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Media Television

Manipulate Your TV Listings with TiVo+Ajax 48

scrapeYurShoos writes "As posted on PVRBlog: another cool use for Ajax (or whatever you want to call it), this one culls the Now Playing xml file residing on your TiVo and transforms it using xsl into a pretty webpage or a Pie Chart."
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Manipulate Your TV Listings with TiVo+Ajax

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:19PM (#12264837)
    No more dirty movies.
    • Whats next, CLR + iPod ??? This is just getting ridiculous!! How many times do i have to say this... DONT mix cleaning products with electronic equipment!
  • How about a link (Score:5, Informative)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:21PM (#12264847) Journal
    to a pie chart [imagecave.com] that has a key so we know what the colors mean.
  • xslt (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:23PM (#12264855)
    yawn, someone has some time on their hands. Seriously, maybe better scheduling, or better recomendations would be nice. I sometimes miss a show I really like b/c I'm watching something else. That ability to put a type of show on some priority listing that allows you to be notified if one of these types of shows is playing would be cool. But why would you want to see the schedule as a pie chart?
  • by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:26PM (#12264875)
    If nerds could really manipulate TV listings, we'd have new episodes of "Star Trek" every night (including those "T'Pol's Bath" shows aired only after midnight).
  • by The_Rippa ( 181699 ) * on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:26PM (#12264877)
    This is a really cool hack, it's nice that it doesn't require me to get telnet or anything running on my tivo. However, it's not very accurate. For instance, I have 121 episodes of Good Eat's Tivo'd, but it's only reporting 13.
  • Ajax? (Score:2, Troll)

    by ari_j ( 90255 )
    Whatever I want to call it? I can't form an opinion as to what to call it if I have no idea what it does and neither the submitter nor the editor saw fit to give any explanation of it or even a link describing the product/software/technology/meat-byproduct. Can someone give an explanation so that the story makes some small degree of sense to those of us who have lives outside of TiVo hacking?
  • AJAX [cleansweepsupply.com]
  • by CaptainPotato ( 191411 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @06:48PM (#12264978) Homepage
    ..."removes tough dirt and grease to leave surfaces sparkling clean. Grease cutting formula in a lemon fresh scent" [cleansweepsupply.com].

    Yes, I know that Tivo hacking is popular, but leaving behind a lemon scent after cleaning up the dirt and filth that is recorded on a Tivo hard drive is a little weird...even for Slashdot.

  • Here is the link to build a Google Suggest like application using ASP.Net

    You can call it Ajax or whatever. Basically it uses asynchronous calls from the client side using Javascript.

    CLICK HERE [dotnetjunkies.com] and make you boring webpage a bit more live and interesting

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Ajax means that your browser makes requests via javascript to send/receive new content, rather than loading completely new pages. Very handy, and it's nice that there's finally a name for it. (Pain in the ass to unit test though, since there aren't any good javascript libraries for Perl or Ruby [what I use for web testing]).

    So what on earth does it have to do with this little XSL hack? You could do the same thing from your command line, no web at all!

    Let's go easy on those buzzwords okay? They take otherw
    • Good Point (Score:4, Informative)

      by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdougNO@SPAMgeekazon.com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @07:27PM (#12265161) Homepage
      I'm glad somebody pointed this out. "Ajax" is just one guy's acronym ("Asynchronous JavaScript + XML") for a technique he didn't invent that's been around for years, first as the xmlHttpRequest ActiveX control for IE and now supported natively by Mozilla. Basically, instead of switching from one web page to another, you have a single page that sits in the browser accepting user input, getting data from a server and repainting portions of itself, just like a standard application. No need to maintain session state because the user stays on that page for the whole session.

      When I first found out about xmlHttpRequest back around 1998 I got all excited. It seemed like what the web had been waiting for. I was really surprised when Asp.Net returned to more of a refresh-refresh-refresh model with an elaborate state maintenance scheme.

      I find designing pages with xmlHttpRequest intensely fun and more like good old fashioned application programming. Do yourself a favor and try it out.
      • I find designing pages with xmlHttpRequest intensely fun and more like good old fashioned application programming. Do yourself a favor and try it out.

