pieratt I hear Good Reads is decent: http://www.goodreads.com/
In Book Recommendation Websites 2010-01-24 21:09:20

pieratt I've been trying to figure out why I don't really like Qonversation. The design is great. Highly legible, nice text-column widths, talented people, good name, nice logo, lots of things going for it. I think I've realized that my beef is the formatting of everything but the actual conversation threads. Personally, I think it's a failed experiment in original formatting. When I'm on one of the multiple front pages (joined, all, etc), I find myself skipping all the actual "comments" and instead quickly scanning the (tiny) thread titles at the bottom of each until I find one that I find interesting. This is, of course, how a normal forum functions. Prominent thread title which you then click through to see what people are saying. Recently commented threads jump to the top. Whereas Qonversation has decided to format itself more like Twitter with emphasis on a linear series of individual comments and posts. While this format works perfectly for Twitter because each set of 140 characters is an island of its own making, it fails for a forum because each comment is worthless without the context that surrounds it. So you wind up being asked to scan a series of incoherent responses and thoughts. It's like taking a bunch of Instant Messenger conversations, shuffling them together, and then expecting something pleasing to come out of the experience. Note that I think this works really well for pages like "Mentions", where you can scan quickly through a bunch of references to yourself, but just falls apart entirely as a system for the rest of the categories. For instance, I click on "suggested" and the first thing I see is a comment from some random dude that I don't know and don't particularly care about. When in fact the system is trying to "suggest" a conversation to me, but doing it bassackwardesly. Design-wise, the conversation is playing second fiddle to someone's thought even though the former is significantly more appropriate. Ok I'm rambling. My $.02
In Qonversation 2009-12-17 18:18:01

pieratt Gotcha. Smart.
In Are you satisfied with your RSS reader? 2009-12-01 10:16:12

pieratt "Friendly" in what sense?
In Are you satisfied with your RSS reader? 2009-12-01 06:44:56

pieratt Not that you're asking, but I have a feature request: it would be nice if the RSS subscription reflected your "work safe" toggle. Nudity is as big of an issue in my RSS reader as it is in my browser. Good luck with the move. Sounds mildly painful.
In Dropular Closing? 2009-11-18 09:49:46

pieratt http://svp.ly/r/e2amu5sf http://svp.ly/r/4z96k6ar http://svp.ly/r/l7k905cw http://svp.ly/r/anov4v98 http://svp.ly/r/oal954e0 http://svp.ly/r/tew3awlm http://svp.ly/r/uwlkrn7r http://svp.ly/r/1ldw7cvl http://svp.ly/r/c6l80pyk http://svp.ly/r/ulev8p7s
In Svpply 2009-11-16 16:38:08

pieratt @nomology The front page is curated, so not all items show up there. You sure they're not on your profile page?
In Svpply 2009-10-26 10:36:41

pieratt @nomology Odd. Stuff has been added from both sites before. Would you mind emailing me some more detail? eg. Why you think you're not able to add more, what youre trying to do, what's happening, etc. svpply@generalprojects.com Appreciate it.
In Svpply 2009-10-26 10:00:25

pieratt @nomology No limit. What issues are you having? Could be that you're trying to grab from a Flash site, which we haven't gotten around yet (but will soon).
In Svpply 2009-10-26 09:29:17

pieratt Good feedback. Thanks everyone. The homogenization of the site is certainly an issue, but the fact is that if the site tries to speak to everyone, then it won't speak to anyone. Needs to have its own voice. It's is only a month old, though. Plenty of time to get better and more interesting. Some invitations for the lot of you: http://svp.ly/r/98mka2ja http://svp.ly/r/hagbfh3f http://svp.ly/r/7v56wv0h http://svp.ly/r/utk0aqea http://svp.ly/r/orkpjtpr http://svp.ly/r/uvtz3m40 http://svp.ly/r/8zxvln26 http://svp.ly/r/7cw7t077 http://svp.ly/r/iims229m http://svp.ly/r/otbh6684
In Svpply 2009-10-25 20:56:03

pieratt I prefer ffffound for the simple reason that its Similar Items algorithm is amazing. I also enjoy the quick glance at other fffound member's collections you get from the individual items pages. Dropular is a better experience in a lot of ways, but there are a couple things that drive me nuts about it. (a) the opacity overlay at the top of the page makes me claustrophobic and I hate how it obscures my view when scrolling. (b) the fact that the similar-images grid on an item page updates dynamically, so I can't quickly go back to a page where I know I saw something to try and find it. I don't understand this and it has driven me batty on more than one occasion. (c) The grid view is substantially less visually appealing now that the right column has been taken over by user preferences and advertising. The site functions have been split into horizontal and vertical chunks and it feels cumbersome. Note that I'm being nit-picky for the sake of contributing to the conversation. There are a number of wonderful aspects to dropular which I'm not getting into it.
In FFFFOUND! vs. Dropular 2009-10-25 20:43:57