Introducing Sweetdex
May 17, 2005 | 
20 Comments
I want to tell y’all about a little site I started up a month or so ago. It’s called Sweetdex. I’ve had it up for a bit, just to see how it was going, and since I like it and it’s a fun site to do, I’m going to keep it going.
It was born from a few ideas that I’ve since found, taken individually anyway, aren’t all that unique. The first was an idea to have a community site for recommendations, and that is the core idea behind Sweetdex.
I find that some of the most useful, most fun and most worthwhile (insert nouns here) come from recommendations. I thought it’d be great to have a site where people recommend stuff…or something. I mean people do this all the time, but there aren’t many central places for recommendations.
As well, a huge pet-peeve of mine with blogs and blogrolls (which is where this stuff is usually linked from and archived) is their lack of permanence.
So I had an idea, for a long time now, about a centralized place to put and share cool stuff. Now, I’ve luckily not had to do much there as there are all sorts of online services popping up to help me tackle that. Kinda. Still I’ve a hard time keeping track of things on the web, so I wanted to make a site that indexes things I’ve a hard time finding. I was thinking, “Hmm, it’d be sweet to have an index of all the cool, hard-to-find stuff.
Throw in some other ideas and…you’ve got Sweetdex.
So what is “Sweetdex”?
I don’t really know yet to be honest. Let me tell you how it got to where it is now.
Well, I bought the domain and got to thinking about these ideas (and more). I fleshed out some things, toyed around with them and decided I’d give it a shot. I thought it’d be kind-of like Boing Boing with less text and more organization, or maybe Gizmodo for all sorts of fun stuff. I came up with a quick plan and started talking to people to gauge the soundness of my ideas. Most the feedback was very encouraging.
Then, a few weeks back I was explaining my idea to Nick and he said it was kind of like Mighty Goods.
And it is. Kinda.
Now I’d seen Mighty Goods before, but never really played with it. It’s great, but there isn’t much of interest to me personally. And it’s all about “stuff.” I wanted something about “stuff” and well, “other stuff.”
Throw in a bit of Ain’t It Cool News and some Play Magazine and you’ve got an idea of what I’m playing with here.
So I launched Sweetdex. It’s a blog-ish thing that’s part recommendation engine, part directory of neat things, part shopping blog and hopefully more. It’s a baby now — who knows what it’ll grow up to be.
Where I’m going with Sweetdex
I’ve got the design pretty much sorted out, although it’s nothing revolutionary, and I’d like to send out a big thanks to Geoff and, more importantly, his dad Jere for the awesome illustration.
Over the coming weeks I plan to work on the idea and the execution. It’s kind of a hobby/play site where I’m hoping to try out all sorts of things. I’ve got lots of ideas and a rough plan, but I plan to also let this one go and see where it takes me. I’d love y’all to check it out and please, if you’ve got a recommendation you’d like to share (not just anything mind you, it’s gotta be sweet) let me know.
Filed under: News
Keyword Tags: sweetdex recommendations cool thoughts people places things
Comments
1. Adrian L. said:
It’s awesome, content wise, but the design is so stereotypically….bloggy.
Posted on May 17, 2005 09:37 AM | #
2. Keith said:
Adrian – Yeah? So. ;) Seriously though. I thought about doing something “different” but then decided that this would work well for what I wanted to do.
Posted on May 17, 2005 09:44 AM | #
3. Jeremy Flint said:
Keith is the new Scrivs. Get ready for the 7nights network!
Posted on May 17, 2005 09:48 AM | #
4. David McCreath said:
Since you’ll be accepting submissions, it would be nice to see some sort of attribution so that readers could start to build trust with different submitters.
Posted on May 17, 2005 10:01 AM | #
5. Scrivs said:
Keith is the new Scrivs. Get ready for the 7nights network!
Tune into http://9rules.com/blog/ tomorrow…
Posted on May 17, 2005 10:04 AM | #
6. Keith said:
Jeremy – Nah. I can see how one might think that. But really, this stuff is just me playing around. At least for now. My main goal was to broaden my writing horizons, learn some new stuff and narrow the focus on individual sites. I’m hoping to make a bit of money, to be honest, so that I can take on a bigger idea, but I’m not really counting on that.
