I think the universal wishlist function on Amazon.com is kind of clunky in an ugly kind of way. Plus, I discovered that the universal wishlist function suffers the same malady as the regular wishlist where products disappear from Amazon.com and you’re left with a mysterious slot in your wishlist that just says “no longer available” or some such; then, if you have a terrible short term memory like myself, because there’s no kind of notation as to what it was, you have no idea what it was that you wanted or needed.
I know what you’re going to say. If you can’t remember what it was, then you didn’t need it. That’s easy for anyone to say who doesn’t have a brain like a seive.
So, I looked around and found a universal wishlist called ThingsIWant.com. I really liked it because you could make multiple lists and make some public and some private. So I was able to have a private list to keep track of gift ideas because I have family that is impossible to shop for and I have to come up with a better present than the last one every single time. It’s not easy topping myself. I’ve come up with some really good stuff. Then I was able to sort the stuff I want/need into lists like “Books I Want To Read”, “Things I Want For The House” (which included organizational tools, gardening decor, furniture, a mattress I need to buy before I have guests, etc), “Things I Won’t Buy For Myself” (which included jewelry, pet clothes, and frivolous things that I really liked but couldn’t justify buying), “Things I’ll Probably Buy” (which was things I probably should get like a car battery jumper, binders to store CDs in, etc), and “Things I’d Like to Wear. It had a nifty bookmarklet too that I added to my web browser and whenever I saw something on a website I liked, I clicked it and it would add the information with photo, price, description and I could add a note if I wanted. I was pleased as punch. Plus, even my parents were able to figure it out — it took them 5 years to figure out Amazon.com and 1 month to figure out the universal wishlist.
I feel now is a good time to remind my good readers and friends that it’s always important to have a back up of your own data, particularly if you are relying on someone else to host it (store it) for you.
About two weeks ago, cyber-gremlins ate my wishlist. Well, not just my wishlist. The whole wishlist website. Everything everyone wanted and wished for has simply slipped away like pixels in the cyber-wind. For a few days, the website had a message up that they were experiencing technical difficulty related to hardware and would be back by Friday. However, Friday passed. Then another Friday passed. Then not even that message was there.
I can access some of my wishlist via Google cache but most of it is lost and somewhere in the fog of my mind it’s just out of my fingers’ reach. I think I’m most upset about my lost list of NPR-recommended reading. Though I’d like to know where I saw that copper pig garden waterer…
I’ve spent the last week trying to find a plugin, a web-based application I can install, a firefox add-on, a software program, anything I can use and host myself that will allow me to create a universal wishlist with all of that information and be able to share it with my family at some point when they ask. I’m surprised the only ones I can find are the ones you have to join and store all of your info on their sites. No crafty programmers have gotten wise and created their own private wishlist zone yet.
If I had the time…
That’s the first thing on my wishlist right after having my list of NPR-reading back in my virtual hands.
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