It’s time that I announced the project I’ve been working on in my evenings and weekends. It is a collaborative filter for new media – podcasts and videoblogs mostly. Behold, the mighty AmigoFish! You can create an account, rate the things you care about and get predictions for other things you might like. I’ve been using it that way pretty much every day for the last month, and have found all kinds of new things to listen to. Try it out and let me know what you think. I’m not going to burden everyone with the “beta” or not nomenclature. It is a work in progress, much like everything like this. I appreciate any feedback you might have about how it works for you, what features you might like, and so on. I’m nervous about going public with this, but it seems like it is time. It’s not like it is finished – it never will be – but I realized that the main reason for not putting it out there was only my own fear. Put it all on black and let it ride!
There is also a blog I’ve been keeping for the project. Obviously, I haven’t sunk a lot of time into things like changing from the default template. If you follow that blog, you can get a little insight into the inner workings. I’ve been asking people that were early users to keep quiet about it so that I could stay off the radar until I was ready to go public. That time is now, so you are all welcome to do what you want. If you could throw a brother a little blog link love, I’d be highly appreciative.
Great big thanks to the alpha users, some of whom suffered through the really bad interface that was on the early iterations of this project. The input of those people was really helpful. I tried to do what the people like Jason Fried say you should – I set up the shell of a useful thing and let people’s use of it drive where it should go. That will be what continues to drive it forward. Here’s hoping some of you sign up and use it and find it useful.
I’m scared, but excited. It’s time to push this bird out of the nest and let it fly or not.
Congrats on going live, Dave! amigofish rocks. It’s been very useful to me in finding good new stuff to listen to. Well done!
Fantastic Dave!! Good to see you putting it out there. I have been doing a bit of re-arranging of my pod list, and this has been a great help. I look forward to trying samplings of the predictions and then rating them once i have an opinion. This way I hope i’ll get closer to my brain feeding nirvana.
It would be good to add a list of “My Podcasts” in addition to those that I have rated there. For example I liked Adam Curry show but after a while it just got dull (to my ears anyway). So I ditched it. I have rated that one a 2 Star, but I don’t listen any more. I imagine that this difference could effect the “amigo rating” if it was included.
There is my backfeed anyway..
–nick coster
finally started to have a good bash at using it, sorry for the delay dave, way too much course work.
Anyway im finding it fun, im actualy getting podcats from the suggestions that I’ve wanted to subscribe to for ages but never got roung to it 🙂
Aslo just wanted to draw attention to American Edit, the mash up of American idiot, I’ve blogged about it was going to post it to you direct but thought itd just be spamish. anyhows its there, on boing boing and at
Keep podcasting otherwise I start to go into withdrawl!
ya – go fish 🙂
instead of trolling through mundane listings of podcasts created by mass appeal, why not have recommendations of only those podcasts that algorithmically should interest you based on your current likes and steer you away from others based on your current dislikes – brilliant…
Birds? Fish? Yes, it’s the Flying AmigoFish.
-k-
Ken, Mike, other Ken – thanks.
Nick – I’m not sure what you think is funky. It sounds like you are using it exactly correctly. In general I think of it as 1 and 2 star ratings being for the things you tried and didn’t stick to. It’s hard to imagine wanting to rate something 1 star and still sticking with it.
Ok, Maybe my desires are too self focused, but hey that is the point right? To provide a pocasting referral service that customises it’s recommendations to MY tastes, based on the preferences of others with congruent tastes.
What I am thinking about is a page within Amigofish where I can load up my currently subscribed list of podcasts and display only these. because these are the podcasts that are currently the most important to ME.
So as you say if I have rated something as a 1 or 2 either I just don’t like my ears or I have unsubscribed. I just don’t want to see these on my personalised Amigofish list. The more I try the more shows are going to get dropped on the rated but not-subscribed pile and the longer my ratings list will become. That is a good thing in itself, but it is not what selfish ME wants to look at.
So imagine that next to each podcast title there is a “subscribed” check-box that indicates that it is what I am listening to. Then… if there was a tab that said “my subscriptions” it would have on it all the podcasts that have the ‘subscribed’ checkbox ticked.
The last thing that I like about the selfish “My Podcasts” page is that using the cool export function I can update ‘Ipodder juicer X lemon’ (or what ever they will be called eventually) by exporting the OPML file. What is more I can export these and share MY recommendations with a friend.
(see, not so selfish after all)
–nick coster