronym.

The typical TiVo user is a person who just wants their TV recordings to work, regardless of the monthly fee. They may or may not be tech savvy, but chances are TiVo was their first DVR—since we've found, anecdotally, people gravitate back to the first DVR interface they use. So why is their marketshare down to 2004 levels? The answer is simple: cheap DVRs from providers are eating TiVo from the low end, and everyone else can now use Windows 7 and a tuner to act as a DVR just fine.

Cheap DVRs from Comcast, or Time Warner or your satellite provider have gotten good—or rather, less shitty—enough to make them actually viable options for home recording. Even I couldn't turn down only paying an extra $5 per month to have a recorder that works well enough to watch stuff with, even if you don't have show recommendations, and fast forwarding barely functions well enough to stop where you want. But it's $5. $5. Five. Dollars. And that's without having to pay upfront for the box. You can rent three of these for the price of one TiVo subscription.

As for the big reason why you don't need a TiVo anymore, in the future, you can thank Microsoft and Windows 7. Just take a look at that Windows 7 PC you have. Yeah, the one in your office. That can be your DVR. CableLabs finally took off their ridiculous OEM restriction on who can install CableCARD tuners—the device that actually takes a digital cable signal and turns it into something your computer can understand and record—so you can go and get one of these yourself for about $200. So for $200, with no future fees except for your normal cable bill, you can have yourself a home DVR that's arguably as good as TiVo. And, much easier to expand and augment, both storage and functionality-wise, than a set top box.

And if you don't want a computer in your living room (you need that thing in your office anyway), all you have to do is get an Xbox 360 and extend it. Multiple Xboxes mean streaming to multiple rooms, something that's not even possible on a TiVo.

Of course there's going to be a core group of TiVo users who really enjoy TiVo functionality, really appreciate their interface and can't imagine using something else. But is that enough to sustain a business when so many other options are cheaper and just as good? The numbers say no.

This from TiVo's SEC filing for last quarter, which shows the company losing 314,000 subscribers in the period, capping more than year an a half of fairly steady decline. They lay claim to just 8% of the roughly 38m active DVRs in the US right now. This is not great.

The TiVo name is so common that most people don't have the sense of the turmoil behind it, but it's very, very real. TiVo's boxes, even if they are some of the best DVRs around, have started to feel stale in the past year, and for most people, cable-co-supplied boxes are simply Good Enough. Basically, they need something exciting, to customers and to TV providers, and they need it soon—that cascading cash river from Dish isn't going to flow forever. [TV By The Numbers via Crunchgear]

Google's game here is obvious: by analyzing this anonymized sea of TiVo viewer data, they can help customers target their ads more accurately. Ad buyers also win, because they have a better sense of exactly how many people are actually seeing their ads. Guess who doesn't like this plan!:

Now, with TiVo's data, collected from millions of digital video recorders across the country, Google can tell exactly which of those commercials are being bypassed. If all the commercials are being skipped, the channel gets no money. It's easy to see why TV executives get heartburn over this.

Between my cable box's DVR function and my computer, I rarely watch live TV. And when I do, I usually end up flipping around during commercials. I know I'm not alone, and I know this is causing problems for networks, who are pushing more and more of their advertising into show, instead of between them.

Google, which already licenses similar data from Dish Network, is giving us a preview of how this kind of thing will work for everyone in the future—soon, data detailing what people are and aren't watching will be too present, too obvious to ignore, and networks will have to acknowledge that hey, nobody is watching ads anymore. In the long term this will make advertising more effective and efficient, but it could also kneecap TV ad sales as a whole. Or not! Says Google:

Our system makes it easy for people to buy TV ads. We're lowering the barriers to entry, which has the effect of growing the market.

Somehow I imagine "lowering the barriers for entry" isn't on the top of NBC's to-do list right now. Google will kill all. [LAT]

Crave posted a pretty good $70 price, a far cry from the $199 retail and $132 it runs on amazon. But a quick Froogle search turned up the same package at Fry's for $60. Considering you're getting the exact same software standalone TiVo boxes use and a USB TV tuner that can decode ATSC and QAM, that ain't a bad deal at all.

Keep in mind you will have to pay $100 bucks a year for TiVo service, the one thing about TiVo that I never liked.

Also, the tuner can only accept clear QAM, ATSC and NTSC signals, so no premium cable. Hopefully now that Windows 7 supports CableCARD so well, you'll be able to expand your channel selection soon. [Fry's, Crave]

TiVo's approach here is direct and clear: This is a basic scheduling app, for searching for, reading about, and marking content for recording, in situations when you can't get to a computer—though a good mobile app can keep a lot of people away of TiVo's TV interface for good. It'll work with Series2 or Series3 standalone TiVos, and BlackBerrys running OS 4.2.0 or later, and should be available in App World starting this morning. [TiVo]

What's even funnier was that Dish had ads saying that its DVR service was "better than TiVo", an incredibly ballsy move when a court ruled that you've stolen technology from the party you're claiming to be better than. [Bloomberg]

This means that TiVo HD and TiVO HD XL owners will be able to use i.TV as a full remote control, replacing those serviceable but ultimately kind of lame standalone apps that they'd been stuck with up until now. While the prospect of a true all-in-one remote app is pretty exciting—though it's firmly just a prospect, since i.TV is simply offering a framework, not developing remotes themselves—the app has a few other new features going for it, including push notifications to remind you when flagged programs are coming on, and iTunes integration, which lets you initiate iTunes purchases from within i.TV's schedule interface.

