Software, but in a good way

I had a real epiphany on the way into work Friday morning. Morning Edition was already over, and besides, it's the fall fund drive on NPR this week. I still don't have a good iPod connection in the car I'm driving and I'd already heard the CDs that were loaded. iPhone to the rescue. The Public Radio app has an On Demand feature that lets you select various recent broadcasts, without having remembered to subscribe to the Podcasts. I got to hear Garrison Keillor's most recent News from Lake Wobegon the whole way to work. It was great.


I was further inspired by a post by Seth Godin about RadioLand. He advocates subscribing to the podcast, but again, I can get it on demand over the 3G network without spending the time to sync. The on-demand isn't always remembering where I was for a quick restart, but I'm sure that's coming. The point is the steps keep getting easier. I don't have to bother subscribing and downloading and syncing

TiVo has herself watching Andy Cohen and the midnight "Watch what happens Live" show, usually at 9am. We also watch a lot of Graham Norton on BBC America. He's hilarious, and we wouldn't see him as often without the time shifting.

What's the down side? Well, sometimes you discover something just cruising stations and seeing what is on. But I think we more than make up for that by having social-media based recommendations. Netflix does a good job in letting you share movie thoughts with friends. I saw someone I'm following on Twitter ask for movie recommendations the other day - he got dozens of suggestions within a few minutes.

When Eleanor was three, she assumed that that our phone number would follow us wherever we went; now it does via the iPhone in our pockets. When Google first introduced satellite views on the maps, I heard someone complain that the car they could see in their driveway had been sold a few months back. It's amazing how quickly we get over being impressed at how some things work and what we expect technology to be able to do.

Some of what's available now really does make entertainment more entertaining. What will be available soon that our grandchildren take for granted?