For some reason, in the early days of the web, email seemed like a logical choice to get input from users.
The first time I tried to have users fill out a form, what I did was that I sent them an exe file which contained a windows application that showed a form and saved the replies to a file. In the email I asked users to send me back that file. But no matter how I worded the email, 50% of users sent me back the exe file instead.
That problem was what triggered me to learn about server side code and databases.
And when that worked, it hit me: I could make a form that asked users about their favorite bands and suggest them new bands right away. This way the system would learn about all the bands of the world on its own and become better and better in suggesting music. This is how Gnoosic [1] was born. Later I adapted it for movies and called that Gnovies [2]. And for literature and called that Gnooks [3].
All 3 are still alive and keep learning every day:
I really really love this, but it would benefit tremendously from one simple, but maybe not easy to implement, feature: movie posters. For someone like me who watches A LOT of movies, it’s sometimes hard to remember a movie based on its title alone, and seeing the official movie poster would make it so much easier.
But I guess implementing this would take away a lot of the current implementation‘s simplicity? Are these available without violating copyright left and right? Is there even a straightforward way to map movie titles to, say, their primary IMDB poster image?
As with many such sites I've used in the past, there are some issues with the data. Gnooks suggested one author, then the same author, but with a typo in the name. Gnoosic suggested Procol Harum, then it suggested A Whiter Shade of Pale (which is the title of the song most associated with Procol Harum).
And of course if your input form gives the user any help when they are filling it out, then you can run in to a problem where users choose ABBA more often than Aerosmith or Argent, (more often than they would have), based just on how ABBA is presented first alphabetically.
I got around this issue by not giving any help; the user was presented with a form with blanks for five artist and song name pairs. Which resulted in a crazy amount of typos, which I fixed “by hand” using a pretty lame interface since I wasn’t a good enough programmer to create a better way in 1996. I spent a LOT of time correcting typos.
Hey, cool to meet someone who went down a similar avenue. BubbleRings also looks like a real fun startup.
It used to be a form without typeaheads for years on Gnoosic too.
I never manually fixed typos, but I have put quite some work into making the system figure them out on its own. For example by asking people "Hey, you entered 'The Beatled' which sounds a lot like the popular band 'The Beatles'. Could it be you meant 'The Beatles'?" and then offering buttons for yes/no etc.
Oh, that’s a great discovery to make. Enjoy! And if you’re into interesting backstories on musicians, make sure to check out how and why she makes music, it’s both tragic and very peculiar.
The first time I tried to have users fill out a form, what I did was that I sent them an exe file which contained a windows application that showed a form and saved the replies to a file. In the email I asked users to send me back that file. But no matter how I worded the email, 50% of users sent me back the exe file instead.
That problem was what triggered me to learn about server side code and databases.
And when that worked, it hit me: I could make a form that asked users about their favorite bands and suggest them new bands right away. This way the system would learn about all the bands of the world on its own and become better and better in suggesting music. This is how Gnoosic [1] was born. Later I adapted it for movies and called that Gnovies [2]. And for literature and called that Gnooks [3].
All 3 are still alive and keep learning every day:
[1] https://www.gnoosic.com
[2] https://www.gnovies.com
[3] https://www.gnooks.com