It has begun.
August 22, 2009
Well, ok, it’s been going on for a couple of hours now. jbr is furiously coding Sharelocally for Rails Rumble. I, on the other hand, have just begun recording his effort. (^_^)/ Hi, I’m oakese, cofounder of Stormweight Systems.
Sharelocally has been percolating for awhile. I’ll confess, we’re both slightly crunchy, very thrifty, and totally averse to waste. Spurred by the recession, Sharelocally sprung out of those tendencies. It’s a site where you can list items you’re willing to lend, and view items that others within a certain radius from your location are lending. Anonymity is preserved until both parties have approved information sharing, though you’ll also be able to share with friends on the site, people in your network who’s profiles you can see. Sharelocally tracks who has what, and takes care of return notifications so you don’t have to feel like you’re nagging anyone. Users accrue lending karma and borrowing karma, scores that let others know how responsible they’ve been — sort of like a buyer/seller’s rating.
I’m excited about this app because its usefulness is so immediately appealing. For instance, my house has about 25 ft^2 of carpet, not really enough to justify buying a vacuum. Still, it needs to be cleaned occasionally. I know someone in the neighborhood has got a vacuum. And I’m neck deep in esoteric cooking implements and appliances that I only use every once in awhile. Handheld electric blender, anyone? Cake pan shaped like a trout?
We picked Sharelocally from amongst a pile of ideas that have been accruing over the past six months. jbr’s been busy hacking away at Stormweight, our startup, a web app that facilitates group decision making through collaborative brainstorming and preferential ranking. Essentially groups pour a bunch of ideas in to Stormweight, each person ranks them as they like them, and the app gives back an ordered list of the groups favorites.
Fortunately, we designed Stormweight for projects just like Rails Rumble. jbr dumped all of his ideas into a Stormweight list and invited the usual suspects. A few of us chimed in with our own ideas, we had a heated debate about their respective merits, we ranked, and Sharelocally came out on top. jbr will use Stormweight throughout the weekend to gather advice, help, and constructive criticism from his far flung posse of collaborators.
I’ll be blogging over the weekend with updates on how Sharelocally is shaping up, so please come back and check out our progress. You can also follow developments live on twitter. We’ll both be tweeting as @sharelocally.