Prior versions were free, and this one should be too, as soon as Apple lets it through the gates, which is expected to happen within a few days, or, you know, not. For now, enjoy a teasey video: [i.TV via BGR]

But first, the extender: The Moxi Mate is a small $399 ($199 for now, if purchased in a bundle or by an existing Moxi HD customer) satellite box that plays back recordings from your Moxi HD from afar, over your home network. It's not all that feature-rich—no wi-fi built in, no scheduling of recordings, no support for more than one Moxi Mate at a time—but if your goal is to stream your Moxi library around the house, at least you now have a way to do it.

About that library. Although the hardware on the main box hasn't changed, Moxi's software update, which should push out tonight, gives your box the gumption it needs to take onboard much larger drives via the e-SATA port, as well as a new optional browsing interface called Grid Guide, which gives users a more familiar, cable-guide-like experience than Moxi's novel—but good—regular UI. Another, smaller update is Switched Digital Video support by way of an adapter, if your cable company's into that kind of thing.

At any rate, the core offering may have grown an extender, but it hasn't really changed. The whole system has the same strengths—a strong interface, good performance, and clear superiority over cableco boxes—as well as the same weaknesses—dependency on PlayOn for online streaming, the learning curve— so unless Moxi Mate tips the scales for you, or you've got $1000+ to drop on storage to build an absurdly large video bank, your current impressions probably still stand. [Moxi]

TiVo will make a custom box for the retailer, but don't get too excited about that: it sounds like a rebranding effort, meaning that your Best Buy TiVo will be quite a bit like your TiVo TiVo, except yellower. Better news is that Best Buy is reported to be pushing for Insignia—for which they are the exclusive retailer—to include TiVo software, which would be fantastic. For now though, this is just playground NYT hearsay official announcement is expected shortly. [NYT]

Because Dish was ordered to pay royalties to TiVo for violating their patent on technology that allows viewers to record and play back video at the same time, TiVo now has major leverage that all but forces other cable providers to do business. Naturally TWC, the nation's second largest cable provider, is top on their target list—and they are said to be in the midst of discussions. Because getting around the patent is no easy task, it seems likely that TiVo will see its market share grow by leaps and bounds in the years to come. [Bloomberg / Image via Jake Ludington]

The court has since issued a stay on the order, pending EchoStar and Dish's appeal. In other words, your DVRs are fine, at least until this legal battle—presumably as ridiculously drawn out as the last one—is over. [Reuters]

The loss isn't actually as severe as they expected, and TiVo execs are playing it down. Thing is, the company isn't suffering because of some obscure recession-related credit problem or internal restructuring—they're actually seeing subscriptions decline. Not coincidentally, they expect next quarter to be worse. [CNET]

Am I pissed off? Yes, because Seagate just sent over this beautiful, whisper-quiet 1TB eSATA drive that's compatible with quite a few cable-co DVRs. Well, I don't want to test it with my crappy Motorola DVR, I want to test it with my TiVo HD, which, with a tiny built-in 160GB drive, is in dire need of extra space. I guess you could say I'm mad because I love TiVo. Oh TiVo, why did you have to go and complicate our beautiful relationship?

All I get on screen is a message saying the drive is "unsupported," despite it being a relatively generic eSATA configuration designed for CE products, currently supported by DVRs from Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, DirecTV and Dish, and even runs, though technically unsupported, on the original TiVo Series3. I followed up and TiVo said this:

Western Digital has gone through our testing and certification process. We know it will work 100% of the time, something we cannot guarantee with other expanders.

The irony there is that when I did have a WD drive on a TiVo about a year ago, it actually malfunctioned once and I had to reset it, losing TV shows in the process. I pressed TiVo for a list of other companies it was testing. Turns out, there isn't one. This is all I could get:

The class of Western Digital drive in the DVR expander is designed specifically for 24/7 use in a CE device. It is optimized for constant read/write cycles and is designed to last much longer when used in a DVR application. Un-optimized or unknown drives add risk to system stability and would reduce expected lifetime.

I have to say, this logic only works when we're talking about drives intended for something other than DVRs, or drives from companies that do not have a reputation as a great hard drive maker, as Seagate does. The question is, why did TiVo stop testing CE eSATA drives after falling in love with WD's? I can only think of two reasons, sheer laziness or cash money dolla dolla bills, and of course, I'm not going to get a confirmation of either.

