Free Candy For Everyone

I like to stop by Amazon every now and again to see what books and music and more it recommends for me. It has a huge database of books and items I’ve bought, plus years ago I spent a long time rating items for hours on end (I can be a bit weird, I know). Today I stopped by for the first time in a while and clicked on the upcoming releases recommendations. Here’s one of the ones it had for me.

Yup, Amazon recommended the game I’m working on to me. I found that amusing. It was the only game recommendation, actually. I guess that’s kind of cool!

New websites comes along all the time. My friends call out “hey, I’ve got free invites for the newest hottest site, who wants?” and I’m always jumping on to see what it is. Most of them I can’t remember a day after I signed up. But the most recent one I’m playing with has gotten my attention. It’s called blippr and the tagline is “Radically Short Ratings and Reviews.” The idea is that people rate books, movies, music and video games with “blips” - 160 character or less mini-reviews.

Ever since I first started browsing the internet I’ve been enthralled by ratings websites. I remember the first recommendation website I found, way back in college. You could rate movies and it would suggest other movies you might like! I spent hours rating things on it, just stars, but I loved it. I think I’ve since gone though and rated hundreds of items on dozens of websites. I mostly use Amazon at this point and have given up on the rest. But this one seemed fun so I’m giving it a try.

There isn’t really enough data yet to give you recommendations yet, so I’ve just been having fun rating things. You rate on a 4 point scale - don’t like, whatever, like it, love it. The final score for the item is some sort of average of everyone’s ratings, but it’s fun to read what people have to say. The recommendations come in by the fact that it’s also a social network site. You can follow people you tend to agree with. You can also agree or disagree with any single blip. This information is compiled to give you recommendations.

I’m finding a lot of joy out of crafting the perfect 160 character blip. How can I say what I want in a concise and interesting way? Sometimes I get to the limit and go back deleting and rewording to get my point across. It’s fun!

It’s still in beta so you’ll need an invite, of course. Email me if you want one, I still have a few. Things I’d like to see - maybe some sort of authority rating based on how many people have agreed with you or disagreed. I’d also hope that the different types of media have separate recommendation scales. I find that while I may agree with people in regards to movies and books, my music taste is vastly different. I really doubt they’ll be able to recommend a music album for me based on what movies I like.

Overall, it’s fun. I find myself popping over there and reviewing at least one or two items a day. We’ll see how long they keep me interested!

Ok, so I’m not talking about stopping reading or anything. I love reading, books are one of my big passions. But books are piling up on every surface of my home. I have several overflowing bookshelves. They just get more and more full, since I can’t seem to stop buying books. And at some point, I’ll have to get rid of some of them or be unable to walk around.

My family tends to be early adopters of technology. I’ve had a TiVo since 2000. Just about everyone in the family got an iPhone within the first month of release. And my uncle bought and Amazon Kindle as soon as it came out. What’s a Kindle, you ask? It’s an electronic book reader. But those aren’t books! you say. I know, but they’re getting pretty darn close.

The screen is actually rather book-like. Reading it doesn’t seem like as much of a strain as you might expect. It’s light and small, and I’m getting sick of bringing 15 pounds of books with me when I go on extended vacations. I’m not sure if I’m ready to buy this first generation reader, but it seems pretty cool. You can go to Amazon and buy books straight from your Kindle and download them right away. You can link several Kindles to the same account and share books with you family.

Some books seem a bit pricey to me, given that they’re in digital format. $10 for a book when you don’t “get” anything? But I’m reading “The Golden Compass” right now, and it’s only $3.19 on Kindle, that’s pretty awesome. Check it out: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials).

In any event, I’m not quite ready to dive in. My brother just picked one up as well, and I might have to borrow his and try to read a book with it, see how I like it. I’ll let you know how it goes!

What do you do when you should be doing something else (like scrubbing your apartment clean)? Besides the big ones like playing Civilization or World of Warcraft there are lots of other things I do to while away my copious spare time. I thought I’d share what I’m doing now.

• Desktop Tower Defense - My brother introduced me to this one a few weeks ago and this little flash game has eaten away several hours of my time since then. It’s pretty simple but I just keep going back for more.
• Reading other people’s blogs! - I can’t quite keep up with all the blogs in my reader. Try Google Reader if you’re not yet using an aggregator. Then you don’t have to stop by all the sites to see who’s updated! Some of my top reads are in the sidebar. Which I should update
• Reading and more reading - Most recently I’ve been reading different comic series. Runaways is the current read - and Joss Whedon is writing a few issues! Yay! I’m not caught up to the current issues yet, but they’re really quick reading, I’m sure I will be soon.
• Daydreaming about an iPhone - Ok, just kidding on this one. But I wouldn’t mind getting one, that’s for sure!
• Shopping! Ok, this one is true. All too often I go over to Amazon and buy more books. Being a member of Amazon Prime is DANGEROUS! Check out my wishlist below to see things I might buy someday. Though I really don’t know why you’d care. In fact, don’t check it out. It’s not there, avert your eyes!
• Reading web comics - If you’re not reading Order of the Stick or xkcd then you’re no kind of geek at all

I’m sure I waste time in other awesome ways (like writing this blog!) but that’s all I can think of right now. Here’s my wishlist. Like I said, don’t look.