I was listening to an US AM radio station last night when I heard an ad for eHarmony, a dating/matching service, which got me thinking how it is too bad that it is focused on the big but (if at all effective) one-time event. We need similar tools like that on the web which actually serve on-going purposes like some of these:
- e-Literate.com: a readers service where you put in the last 12 books you like as well some other information to get recommended reading for the next 12. No sales of books are tied to the site as flogging is not the point.
- Ska-mazon.com: you tell the web site which ska records you have and it will tell you the ones you should look out for and where you can get them. Flogging is OK as it is pretty hard to find good ska these days.
- e-Quaintance.com: once you have pals from undergrad who move away but you keep in touch with and once you have a family, everyone still needs a circle of some what tenuous acquaintences that you can get together with but have no need to really get to know. You can have a decent pint with them. You can talk a bit of sports with them but when they head out you can’t be sure if you have their name quite right. The service weeds out those who would be a particular irritant to a decent crowd – including you.
- LiFix.com: It is as likely as not that the thing you would be best suited for is something you have really never come into contact with. I, for example, am convinced but for fate I would have made an excellent Bush Tucker Man or second rhythm guitarist for a major rock act….major. So with this website, people load in their lives facts offer to give them up in exchange for a better fate and see if through a succession of elaborate exchanges of place and identity, the real life you deserve – like mine of either the outback or spandex – might be lived either on a temporary but also perhaps permanent basis given filing of certain consents and health information.
Is this too much to ask of the internet which promised so much but gave us only blogs? There must be more web apps you would like to see.