"A library book, I imagine, is a happy book." Cornelia Funke

"Everything puts me in mind of a story." Ben Franklin

Monday, April 28, 2014

Backtracking to Thing 4: Keeping Up


"Zite is a smart personal magazine in that it knows what you like. When you build your Zite magazine, you tell Zite about what you like and it populates your magazine. Then it tracks what you read and continues to populate your magazine with things it thinks you may like."

This was fun to set up.  I began by identifying my  general interests in Gardening, History, Arts and Culture, Fashion, Hair and Beauty. I got a little deeper and now have 38 interests. I just re-opened the app and it brought up such potential hits as "Rethinking the plain old geranium, with shady hill," "Ikea Billy Bookcase Hack," "A Passion for Books: 35 Children's Books about Reading, Libraries and Librarians," and "Interesting Vintage Pictures of Female Students from 1920s to 1950s." It also turned up such misses as "Nicole Ritchie," "DJ E-Z Rock of 'It Takes Two' Fame Dead at 46," and "George Clooney is Engaged."

I appreciate that you can thumbs up or down the articles. We will have to see if that really improves the content match for me. Will I really use this app? ...Maybe. It seems fun, but will the articles really be helpful/entertaining enough to keep me hooked?

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