Talkings of a Tyrant

I’ve previously reviewed BlinkList and I would like to congratulate them on their additions to the service. They’ve added an easy to access comparison between you and your fans and friends. They’ve also added a profile that shows up on your bookmarks, though mine doesn’t seem to show up (do I have to log out?). Good job. Keep up the good work.

One of the few things they lack, though, is a decent search engine.

If I’m going to have 250+ bookmarks, I’m going to have to be able to search their titles, descriptions, and possibly the content of the page. Not just tags.

Update! BlinkList has added full text search! Yes!

Good job on the tag searching engine though. AND, OR, and NOT are replaced by ‘+’ ‘|’ and ‘!’ Excellent.

What would happen if, suddenly, half of the US was laid off in favor of machinery or low-wage workers in Asia? What would happen if all of the current jobs became obsolete?

In the past, people had to upgrade, so to speak, when social changes like this happened. Frequently throughout history, farmers moved en masse to the cities when they lost their land or were out-sold. Someone who worked in the factory might become a technician for the machine that now does his/her job. But now, what will our nation do?

Moving from blue-collor workers to something higher requires, at the moment, a heck of an education. People would probably have to return to college, as college degrees are what really matter these days. The next few generations would have to go to college to have any chance.

Otherwise, they would be out of a job. They would encounter something called… boredom (dun…dun….dunnnnn!) !

What do people do when they’re bored? They play, or when they don’t have the money to do that, they riot. Seriously, that is (in a very simple sense) why the rioting is happening in France (aside from all of that racial discrimination, repression, and social differences, that’s all that’s happening). Hopefully, our government, with its infinite wisdom and reason (*hacking cough*) will give us all broadband connections and computers!!

It would be a good arrangement. People wouldn’t riot, they wouldn’t be bored, and they could, perhaps, find jobs on the Internet. Web designing, programming and advertising are all good ways to make money off the Internet.

In a perfect world, the average intelligence level would (hopefully) increase. Web developers would get rich (rich!), while people would learn, research ideas, play around with del.icio.us and surf other Web 2.0 websites. Oh, and world peace would happen (the US wouldn’t have any money to do anything, right?), the Easter Bunny is proven to exist and everyone sings kumbaya while they’re at it.

In a realistic view: We’re all doomed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Loosely based off/inspired by a Reasons Unbeknownst post about the Economics of Boredom.

Reddit has added a few more things in the last several days:

1. The ability to view post in a frame with a Reddit bar at the top. I don’t really like this one, and neither do most people (there were so many complaints that they had to switch it to ‘off’ by default). It is still useful though - you can rank the site from the Reddit bar.
2. A “recommended” page that has learned from how you rank things. This is excellently done, especially since there are upwards of 130 articles I’ve ranked. The relevence is astounding - just about all of the submittions on that page are articles I’m interested in.
   

   I still use the main page, though. I don’t trust Reddit to read my mind, and I’d never know if I missed some interesting articles if they were on a completely different topic.

3. A “Stats” page. I think it was always there, but I didn’t notice it until recently. It lists both the top 8 people in karma rankings, as well as the top 8 in what their average submittion got ranked as. I’m proud to say I’m number 3 of the top Redditors for rankings per submittion (for now…)

If you haven’t already, go check out Reddit. I’ve given it a review already, so for more information check out my review!

Reddit
Reddit - A Review :: Talkings of a Tyrant

Since my previous post I’ve found a few more things you can do with Blinklist.

1. It is very easy to add someone as a friend. Just go to their BlinkList and click the face next to their name! Simple as pie!
2. Once you’ve added some people as friends, you can view a synopsis of their recent links from the front page.

Useful!

BlinkList offers lots of useful tools and functions, all without loosing any ease of use, which has led me to say:
Goodbye del.icio.us! Hellooo BlinkList!!!

Edit: to read more about Blinklist, see More BlinkList
and BlinkList is Lacking in Search

I’ve decided, to Mike’s request, to review Blinklist.

The Good

Blinklist is a social tagging and bookmarking site. Being a social tagging and bookmarking site no longer is unique and cutting edge, as there are tons of social bookmarking sites these days. Simply swing by TechCrunch or eHub to find several.

Blinklist, however, is a better social bookmarking site. It is difficult to describe, but the simplicity and ease of use is really appealing. It uses AJAX to make actions easy and quick. Instant blinking!

Blinklist is very much like del.icio.us, except better. It has all of the features (except a list of your tags when you submit a new bookmark) and a bit more. In fact, it is so much like del.icio.us (and it automatically transfers you del.icio.us bookmarks for you if you want), that it is really easy to switch over to Blinklist from del.icio.us.

Blinklist has some unique features, and several features that del.icio.us doesn’t have. If you select any text on the page, and then use their bookmarklet, the text you selected becomes the description! Saves time and energy, so you can get right back to work (*cough* *goofing off!*). The ability to make a bookmark “Private” and unviewable to public eyes is easily available. You can also star your bookmarks to easily view your best bookmarks.

I’m not as fond of the star system as others are. Generally, I only bookmark a sites that I like (doesn’t that make sense?), so the need to “star” something isn’t really prominent.

The Bad

The only thing it doesn’t have, however, is the mass cult following that del.icio.us has. Massive cult followings are the key to social bookmarking. That’s why it’s called social bookmarking. Can’t give any advice there though, and can’t blame them. Its only a few months old.

You know if this is the only thing I can think of that is bad, that Blinklist is awesome.

The Ugly

Wait, what?

Scratch that. (The Ugly)

Blinklist is in no way ugly. It is well designed and very easy on the eyes. Read this as: oooo… pretty…

In conclusion

To conclude this rather short blog post, I hereby announce that I’ve switched over to Blinklist! No more ugly-looking del.icio.us for me!

• Blinklist
• Blinklist demo (old, but still informative. Site looks a lot better than what’s shown here)
• Import from Del.icio.us
• My BlinkList Links
• Edit: The BlinkList Toolbar