A shout-out to some cool product blogs.

Lately, I’ve been adding a lot of products to the site drawing upon some of the more popular product and/or consumer blogs. I thought I would give a brief synopsis on some of my favourites.

productdose.com – www.productdose.com

My first experience with this site is when it was posted on digg a few months back when it featured some cool geek watches. productdose.com is a blend of high-tech gadgetry and exceptional style. They typically post 10 or so products each day and they almost never disappoint. I love productdose.com!

Gizmodo – www.gizmodo.com

The gadgets weblog. They focus mostly on technology products (mp3 players, televisions, PDAs), while keeping the site interesting by trying to showcase cool, less-techy items. The Tylenol Flavor Creator instantly comes to mind. Gizmodo never ceases to amaze me as they post tons of products everyday (tonnes for those who live in the commonwealth). Check out Lifehacker too (sister-site)!

Techie Diva – www.techiediva.com

I recently came across this blog, and I think they are pretty new. There is definitely more of a female perspective to the products listed on this site, and you are far more likely to see pink. Lately, I’ve seen some pretty fashionable cell phones listed on Techie Diva. I think the juxtaposition is what initially caught my attention.

Engadget – www.engadget.com

You aren’t likely to find fashion here. Engadget is strictly gadgets: cell phones, PDAs, laptops, UMPCs, and robots. This is a very popular gadget blog and there is pretty much a steady stream of new doohickeys to be talked about. They also post some useful guides and off-beat stories.

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You can access lists of products posted on these blogs using the ProductWiki tags: productdose, gizmodo, techie diva, engadget.

Happy Victoria Day, fellow canucks!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Lighting is something that a lot of people never really think about. We think of lighting as functional - the Sun's gone down, let's turn on the lights! However, it's one of the most important features in movies, and surprisingly, video games.

The intensity of lighting is also key when you're at home. How many people like having super-bright halogen lights shining on them right before bed? Actually, I do, but I know I'm alone on that one. The biggest mistake we might make with lighting is buying lights for the sole purpose of functionality, while ignoring the design of the lamp itself. I've been adding a lot of beautiful lamps to the site, here are some that I've particularly liked:

However, my favourite, by far, is this beauty.

It's actually a piece of furniture! How incredible is that? I'd love to put my feet up on a glowing box. Imagine how cool it would be to have a clear-glass drink back lit.

ProductWiki so far...

Having recently completed some major development efforts, I think it's a good time to share with you charts and graphs demonstrating where we are. As you may already know, we launched in beta on November 25th with a completely clean sheet (0 products, 0 categories, 0 users). We've been up and growing for almost six months, and it's been a wild ride so far and are proud to have 3900 products listed on our site categorized with descriptions and photos.

Categorized Supply and Demand

ProductWiki is a hierarchy of product categories, and the following graph looks at number of products (in orange), and the popularity (in blue) of our main categories. Popularity is measured as the number of page views per day of content contained in each category.

Categories: Products (orange) vs. Popularity (blue)

It's interesting to look at this chart as a measure of supply-and-demand. For example, the fashion, sports & outdoors, and auto & vehicles categories have disproportionately high page views compared to the number of products listed. This could mean there is relatively high demand for this content on the web. Conversely, media (CDs, DVDs, and books), and computers show an opposite trend. This shouldn't come as a surprise as the Internet is saturated with computer and media products because of sites like Amazon.com and Newegg.

Growing the Catalog

We use the number of products listed on the site as the preferred metric for determining the size of the wiki (Wikipedia and most other wikis use the number of articles). The following graph plots the number of products cataloged on the site as a function of time since the beta launch.

Products Cataloged over Time (since the beginning)

We started out with rapid growth that has subsequently slowed to a steady linear growth. If there is any one thing that I would like to see improved would be product count growth rate. We have released a new bookmarklet tool that makes it a lot easier (and fun!) to add products to the site.

A Brief History of Time

The Internet is a very public place. Using Alexa's data, anyone can get a ballpark figure on how much traffic any given site sees. I've decided to provide a narrative timeline of the most significant public events to date in the history of ProductWiki.

