The community is very important. But there's something to be said for the ability to filter properly - there was a blog post on HN recently discussing how aggregate sites end up with the lowest common denominator. What ends up on the first page is only a small % of the submissions that are actually interesting. I probably miss half of the stories that I would like just because they fall off before I even see them.
The question is, how do you figure out what's interesting to who? Joel is attempting to answer this for himself. A site that could answer it for everyone while still somehow maintaining social bonds would do very well I think.
Absolutely... the spirit of reducing waste and consumerism is admirable, but this guy is being ridiculous by claiming that he only owns "15 things". Not only is he missing the point, but his hyperbole is out of control. A toiletry kit is 1 item? Right.
Tasker for Android can do all of the things mentioned in the post to create a "bedroom mode", plus much, much more:
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/index.html
(on Android market too but the direct version is cheaper)
It's like a GUI scripting engine for your phone. Very similar to Locale, but you don't have to pony up for extra plugins to do fancy stuff. Well worth the asking price.
I'll second this suggestion. In my experience so far, webapp2 is a great way to get beyond some of the stranger idiosyncrasies of the default webapp without being overwhelmed or completely throwing away the benefits of Google's extensive documentation. If you like an extension or modified feature, use it. If not, do the way Google tells you to and it'll work just fine.
If you use nothing else, the extended routing functionality and lazy loading of handlers are big improvements and are pretty painless to implement.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback trb. The site is targeting a fairly specific market... basically, people who are planning events that normally have gift-giving associated with them. Weddings, baby showers, engagement parties, and the like. It's common practice to make a gift list somewhere so that people know what you want. I could probably do a better job of immediately communicating that on the site.
I'm most definitely not a designer by trade, so the typography tips are much appreciated.
The question is, how do you figure out what's interesting to who? Joel is attempting to answer this for himself. A site that could answer it for everyone while still somehow maintaining social bonds would do very well I think.