But does it work?

Blist is now Socrata.com

This is terrible, but I was cleaning out my bookmarks today and came across blist, so I clicked on it.  Then I remembered the cute little list-based app.  Chicken recipes, cleaning techniques, and so forth.  Blist came up and -- they've gone professional!  Gone is the little dorm-room logo and identity.  They've upgraded, up-named and upclassed, and now they're filled with very applicable government information lists (and of course a list of Bernie Madoff's bilkees.)

Personally, I'd like to be able to view their data architecture from the top level.  How about a template for that?  One that you could customize, so that you could use terms that you wanted or a structure you preferred.  

Hmmn.  Actually, why doesn't someone just create an information front end, period.  Wouldn't that be nice?  You could have your own custom view of life and applicable data.

Blist -- excuse me - Socrata is nice, but for those of use up to our necks in data, the "search for it if you want it" approach might just be too hard.  I look forward to seeing what they'll do next.

My Favorite Home-Based Business Idea: Bitch.com

Vintage post:

I was speculating with a mom friend of mine this morning about a great service that overqualified, stay-at-home moms could start.  My absolutely non-pc code name for it was "bitch.com" and the idea is this. You're tired, fried, and just not in your happy space.  You have a master's degree in CS and used to be program manager for a fortune 500 company.  What do to?  Why not take a part-time job at bitch.com, the UI and final testing company for products where you can let it all hang out? Imagine.  Instead of those nice little "I experienced my third crash today when I clicked on "save as." I was using Firefox and no other programs were running." notes in the bugtracker, you could really wake your coders up with some jewels like "I hate your product.  It crashed again, and my fingernails are making huge claw marks down the sides of my keyboard as I look at your stupid guy jumping on his stupid bouncy ball  (for example). 

At any rate, you could have screamingly hormonal, really pissy bugs logged, and could really give your coders a taste of the real world! What a great idea!  And you could always use the Damoclesian threat of letting the testers do a ROUND TABLE with the coders to get even better performance! Time for lunch.  I think that I might have had too much coffee this morning...

Did you know that NYTimes has a visualization lab?

Yup. What's up with that?  Looks like it ties into IBM's Many Eyes project, which sounds like the most fun job around.

wefeelfine emotion blog summary in graphics

Wefeelfine is more people having fun harvesting fun words from blogs.

information aesthetics blog

This blog has just too many cool things. Check it out.

13 Great tools for organizing the web

The "organizing the web" problems is near and dear to my heart.  Here's an article talking about 13 great tools for organizing the information that you access on the web.

Googlereader - Yeah. Googlewriter - Ugh

You know, I use a lot of the Googlereader. Ever since I found this video on the internet, which is an interview with Robert Scoble, talking about how he reads about 11 billion blogs a day and how easily he can do it with Googlereader, I "went" for it.  I promptly put about 400 blogs into Googlereader (for one particular client),and then got drawn into another job.  Yup.  People like me need "channels."  I will go into a situation, need to connect with every blog in the universe about that situation or market segment, do it, finish doing it, and move on.  I don't want to LOSE all the work that I did putting this information together, but I don't want to trip on it every time I go to the bathroom, either. 

I just started using Googlewriter.  Ugh.  What a un-useful product!  What happened?   Slow, clunky, ugly, hard to figure out, apparently has limited functionality... sigh.  I'm off now to see if Nolowriter has gotten any better!

How can folks not like Google?

Question: Is Google the new Southwest Airlines of the successful dot-com world?  Like, with a sense of humor and everything?

My good friend Janet just sent me this link. Check it out.  It's one of the available language options.

Vewwwy cool

The top 57 Wikis by Rank

This list was put together over by the folks over on Advolcano.com.

oooh, this looks fun. Check out Fidgt

Just found Fidgt, which puts the fun part of visualization into the hands of end users. And what's the fun part of visualization, you might well ask?  Visualizing YOURSELF, in this age of the narcissist.  Wheee!

From the Fidgt website (and here's a description of features):

The Fidg't Visualizer allows you to play around with your network. You interface with the Visualizer through Flickr and LastFM tags, using any tag to create a Magnet. Once a Tag Magnet is created, members of the network will gravitate towards it if they have photos or music with that same Tag.

This simple mechanic lets you visualize your Network in a unique way, demonstrating its Predisposition towards certain things. What is more popular amongst people in your Network - rock or electronic music? Are photos of buildings more popular than photos of sunsets? Based on how your network reacts to those Tags, you might get an answer. The Visualizer also shows how your Network compares to a random sampling of the networks of other Fidg't users, letting you see how your network stacks up to others?

For good measure, you can also search through the network for certain users, and check out their recent photos and music. This visualizer is just one example of some of the cool Address Book applications you could build on top of our web services. For a more detailed guide, check the wiki.

Sounds fun. When they can afford a better writer to describe it, I'm sure it will sound even more fun!