According to this article on CNet, TiVo plans to announce the release of Tahiti today! For those of you who don’t know, Tahiti is a software development kit that will allow third-party developers to add features to the TiVo service.

Being a software developer myself, I’m really excited about this release. On a number of occasions, I’ve stated that TiVo needed to embrace the open source community in order to encourage innovation. In my opinion, this is a wonderful attempt by TiVo. The kit will allow developers to add features to the service that were at one point not possible unless you hacked your TiVo box. TiVo is smart to encourage developers to create applications that augment their current capabilities. I mean, why not take advantage of “free” developers that will create new applications for you?

It will be interesting to see how quick the open source community embraces this new set of features. I wonder how long it will take before somebody releases new functionality for your TiVo box.

Stay tuned! I’m sure there will be a lot of news as the result of this release.