Should be fun and educational for me if nothing else. But don’t expect a network. I’m pretty much done. For now. ;0)
Posted on May 17, 2005 10:05 AM | #
7. Keith said:
David (#4) – Of course. The way I see it is that the submissions would have to be attributed. I mean, if for nothing else than that it would be just me and my likes. That doesn’t leave any room for other tates.
Posted on May 17, 2005 10:07 AM | #
8. Adrian L. said:
My initial comment wasn’t intended to be negative, though it came off that way.
I’m hardly one to take the high ground in terms of design, I’ve don’t almost nothing of note in at least a year.
It was just an observation.
Posted on May 17, 2005 10:34 AM | #
9. Keith said:
Adrian – Hey, no worries. I didn’t take it negativley and to be honest I wish I could have spent more time on the design, but I’ve just launched 3 sites in my spare time and my focus for these has been content. Maybe I’ll go back and address the design at some point, but I feel what I’ve got will hold me over a bit. ;)
Posted on May 17, 2005 01:39 PM | #
10. Jeremy Flint said:
Hey Keith - comments are all in good fun. All in good fun.
Posted on May 17, 2005 02:09 PM | #
11. Andrew Kaufmann said:
Keith – Love the Sweetness site. Great design. I’m in the camp of people that preferred the previous design of the Asterisk site, but I love that Sweetness design.
My suggestions for Sweetness would be:
1) A “Recently reviewed” navigation on the side
2) Possibly a “Recommendations coming soon” for items that you / someone recommends but hasn’t been written up yet.
(I feel stronger about the need for item 1 than item 2)
Posted on May 17, 2005 02:52 PM | #
12. Keith said:
Andrew – Good suggestions. I plan on working on things like that and did plan on a “recently reviewed” menu or something similar. I’m going to take a break from tweaking for a week or two and let things settle, but rest assured, this one is going to be a work in progress that will hopefully improve and gain focus over time.
Posted on May 17, 2005 03:24 PM | #
13. Crespo said:
I get the feeling it’s just another one of those places people present their affiliate’s links to get cash. That’s a little turnoff.
But hey, it’s a nice project, probably me being, err, me and feeling exploited.
Posted on May 17, 2005 03:34 PM | #
14. Keith said:
Crespo – I will make use of affliliate links as it’s appropriate. No hidden agenda there. I mean, why not? But I don’t plan on just adding any old thing and many of the entries won’t even have that option. It’s about things (or ideas or whatever) that I (or someone else) think are worth mentioning. If I can make a couple cents pointing that out, I’m going to and not feel too bad about it.
It’s about recommendations first and formost. The affiliate stuff isn’t even secondary.
But, hey, if you don’t like that – don’t read – no reason to feel exploited. Trust me, I don’t want anyone to feel in any way “bad” about this. But if that’s you, there isn’t much I can do. ;0)
Posted on May 17, 2005 04:15 PM | #
15. Rob said:
Damn fine idea! The Audience categorization is a good compliment to Type. I think you’ve got the integrity to keep this fun & interesting and not commercial.
Posted on May 18, 2005 10:12 AM | #
16. Rabbit said:
“The Audience categorization is a good compliment to Type.”
I totally agree. (Althoug the correct word would be “complement.”)
Posted on May 18, 2005 11:01 AM | #
17. Rabbit said:
“Althoug…”
Ouch… that’s what I get for correcting other people. :)
Posted on May 18, 2005 11:02 AM | #
18. Andrew Kaufmann said:
And then you can go on craigslist.com and spam all the gigs pages with “Write 20 reviews get $5 for each review after!”
In all seriousness, I don’t get the vibe of it being just a site to put affiliate links at all. It makes sense to give people a place to go to buy the recommended things. And there’s no shame in getting a commission from it.
Posted on May 18, 2005 12:15 PM | #
19. Keith H. said:
Damn Keith, where in the hell do you find the time. Asterisk, ipod army, sweetdex and to-done?!? I thought you already had a full-time job. Seriously though, I admire your attitude. The best way to pick up some new skills or sharpen existing ones is to dive right in. Good luck with all the experiments.
Posted on May 18, 2005 01:33 PM | #
20. Keith said:
Keith H. – And the funny thing? All of this is to help prepare me for even bigger projects! Which is all to prepare me for early retirement! ;) No seriously. I’m just a fast woker and writter. I’ve been spending quite a bit of weekend hours on this, but it’s been fun and now I’m going to take a few weekends off for fun.
It’s totally true about diving right in too!
Posted on May 18, 2005 02:38 PM | #
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