Amazon, Tivo, and the Webocalypse.

The good people over at ars technica are reporting a rather neat (or horribly awful, depending on your view) team-up between Amazon and Tivo. Soon you’ll be able to buy those product placements from your favorite TV shows without even doing an amazon search. I could see this going one of two ways: TiVo customers (and impulse buyers) will love it OR it will be the most annoying piece of integrated technology since Microsoft gave us “clippy” the ever-so-annoying paper clip ‘helper’.

In other, non-related news, the times online is reporting the Webocalypse. Ok, ok, so it’s not really the end of the web, but it’s a start. Basically google has to give up 12 TB of YouTube user data to Viacom. Somehow Viacom thinks this will stop people from posting clips and shows on YouTube. It won’t. It will, however, give them more information than any possible ‘focus group’ could ever get on the viewing habits of young people. I’m assuming I don’t even need to mention the privacy issues this action brings up. Also The European Parliament added a law so each member state’s authorities could determine what software is appropriate for use on the internet. The article itself is a tad alarmist, but there are some very good points. I’m wondering how this might influence those of us across the pond.