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Buddy list for the boob tube

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
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Rafe Needleman

PHOENIX--eVoke TV is trying to bring community to the television experience. If you're watching a show on your couch, all alone, you can fire up your laptop and see what your buddies are watching. If you click on a show, you'll then join a live chat room about it, and you'll be able to click on dials to indicate if you're enjoying the show. A unique idea, but the demo wasn't pretty to look at, and anyway who watches live TV these days? Isn't everybody Tivo-delayed?

With eVokeTV, you can look at graphs and chats from previous shows to see what's good that you missed. eVokeTV doesn't yet interface directly to TV archive services (like Google Video) or your Tivo, to help you catch shows you missed. I suppose that's the next thing.

Not mentioned was what else the company does with its data. I imagine the networks might find the chats and charts very useful.