tivo

Don't you just love TiVo? You can skip over commercials at lightning fast speeds, and pause and rewind live TV. It's a luxury I don't think I can live without. Even those of you with a regular, cable-company assigned DVR can perform all these great tricks, but I found a faster way to get through those annoying commercials — you can skip over commercials in 30 second increments with a simple hack and your standard remote.

Why would this be necessary? Oh, I don't know, because you can't wait a single second more to finish watching the latest episode of Gossip Girl, and the never-ending pain med and TUMS ads are out of control? Cause sometimes it seems that even though you're forwarding at four times the normal speed, it still seems to take forever to scrub through? Cause we're all impatient? You know what I mean. Check out the simple six-step hack I found on Wisebread to make your commercials disappear a little quicker when you read more

Nothing's worse than finding that your TiVo has deleted one of your shows or hasn't recorded an episode because it has run out of space. I get it; I'm a TV junkie too, and have a few tips for pushing your TiVo's space to the max.

• Record shows in lower quality rather than highest quality. Note: this is only for standard def TVs and series 2 or lower.
• Modify your Season Pass settings to record a low maximum number of episodes, and make sure you select "first run only" for shows so you don't get any reruns (if you don't want them).
• When in doubt, add an external hard drive. Western Digital makes a TiVo expander that will add a ton of hours to your TiVo's hard drive, available in 500 GB or a terabyte.

Owners of TiVos know that the devices do so much more than just record shows. Now, they do even more: today, TiVo launched custom RSS feeds so you can get a ton more content on your TiVo.

If you have a TiVo Series 3, a TiVo HD, or HD XL, you'll be able to add feeds or season passes for hundreds of new web videos, shows, and podcasts.

The custom feeds are especially helpful since TiVo's search listings don't always pull up what you're looking for. Having it directly fed in and downloaded makes things way easier.

Want to see it in action? Check out TiVo's website.

When babe's is in arms, a mother can watch what she wants — from Grey's Anatomy to The Real Housewives, she doesn't have to worry about wee eyes seeing racy scenes or hearing inappropriate language. Then, the child enters the toddler phase and it's time to tame what's being shown on the tube. This can get hairy if the home only has a single television set. Hours once reserved for watching a parent's favorite sitcoms are filled with episodes of Thomas the Train and other cartoons. Or prime viewing time becomes bath, story and bedtime. If moms and dads still want to partake in the water cooler conversations at the office centered around the fate of George and Izzie, they may want to invest in a DVR or TiVo!

• "Interplanetary Internet" will allow astronauts to tweet from outer space — Discover
• Netflix has announced it will stream movies to Sony Bravia TVs. — Business Week
• Best Buy and TiVo are teaming up. — NYT
• Could social networking sites can reveal your social security number? — WSJ
• BlackBerry's U2 commercial: Brought to us by Apple? — Gizmodo
• "Death by Cell Phone" campaign launches in Florida. — Switched
• Make your own charging pocket from a shampoo bottle. — Unplggd

Traveling is fun and all, but I get full-on separation anxiety when I leave my TiVo. I love that little guy, and I totally get guilty feelings of entertainment debt.

Luckily, there's iTiVo, a download for Macs that connects to your specific TiVo and then downloads your shows into iTunes so you can put your recorded programs onto your iPhone or iPod. You'll need to enter your TiVo's IP address and media key (both located in your TiVo menu) in iTiVo, and once you're connected, you just check off which shows you want to send to iTunes.

Guaranteed, the Real Housewives will make your cross-country plane trip far more enjoyable.