        Oddly enough your comment contradicts the original poster's sentiment. This buzzword is going to be dropped around a lot for months to come because people are pimping the technology (which, while not being new, is finally widespread enough to make use of it... oh and has a handle).

        It's another wave of excitement over a newly discovered technology and buzzw
        • Re:Good Point (Score:3, Informative)

          by serutan ( 259622 )
          Yeah well, this guy's site sort of ticks me off. It's informative, but he presents it way too much like something he invented, which he didn't. Naming something is usually the prerogative of its creator or discoverer, not just some guy who thinks it's cool.

          I guess it would be hard to make a good acronym out of "Somebody else's stuff plus somebody else's other stuff that I drew some diagrams of."
  • naming (Score:2, Informative)

    We decided to call it 'Jasc' at work.

    Javascript API for Server Communication. AJAX seemed to avoid most of the uses of the various technologies the are included in this umbrella.

    For example, the communications do not have to be asynchronous and doesn't actually need to have anything to do with XML.

    Actually the engine isn't even required to be JavaScript, IE uses ActiveX objects and I have seen an example of an implementation using Java in Opera. However for our API, we are wrapping the engine in a JS ob
    • Re:naming (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsborg ( 111459 )
      For example, the communications do not have to be asynchronous and doesn't actually need to have anything to do with XML.

      Uh... the core part of AJAX is the XMLhttpRequest [adaptivepath.com] function, therefore the XML in AJAX. Also the link defines XMLhttpRequest as being asynchronous, I have no idea if that is necessarily the case... but if it were, then the (A)synchronous would make sense.

      From your definition JASC is somewhat different from AJAX, in the implication that you don't need to use Javascript or XMLhttpRequest. I

  • by clmensch ( 92222 ) on Sunday April 17, 2005 @08:33PM (#12265502) Homepage Journal
    The Adaptive Path web consultancy is making good progress in spreading the "ajax" meme. Please do not give them indirect credit for "creating" something that has been around for a while just because they came up with a freakin' buzzword. What is this, the 90's? This just reeks of a marketing strategy...so typical of consultants.

    Here's a good comment from the original slashdot "ajax" discussion that sums it up [slashdot.org]

    • by Lovejoy ( 200794 ) <danlovejoy@@@gmail...com> on Sunday April 17, 2005 @10:07PM (#12266065) Homepage
      One thing that consultants are good at is marketing. One thing that OSS developers are ridiculously bad at is marketing. (Witness OGG VORBIS) The presence of athe Ajax meme on Slashdot is the proof in the pudding, so to speak.

      OSS developers could make a lossless 90% compression codec - and they'd probably call it OMGWTFBBQ!& (pronounced BANGAMP) Then they'd complain because nobody would adopt their brilliant product.

      Geeks don't like to admit it, but marketing is important.
      • "...they'd probably call it OMGWTFBBQ!& (pronounced BANGAMP)"

        Nope, BBQ is pronounced "Eastern North Carolina pig pickin' ".

        • I used to live out east. I was skeptical of Texas Barbecue. But I have come to realize:

          Cows are better than pigs for eating, and Texas barbecue is better than East Coast Barbecue.

          Low country barbecue is great, I like pulled pork just fine, but it's dogfood compared to some succulent Texas Brisket. Maybe with some Rudy's [rudys.com] "sause" and some pickles and onions... or maybe head down to the Salt Lick [saltlickbbq.com]...

          But even pork loin cooked up Texas style is, IMNSHO, better than pulled pork.

          You're making me hungry...

  • This will be much more useful when they get around to putting on more than two or three television programs actually worth watching.
  • WTF do I want my TV listings in a pie chart for? So I can graphically see how homogenized TV has become?

    If 40% of your graph is a single show (as in the blank example linked in the summary) that's just depressing.
  • Please stop using that stupid acronym.

    The term "AJAX" is just a parasitic attempt to profit from a well-known and long-used technology without a common name.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -- The New Mighty Mouse

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