What I'm watching
By Mark Czerniec
November 3, 2006 7:49 PM

Here is a slightly buggy but engrossing little widget. It shows you what TV program I might presently be about to watch or record, and it lets you click into the future (up) to see other programs that interest me.

It's also solid wood and it makes a gratifying clicking sound. If you click too much, though, it can go out of control, so be careful. Want one of your own? Get it here.

While sharing what I, Mark Czerniec, am personally watching is probably not that useful to the world at large, MeeVee, the TV listing service which provides the widget, may be. I am someone who, in the last century, used to subscribe to TV Guide and go through each new issue with a highlighting marker to pick out the shows I might want to see. Now MeeVee takes care of all that.

Once you register with MeeVee (it's free), you get live TV listings for whatever provider you're using. Then, you can start building a list of favorite shows or actors or keywords or whatever, and all of the programs matching those specs will be highlighted in the grid, or can be listed separately for the day or week. You can further specify whether you are interested in all episodes of a particular show, or only the new ones. For something like The Simpsons, which reruns in syndication so much, I only want the new ones listed. On the other hand, Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown is scheduled kind of unpredictably, and there are episodes I never saw, so I want them all listed, just in case.

In an age when TV shows switch nights and times almost randomly, MeeVee can help you keep track. Want to follow 30 Rock until the bitter end? MeeVee will probably know that it's jumping to Thursdays later this month.

MeeVee is not perfect. It does not always know which episodes are new. Also, adding "NFL Football" to your list does not give you all of the NFL Football. You must also add Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football. Knowing details like these is, obviously, a warning sign of a serious TV addiction.

Luckily, when MeeVee is glitchy, there's another authority worth consulting: Yahoo! TV.