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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

March, 2005

Newly Discovered: MetaWishlist

[Editor's Note: I'm hoping to make this a new feature on the site (man, how many times have I written that). Anyway, since I'm always discovering new and fun things I'll try to feature one or a two a week.]

This week's "Newly Discovered" is MetaWishlist. Essentially MetaWishlist allows you to create a wishlist across multiple sites. I know this isn't that revolutionary (Froogle has a shopping list), but this site has some cool social features. For one, you can look at what everyone else wants. But you can also keep multiple lists, use tags to organize and everything has an RSS feed (like every good piece of social software should). Here's how the site is described on the front page:

  • Store. Save everything you want from multiple websites all in one place.
  • Organize. Group your items in any number of lists, mark them with tags, or both.
  • Share. Send your list to family, friends, or even complete strangers.
The site even has a bookmarklet so it's easy to add stuff to your list from any shopping site (including pictures). While there are still a few things I'd like (a "bought" button for one), there are some great features (including adding up the total of all your desired items). I've decided to move all my wishlists there, since it just seems easier.

So, if you feel like buying me something (especially that 12" Powerbook), just click here.

UPDATED 3/31/05: A few hours after writing this entry I got this email from Alex, the person behind MetaWishlist. Here's what he (I assumed it was a he, although that could just be me being sexist), had to say:

Noah,

Hey, this is Alex, the creator of MetaWishlist.com. I noticed a link to your blog yesterday from Scoble’s blog. Then, I realized that you were one of my users!

Thanks for the blog post about MetaWishlist.com; maybe it will help get some more people in there for better beta testing while I’m adding new features. I just added list comments so people can tell you what they think of your wishlist… so you might want to add that to your blog post. I also just moved it to a much faster server -- getting ready for prime-time! So, you should see a significant speed increase.

Thanks!

Always nice to see when software creators really care about their users. Since the email I've been emailing back-and-forth with Alex and have made some recommendations that I think are fairly useful, including my bought button and an easier image navigation interface.

Thanks a lot for the email Alex, like I said, it's nice to get noticed and to know that there are really people behind the web apps I enjoy. Best of luck!

March 31, 2005
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.