Category Archives: Rants & Raves

Why, Yes, that WAS 43 Things on the Amazon Home Page

Posted on December 28, 2010 by | Leave a comment

If you visited Amazon any time in the past couple of days, you may have seen an ad on the home page touting our New Year’s Resolution feature.

43 Things ad on the Amazon home page

Toot toot, as they say. We worked hard on this feature and are happy to see it get a little love. We hope you like it, too.

And in case you’d like to see it, here’s the link to Jackie Warner’s suggested resolution.

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Posted in Highlights, Rants & Raves, The Office, Thoughts

Be thankful on 43 Things

Posted on November 24, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, we decided to make a blog post highlighting some of the “thankful” goals that people are doing on 43 Things:

  • Give thanks – hopefully everyone will do some of this at dinner tomorrow.
  • Thank my parents – especially if you’re eating dinner at their house! Either way, they brought you into the world so would a phone call kill you?
  • Thank god – for the monotheistic folks out there. Everyone else can thank luck, the stars, the gods, mother earth, flying spaghetti monster, etc.
  • Be more thankful – couldn’t hurt to be more thankful on a day-to-day basis.
  • Identify 100 things that make me happy besides money – it’s a proven fact that expressing gratitude on a daily basis makes you a happier person.
  • Volunteer – if you ever think things aren’t going well for you in life, just volunteer a couple hours at a homeless shelter. It’ll put your problems into perspective and you’ll help out others in the process.

Have a happy and thankful Thanksgiving from all of us at The Robot Co-op!

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Posted in Rants & Raves, Thoughts

What are we all working on?

Posted on November 21, 2004 by | 3 Comments

43 Things user Noah Mittman shares his list and these kind words about what we are trying to do.

The nice thing about 43 Things is that while the collaborative pieces are growing organically in the new folksonomy model of Flickr, delicious, and the like, the product itself is growing organically as one of the developers writes, this development is being done in stages, and one of the major stages is asking people what the tool should be. I’m not sure anything like this has happened before, even in the realm of open-source software.

43 Things is just another sign of the new breed of internet user who seeks not only community but also aggregation. It’s not enough we want to see our data, but we want to see how many other people share our data. It’s a strictly objective way of seeing how we belong beyond meatspace. It’s also a further extension of how we innately like to work with others, because 43 Things is a simple enough idea which is easily duplicated. However, the authors are being transparent in the development of the tool, so it’s extremely comfortable for us to put our interest into the site and see how it evolves. Over time we will feel a shared ownership in the result, and huzzah, you have a regular user base with real attachment to the site, and a site that assuredly answers the needs of its users.

Thanks Noah! It is inspriring to hear from folks who see the potential in this idea and this way of working.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and hopes for 43 Things drop us a line at robots@robotcoop.com or better yet, post your list on your blog with some ideas to share.

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Posted in Rants & Raves