Epinions

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
-- Dandemis

Wednesday, September 22, 1999
One year ago: Event Horizon

I'm developing a bad habit -- napping soon after I get home in the afternoon. This isn't conducive to actually getting stuff done! Tonight I lay down to relax, and before I knew it, it was nine o'clock! I feel like I'm getting a bit of a cold, so perhaps I need the rest, but gee! So tonight I only was able to do some rough notes for my lindy exchange report. I'll have to actually write it tomorrow night, since I'm going to see Jack up in Bellingham for the weekend and I won't have much chance to write up there.

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My company is probably going to add a new person. This is a big deal when we only have four people working there; it's a 25 percent staff increase! So the person in question traveled here from overseas, and spent the day in our offices. I was amused that Chip expected me to know all about interviewing new people; contractors didn't get involved much in that when I was at Microsoft. But we talked about how we would be working together.

Later, Kat and I had some discussions about restructuring the site, my part in particular. I found that I thought and talked better when we were on the floor, poring over the diagrams and sketches. I had my best ideas when I was looking at the ceiling! This only worked because of the luxurious carpeting here in our sky-suite.

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The latest toy I've been playing with: Epinions. This is a site where you review things, with the greatest emphasis on products you can buy. (Web-site recommendations aren't part of this, that I can see.) The value comes from other people rating your reviews as useful or not, and building a network of trust where members mark you as a trusted reviewer, and you mark them as trusted also. They've actually implemented micropayments as part of this, as an incentive.

My biggest aggravation with the system so far, is that the things I want to review aren't listed in their system! You can review music, but there isn't a classical genre yet, which surprised me a lot. I suppose that swing comes under the jazz heading. I've done a couple of movies, also, but Henry Fool, a recent Hal Hartley movie, wasn't listed. You can review things that aren't listed, but it won't be easy for people to find them. They end up in some category like "Jazz: Instrumental/Other." Not very intuitive!

But I think the whole Epinions program could be interesting. Check out my epinions and see what you think!