A timeline of events courtesy of Alexaholic courtesy of Alexa

1. Launch, Nov. 25th, 2005 - ProductWiki launches in beta with a completely empty wiki. It was really a site to see, and the feeling here at HQ was one of hope and exhaustion. Coincidentally, Amazon also launches a "ProductWiki" feature on their site. Read more.

2. Xbox Modding on Digg, Feb. 15th, 2006 - I spent several hours writing an article that summarized all of the information about modifying your Xbox to run Xbox Media Center and it became hugely popular on Digg and the blogosphere. Hundreds (if not thousands) of community members have successfully completed the guide and the response has been amazing!

3. Spain gets into ProductWiki, Mar. 8th, 2006 - ProductWiki mentioned on some significant Spanish websites such as genbeta and meneame.net (think Spanish Digg).

4. Review on Mashable, Mar. 23rd, 2006 - Pete Cashmore of Mashable reviews ProductWiki. He provided us with a valuable perspective and some useful criticism.

5. ShopWiki launch in NY Times, April 24th, 2006 - Our nearest competitor, ShopWiki, is mentioned in a reasonably popular New York Times article. Since we are so similarly related, there is an echo effect in our traffic. Although at the surface we may seem like very similar sites, we believe that there are significant differences in our fundamentals. Read more here.

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Phew! That's where things stand right now in a nutshell. We're hoping to see a lot more growth in the coming months, and I think I'll make it a regular thing to report that growth here on this blog.

We've got a new welcome page.

We're happy to have just released our new welcome page to ProductWiki. We feel that our website has a lot to offer and great potential, and we wanted to make sure that some of our best features are visible. Our "old" homepage is still visible at www.productwiki.com/home/ and is still an integral part of our site, serving more as a hub to our content.

I've compiled a list of some of the top ten things you may not have known you could do on (or with) ProductWiki:

10. Ask questions or get advice using discussions.
Whereever you are on the site you are always one click away from starting a discussion. If you want to know where you can buy Finnish mustard, just ask.

9. Maintain personal product lists.
We have a widget on all of our product pages called the "quadrus". The quadrus allows you to "tap" products as "love it", "want it", "have it" or anything else. The products you tap will show up on your user page so that you can take a look at them whenever you want. Read more about it.

8. See what other members have saved to their lists.
If you can tap products, then so can everyone else. If you want to see what other people are adding to their lists, just take a look at their user pages. Have a look at some stuff that I want to get my hands on.

7. Submit your own personal photos of products.
Do you own anything that is listed in our site? Why not share an actual image of the products, because real photos can be very useful when someone is trying to figure out if a product is really good. Perhaps you could show a birdfeeder in action.

6. Edit product / category descriptions.
As mentioned in the previous post, whenever you see a yellow rounded box (a la Web 2.0 style) with the words "edit this page", it means you can edit that page (whoa!). If you find a spelling mistake, change it. If you want to expand a description, do it!

5. Add new categories.
You may not realize that even our hierarchy (a fancy word for organization) is editable. If you are an expert in drill presses, then add the category. Again, look for the "edit this page" link.

4. Edit your "About" page.
There is no better way to tell the community than to write a little blurb about yourself. Be creative if you like.

3. Publish a list of products on your blog / website / myspace.
For those of you that are web inclined, you can put your list of products (see #9) anywhere on your personal web spaces. Read how to do it here.

2. Search for products and content using different criteria to narrow your search.
Looking for a new dress? Why not look for a strap-less, knee-length dress? Or, if you are looking for community stuff, take a look at all content related to grooming for example? You can filter stuff on ProductWiki by making selections from the left menu accessible on all category pages.

1. Add products using a bookmarklet.
Finally, the number one thing that you may or may not have known you could do on ProductWiki is add products with our bookmarklet tool. If you are browsing around the web and you find an interesting product, you can add it to ProductWiki with a single-click. Read how to install the bookmarklet, and you are off to the races.

We are in the midst of working on this last feature to make it easier, faster, and a more effective tool. We are hoping to roll it up into a Firefox extension soon.