MakeUseOf » wishlist

Get Social With Collaborative Lists On ListGeeks

Nancy Messieh — Sun, 15 May 2011 22:30:00 +0000

If you’re a fan of making lists and want to turn it into a social affair, ListGeeks has the perfect set up for you. ListGeeks is the ultimate site where you can get your list-making fix, while also keeping up with other people who are just like you. The site takes a simple approach, simply create as many collaborative lists as you want to, share them with other users, and encourage other users to create similar lists of their own.

Since ListGeeks really does label itself as a social site, you won’t find any way to make your lists private. All of your lists and comments are public, shared with all other ListGeek users. If you like the idea of creating lists but are looking for a more elaborate social network site, where your lists are illustrated with photos, be sure to check out Pinterest.

After signing up for a free account, you can get to creating your first list straight away.

Each item on the list can be accompanied by a URL.

Once you’ve completed and saved your list, it will be visible on your profile, and you can also share your list, or other people’s lists for that matter, via Twitter or Facebook. You can also give and receive comments on lists.

You can delve into the social aspect of ListGeeks in either one of two ways. You can either browse the lists that have been posted, by popularity, date or take the staff picks.

Or you can choose to browse other Geeks by most recently active or most active.

You can then choose to follow other users, and a list of their latest lists will be visible in a personalised feed.

You’ll find that there are little numbers accompanying the title of each list. The first number represents the number of people you follow who have done so. The second number represents the number of people on the site who have created their own version of the list.

If you want to create your own version of someone else’s list, when you open it, you will be presented with a space to create your own list using the same time.

You can also scroll through all the available versions of the list by selecting Everyone and then using the arrows above the list to navigate.

Lastly, you can edit your own profile through Settings. You can add a picture, select a color that will always be used for each of your lists, add your name, location, website and a short bio. The color you select for your profile is the color that will be used for all of your lists.

ListGeeks is built on a simple premise and for that reason it works. It doesn’t claim to be more than a site where you can go and create lists. While other sites, like Amazon for example, have this feature built into their services, sometimes all you need is a place to create lists.

ListGeeks can also prove to be quite inspirational if you want it to be. It can be a great way of finding inspiration for your writing, inspiration for things you should try and haven’t done before, or even just a great place to see what makes other people tick.

What site do you use to create collaborative lists? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Flickr

7 Online Wishlists to Help You This Holiday Season

Ann Smarty — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:01:14 +0000

How well are you prepared for the holiday season? Giving and receiving presents is the most exciting part of any holiday. But it can turn into the real headache.

How do you manage your wish lists? How do you make sure each of your friends and relatives will not be forgotten? How do you organize your own plans?

Let’s see how you can turn into a professional “gift giver” with these web-based wishlists that will help you organize things you want to receive, things you plan to give and thing you dream of but don’t dare to ask for:

	Browser Addon	Registration process	Best Feature
BoxedUp	FireFox, Safari, Explorer (bookmarklets)	no email confirmation needed, instant login	Create your wishlist flash widget to display at your site
GiftHat.com	FireFox, Safari, Explorer , Opera (bookmark)	no email confirmation needed, instant login	Import your Amazon wish list
GifTag.com	FireFox addon	email confirmation required	Create and store the product page screenshots with a handy browser extension
Your-Wishlist.com	No	no email confirmation needed, instant login	Choose your wishlist theme and graphics
WishListr.com	Bookmarklet	no email confirmation needed	Import your wish lists from Amazon and Delicious
GiftBoxHome.com	No	no email confirmation needed, instant login	Set the gift priority
Kaboodle.com	FireFox addon	email verification required	Enjoy a really fast and easy gift submission process with the browser addon

BoxedUp has a clear interface and allows for a number of nice features:

sort your products by Wishlists and by Status (“things I want”, “things I have”);
add favorite places you like to shop;
add friends and join communities of like-minded people.

What’s more, the service offers you the chance to create your wishlist flash widget to display at your site or page to let all your friends see what you want to get for the holidays.

GiftHat also has some similar basic features; though it lacks that pretty design of BoxedUp. The tool also lets you import your Amazon wish list.

Like GiftHat, WishListr also provides a convenient importing option (it allows you to import wishlists from Amazon and Delicious).

Your-Wishlist let you add products only from their own database but they have introduced a few fun options. For example, have fun choosing your wishlist theme and graphics.

GiftBoxHome is another good service that among other handy features also allows to set the gift priority.

GifTag offers a handy FireFox addon (which is required to add the items to your wishlist). The extension adds the product page screenshot and let’s you easily organize your multiple wishlists. Besides, it lets you quickly send the gift page to your friend (to make sure your friend knows what you want to receive).

Kaboodle is the most advanced gift organizing tool that also offers a FireFox addon. It grabs the product page information and leaves you almost no work.

It also allows you to sort the gifts by category (my favorite one was “If I Had One Million Dollars” one).

How do you get prepared for the holiday season? Have you already created your wishlist? How do you organize your gifting?

Keep Track of Wish and Gift Lists with Kaboodle

Tina Sieber — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:01:49 +0000

It’s September and supermarkets are rolling out their Christmas goods: gingerbread, stollen, cookies, and more. Ridiculous, isn’t it? What’s even more ridiculous is that some of these delicacies will expire before Christmas. Anyways, maybe this is a good time to think about presents and collect ideas both for what you would like to receive and what you could possibly buy as a gift for others.

Kaboodle is a handy tool that can help you save and remember items you found online, organize them in lists, which in turn can be made public and shared with others. More generally it can also be used to collect information, but there may be better tools available for this task.

Nicely hidden at the very bottom of every page is the option to “Get the Buttons “. What they mean is “Get the Extension”, which at this point is available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. I’ll focus on the Firefox extension here.

Once the extension is installed and Firefox is restarted, you can enable the Kaboodle Toolbar. Right-click into an empty spot of any toolbar in Firefox and set a checkmark in front of the “Kaboodle Toolbar”.
Instead of activating the whole toolbar, you can also take the single buttons and place them wherever you like. Right-click into an empty spot of any toolbar in Firefox and select “Customize” from the menu. Then drag and drop the Kaboodle buttons into a desired location, for example on the Navigation toolbar.

Now that your browser is Kaboodle compatible, you can add items with the click of a button. This will work on any website. When you click “Add to Kaboodle” or the respective button, the extension will extract information and open a menu that lets you fix the details or add more information manually. If the spontaneous extraction doesn’t look right, click “fix details” at the bottom and you will be able to select another image, define your own, enter a custom title, change the description and add highlights.

Clicking “Submit” will of course add the item to the list you picked and it will take you right back to the original website.

Back in Kaboodle you can do a lot more than just manage your items and lists. There is a whole network available through which users can share their lists, recommendations or ideas. You can add friends, join groups, follow specific brands, and much more.

Personally, I have decided to keep it simple and am maintaining only three lists: ‘gathered’, ‘wish list’ and ‘gift list’.

Talking about gifts and wishlists brings to my head a couple of other MakeUseOf articles.

- Need a Personal Shopper? Amazon Watcher does the Work for You
- Go Gift Shopping with Amazon Gift Central

Where are you keeping your wish list and how do you acquire gift ideas?