I came across a blog this evening, disturbingly named Idea Sling. (Disturbingly due to the similarity in name to my current project: ideaShrub) I was very concerned that this web site was, somehow, going to be in direct competition with my work, however that does not seem to be the case.
In a nutshell: The premise is that if you have a good idea, but neither have the time nor means to implement it, you should free it up to the public. To quote their mission statement:
Creative People and Go-Getters are celebrated on this site. Those personas often don’t exist in the same person.
Instead of letting your idea fester and nag you until the day you die, let it free, into the wild. Who knows it may take wings under the guidance of some industrious soul.
What this site reminds me of, more then anything, is a really slooow version of Half Bakery. Honestly, I see no advantages to using this particular service over the other long-established web site. I wonder if they even realize that Half Bakery exists? Granted, sometimes the ideas on Half Bakery are a little bit out there, it is still an excellent forum for project proposals (similar to the ones on Idea Sling).
On a closing note, ideaShrub is going to, incidentally, provide the core service of both Idea Sling and Half Bakery, and much more, giving users the ability to publish, broadcast, share, and collaborate their ideas in a much more open (or private) forum. I’m tempted to auto-create some new shrubs (using the handy API) filled with data from both of these web sites, so that people can easily browse them in a ‘familiar’ interface.
ThePef (July 2, 2005 at 9:51 pm)
John,
Appreciate the comment, and no I actually did not know Half Bakery existed until I launched IdeaSling this week. Personally, I don’t like the Half Bakery interface, and as you mentioned I found it somewhat half baked at times. By the way, there is also another site that someone pointed to me shouldexist.org. Another good site, but seems to be not used to often. I decided to use a straight up blog, because it served its purpose. Announcement, subscription, communal audience, cataloging, and commentary. Though the last isn’t necessary. In addition, I will extend the information as time goes by. But once again, that is not the intent. The intent is to get the idea out there, too as many people as possible. That is it. If it was slow, I suggest you call Typepad. I am not experiencing any difficulty, and if you perform a trace route you may find some other problem.
-ThePef
John Resig (July 3, 2005 at 6:40 am)
ThePef Thanks for your comments, it’s appreciated. I agree with your subscription point, halfbakery doesn’t have any sort of RSS feed, which is a shame. I forgot to mention, but I like the fact that you expressly put everything under a CC license.
As per the ‘slow’ comment, I was refferring to the process that your site currently takes — e.g. Email you, you post it. As opposed to Half Bakery, where you just signup and post straight out. It might be interesting to set up a communal web log, allowing anyone to post a new idea, once they’ve created a new acount (and maybe go through a moderation process first?) That would certainly speed up the whole process.
ThePef (July 4, 2005 at 11:38 am)
John,
Thanks for the followup. I cleaned up the process, and it should work or least appear to work better than it did. Perhaps sometime we can discuss some of the communal aspects, though I really don’t want to go to far down that route. Sometimes simplicity is the best approach, and too often we walk over the line. I am a product manager for a major software company, and much of the site was created out of my own need to get ideas out, and away from me.
Thanks again,
ThePef
John Resig (July 4, 2005 at 2:01 pm)
“… the site was created out of my own need to get ideas out, and away from me.”
That’s a good point, ThePef. Really a shame that copyright and intellectual property is so messy. Hopefully the CC license will help ease that stress, a little bit.
ThePef (July 4, 2005 at 3:25 pm)
I used to work at AOL and one of the big problems with Steve Case’s vision about utilizing Time Warner content was the messy IP restrictions. They couldn’t get anything off the ground without involving an army of lawyers.