What Blog Should I Get?

mmm salty potato chips. Seth Godin, who I’ve blogged about a little before (seeing as he inspired the concept of the site in the first place), has a post about personalization by changing one or two words in a URL. Where have I seen that before?

I added a couple of more recommendations recently:

http://what.sd.card.shouldiget.com

http://what.smartphone.shouldiget.com

Also, I told a couple friends of ours who are getting married in April about the site. They are SO EXCITED to use it to create their registry. I almost feel like I should make a skinned version of the site at what.sheets.shouldiregisterfor.com

Wow. The reddit traffic seriously slammed the shouldiget.com server. How sad.

Anyway, interesting discussion going on over there about whether this is spam or not. I weighed in with my $0.02 http://reddit.com/info/uw76/comments

Also, if anyone has a suggestion for a REALLY GOOD paper shredder, let me know.

SearchEngineWatch has a story about online shopping search on the phone. I decided to get in the game and launch Should I Get Mobile last night.

I built it using the Stealth Mobile Platform, which let me get it up and running in about 4 minutes. That was pretty awesome. I don’t have a cool 5 digit phone number yet, but you can text “what ipod” or “what camera” to 646-644-0471 and get an answer sent back to you.

Sweet!

Stealth Mobile is still somewhat stealth, so no info on their web site yet, but their platform is really solid. Give it a try!

Had a nice amount of traffic for our launch today. Got a little bit of feedback. The biggest complaint was “shouldn’t it be *which* iPod should I get?”

I promptly corrected the problem, and now http://which.ipod.shouldiget.com works too. Enjoy, and tell your friends

Yay!  Tell your family.  Tell your friends.  We’re in business!  Make holiday shopping hella’ easy!

Should I Get unfortunately fell by the wayside while other priorities in my life took over. But now that I’m starting to shop for the holidays, I’m remembered how annoying it is to research products.

All I want is for someone else to tell me what to get!!!

And with that, http://shouldiget.com is back in business, with all new product reviews. Including that coffee pot my Dad recommended: http://what.coffee.maker.shouldiget.com And let me tell you - it’s fantastic!

The site development is coming along nicely. Got the first pass of the data model and administration done, thrown out, and repeated.

The UI is just about there, and all the little things are getting checked off one at a time: 404 pages, robots.txt, adsense, sitemap, favicon.ico, etc.

I tried to register for a coffee pot today. I had to ask my Dad instead of this site. Although to be honest, I trust my Dad when it comes to coffee way more than some random dude’s website His response will be posted on What coffee post should I get ASAP!

I need a new coffee maker.  Mine leaks.  I have no idea which one to get.

I wish this site was finished.

So this past weekend, about an hour before I wrote the first line of code for What Should I Get, I watched a lecture that everyone’s favorite marketing guy, Seth Godin, gave at the Googleplex. It was a great talk - I recommend everyone watch it.

During the Q&A, one of the Googlers who works on Google maps asked how they can market their maps product better. Yahoo and Microsoft have copied the scrollable map interface, and no one knows Google maps exists. People still use MapQuest. What can Google do? Here was Godin’s reply:

For most people who need to get to their hotel, they didn’t have a map problem! The digerati had an AJAX map problem: there wasn’t one… the boingboing people went crazy… But maps aren’t broken. The reason Google is going to be successful is that 50 million people will continue to say “watch me search, watch me surf, make it better.

You already know I’m staying at the Artisan hotel in Las Vegas. I shouldn’t have to go to Google Maps and type it in. It just shows up in my RSS feed. Ready to go. Directions from the airport. To my hotel. *THAT* is what i want. Not AJAX.

A couple hours later, What Should I Get was born. Because *THAT* is what I want. I don’t want to go type it in. I just want to know.

Check it out! You can now search for compound product categories like so:

http://what.digital.camera.shouldiget.com
http://what.wireless.router.shouldiget.com
http://what.renters.insurance.shouldiget.com

Pretty cool, huh?