I have absolutely nothing against WD (even though that one did fail in my TiVo back in 2008). I like a lot of their products. I just can't believe that there's any merit to this exclusive partnership. When I buy an electronic toothbrush from Braun or Philips, am I restricted to using a particular kind of toothpaste? No. The understanding is that I will use toothpaste, but not what kind. Ditto here. There's an eSATA port, so the understanding is that I will use it. But, within reason, the brand choice should be up to me.

I will continue talking to both companies about this issue, because I feel strongly that the ban on Seagate drives be lifted here, especially for a totally legitimate means of adding extremely necessary additional storage. All this does is promote hackery. Speaking of which, anybody got any good tips for hacking a Seagate DVR expander onto my otherwise awesome TiVo HD? [Seagate Product Page]

TiVo
For a long while, TiVo was the undisputed king of TV recording. Other DVRs have come a long way in the last ten years, but they're all late to the party, and still playing catchup: The TiVo name is now permanently tattooed into the public's consciousness, synonymous with recording shows and backed up by still-impressive hardware.

But the fact that TiVo has attained a near-Kleenex level of brand recognition in the US doesn't mean a thing overseas. As of writing, the service is only available in a few other places—Canada, the UK, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia—where it has been met with limited enthusiasm. While the US, with its huge, old, fragmented cable industry, offers a fantastic opportunity for a meta-service like TiVo, smaller countries with one or two dominant pay-TV providers—which have their own increasingly formidable DVR alternatives—are tougher nuts to crack.

The Kindle
This choice might seem odd—or at least inconsequential—on account of the steady stream of new e-reader hardware available all over the world, but Kindle exclusivity is actually a technological feather in America's cap. Why? Because the source of the Kindle's importance isn't its hardware, but its connectivity and the service it's tied to.

Anyone can slap a case around a panel of E-Ink and add an off-the-shelf Linux OS—and plenty of companies have. But being linked wirelessly to a massive library of legal downloads, bestselling books, magazines and newspapers, is what will make a reader great. For now, the only mainstream reader that can claim such a feature is the Kindle, and the only country that can claim the Kindle is the US. Not that it can't go global—similar services for music and TV, like the iTunes store, have found ways to deal with tricky licensing and gone global—it's just that it probably won't for a while.

Push-to-Talk
Without a doubt, this is the technology that feels the most American on this list. Intended primarily for the workplace, push-to-talk technology has tragically seeped into the mainstream, subjecting millions of innocent mall shoppers to that incessant, inane chirping, and the shouting at the handset that accompanies it. Who hasn't been inadvertently pulled into the middle of a heated, long-distance argument about novelty Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches flavors while waiting in line at Walmart? Well, pretty much anyone who doesn't live in America—and not just because they don't have Jimmy Dean, or Walmart.

As it turns out, PTT's Amerophilia can be explained by little more than poor marketing. According to ABI Research:

In other world regions MNOs have failed to market PTT successfully to business users or have opted to market to consumers, and it just hasn't taken off.

Nextel, which was inherently crippled by a proprietary network technology that wasn't built out in any other country but the US, found success with PTT by pitching handsets to businesses as turbocharged Walkie-Talkies, not by marketing them directly to consumers, most of whom would have trouble imagining a more efficient way to make themselves look like brash assholes.

Video On Demand
iTunes has gone worldwide and services like BBC's iPlayer have brought the Hulu model overseas, but America still has the best VOD situation in the world, bar none. The problem is simple: Even countries with a healthy entertainment industry import a tremendous amount of American TV, often well after it was originally broadcast. This regional disparity seems kinda stupid in the age of the internet and VOD, but it's just as severe as it ever was.

European or Asian viewers have to wait for painful weeks or months for a domestic channel to license, schedule and dub international American hits like Lost or Mad Men, and hope, assuming their stations have a VOD service, that the show eventually finds its way online. As an ad-supported service and a product owned by the networks who profit from the above arrangement, Hulu's reluctance to stream content to countries is understandable, but the despair is deeper than that: You can't even pay for TV if you want to. People without American billing addresses are barred from VOD services like Amazon's Unbox, and will find their iTunes video selections sorely lacking.

Satellite Radio
Since is smells distinctly like a waning technology, satellite radio might not do much to stir your techno-patriotism, but goddernit, it's ours. The US has far more satellite radio subscribers than the rest of the world combined, all through the remains of Sirius and XM, now merged under the lazy moniker of "Sirius XM". Why? We have lots (and lots) of cars.

Satellite radio actually has roots as a proudly international service—after all, it is broadcast from frickin' space—having been developed in part by a humanitarian-initiative company called 1Worldspace, which was established to broadcast news and safety information to parts of the globe without reliable terrestrial radio infrastructure. They still exist today, but they broadcast to fewer than 200,000 subscribers, mostly in India and parts of Africa. Satrad's American success can be solely credited to our auto manufacturers, who eagerly installed satellite units in new cars for years, healthily boosting subscription numbers (but not necessarily car sales). With no comparably pervasive car culture to take advantage of anywhere else in the world, satellite radio is a tough sell.