Pigskins and shenanigans played key parts in this week's Wall Street flick.

Go long, TiVo
The new pro football season kicked off on Thursday night. Earlier in the day, I had written about TiVo's (NASDAQ:TIVO) new service for fantasy football junkies. The DVR pioneer had teamed up with Sportsline.com -- a CBS (NYSE:CBS) online property -- to offer stats and other goodies to participants of its fantasy football leagues.

I went ahead and checked it out as the defending champion Steelers and Dolphins went at it in Pittsburgh. Logging in was a bit of a drag. That TiVo remote just wasn't cut out for inputting user names and passwords. However, I had to do that only once, and after that, the service worked as promised. After Ronnie Brown barreled into the end zone to tie the game up in the second quarter, I hit my TiVo button and worked my way to my league scoreboard to see my team credited with Brown's score.

Man, I love TiVo. Before long, you may as well just staple us to the living room sofas! More importantly than my own "Oooh, this is cool" moment, the patent-rich and profit-poor company is finally starting to see that it needs to win back investors. If TiVo -- a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation -- keeps impressing me like this, it'll leave me little reason but to be an investor in the company, as well as a happy subscriber.

Google goes back to the future
In a move that is sure to please history buffs like my father, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) rolled out Google News Archive Search, which will let Internet users retrieve stories from various sources dating as far back as the late 1790s. The move is a good one. Just for kicks, you may not have to go that far back. Try digging into August of 2004 to read up on Google critics who bashed the company's IPO for being overvalued at $85 a pop.

MySpace, YourMusic
You've got to hand it to News Corp. (NYSE:NWS) as the media giant continues to monetize its MySpace.com meal ticket. Last month, it booked a lucrative advertising deal with Google. This week, MySpace teamed up with SNOCAP to sell music through its highly trafficked site.

MySpace is in an intriguing position. It is a hub for local artists, and it can take advantage of a market that Apple Computer (NASDAQ:AAPL) has neglected. This isn't too different from the path that I had suggested for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to take last year if it wanted to stand a chance in digital music. No one has taken the baton from the original MP3.com in empowering the digital distribution of local music. That's a shame in this day and age, in which amateurs are becoming the real stars of the Internet.

OK, there are a few sites doing some cool things for local artists, but none has the ability to scale the service in mainstream fashion like Apple or Microsoft or even Google does. Let's see what MySpace's offering ultimately looks like; if it will allow the bands on MySpace Music to sell directly to the end user on such a popular platform, that race for eardrums may be as good as over.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

TiVo is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor newsletter recommendation. Microsoft is an Inside Value selection. You can try out any of our newsletter services free for 30 days.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz recommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy.