I wrote some code for the first time in a long time today… well other than the occasional code I write at work. It was fun. I truly enjoyed it, and though it was never employed on a live version of Lopico I really like working with jquery. Today I was prototyping an interface for building out navigation, which I intend to use for something work related, though I probably can’t say much more than that. As I was writing code though, I started to think (naturally) about the unfinished version of Lopico that I started last year. So, I looked at it a little bit, and even took care of a bug. I’d love to get back to Lopico… but it’s probably never going to happen. I’ve decided to limit myself to one outside-of-work project at a time and right now that’s the novel that I’m working on. When that’s done (which feels close, but also really far), I’ll likely work on a new site, but not Lopico. It’s really a matter of finding the right opportunities at the right time. While I think Lopico could still work, I don’t think that at this time, it’s where I would best utilize my time and talents.
Maybe… One of the ideas that I have for a post-novel website is local focused… but it would mean completely scrapping all of the lopico architecture if I decided that was what Lopico would be about. Still local, but with a drastic (less-business) focus. I’m seeing a lot of opportunity in local, but not in the review space. I don’t think that there’s anything on the web that really does a good job of organizing people into geographic groups in the same way that we associate those geographies in real life. If I tell someone that I’m from Chicago, and they ask me about it, I’m not going to start mentioning reviews of restaurants… but there are a lot of other things that I could say and share about the city and specifically about my neighborhood. Hyperlocal, it’s called, but I’m thinking it stretches beyond what we commonly see. I think it stretches into people having a real need to access local information in better ways than what’s currently available.
And there’s something that I want to do with bookmarking that I think needs to be done. Delicious revolutionized the concept of bookmarking (and maybe kicked off web 2.0 in the process), but it’s been more or less at a standstill sense. The way that people interact with their bookmarks is fine, but it could be better.
But before I get to all that… I’ve got a novel to finish (more on that soon).