I’m not impressed with software suggestion services. I think that they’re only capable of identifying genres of interest and fail to recognize subtle differences between members of a particular genre. And because of the lack of transparency in how suggestions are generated, it’s not clear how to rate an instance of failure in an otherwise acceptable category. If a new author has written two books (one good and one bad), then will an honest ranking hide or reveal the third book?

My Tivo problem is a bit worse. Because I just caught Tivo suggestions recording the weather channel. Our cable company also provides round the clock local traffic and weather. And thanks to the weather channel incident, I’m thinking that it would be handy to record it for fast access to the morning traffic. But is it possible to record and watch it every morning without Tivo deciding that we’re slaves to traffic and weather?