It’s been a mere five months since my last update on here, which means that for five months, there’s basically nothing that tickled my fancy. But, this changed a few weeks ago, when I started testing Glue.
Developed by Adaptive Blue, this Firefox plugin is what you want when you’re interested in movies, books, music, restaurants and a few other things Glue can work with. Adaptive Blue is also the creator of the BlueOrganizer, which worked similarly, but is being discontinued in favour of Glue.
After signing up and installing Glue, whenever you are browsing sites Glue can work with, a little toolbar automagically appears at the top of your screen. Like this:
You’re then presented with all the other people who’ve recently looked at what you’re looking at. It may not sound too exciting, but surfing Amazon, Librarything or IMDB (which are among the rather extensive number of supported sites) is a whole lot more fun with Glue.
And it’s of actual use too. You may see that someone who is interested in Palahniuk’s “Choke” is also interested in a book called “Zombie” by one Joyce Carol Oates. And incidentally, “Zombie” is just as sick and twisted as “Choke”, so you’ve just been alerted to yet another sick and twisted book you can add to your reading list.
Glue does not have, what some people in the know call a “destination site”, meaning there’s no website where your and all the others’ activities are displayed. Which isn’t necessarily a downside, since it removes the need to keep going back to a site to see what all the others are doing (like, say, Facebook). It’s all there, right inside the plugin, baby.
The plugin also adds something to your browser that looks like a bookmarklet. It contains the most important links, not least the one to the things you’ve saved, or liked, as they call it:
The plugin of course integrates with, among others, Twitter and Facebook, lets you perform searches on the items saved and, since Monday, also has a sleek little iPhone app.
And apart from other similar tools that let you save and comment on various items, Glue is actually really smart. Even though it supports a plethora of websites for every sub-section, like Amazon and LibraryThing for books, or IMDB and Wikipedia for movies, the item you save is always recognized as a single one. Meaning that when you save “Choke” from Amazon and someone else from LibraryThing, you’ve still saved the same thing and Glue displays it as such. This, Ladies and Gentleman, is how semantic shit is supposed to work! And if you don’t know what I mean, just try it out already, will you?
Glue’s installation website contains a little FAQ and a Quick Start guide, which holds a bit of information on the sites supported by Glue. Check it out!
Oh, and since I just can’t shut up, here’s what I would like to see in Glue in the future: The ability to not only “like” stuff in order to save it, but also to just mark stuff and put it into certain categories, like “I wanna” or “I hate” or “I don’t know why I’m saving this, but it looks like sometime maybe I want to get back to it”.
RT @fraser I love this: “This, Ladies and Gentleman, is how semantic shit is supposed to work!” http://bit.ly/wu2U
I love this: “This, Ladies and Gentleman, is how semantic shit is supposed to work!” http://bit.ly/wu2U
It?s been 5 months since I updated. For 5 months nothing has tickled my fancy. This changed when I started testing Glue. http://bit.ly/wu2U
It?s been a mere five months since my last update on here … But, this changed … when I started testing Glue. http://tinyurl.com/63m9pa
Apparently someone didn’t do their homework… or just lacks integrity.
There is already a product named Glue since 2006. http://gluenow.com
Sounds like a great product but stealing a product name is not cool.
Richard, great review of Glue. I also wrote a review about Glue a few weeks ago. Great stuff…and you’ll love it’s iPhone counterpart.
This is me on Glue -
http://bit.ly/steffanantonas
See you around the web!
@Jordan Unfortunately, the current version of the website you pointed me to doesn’t contain a lot of information. I guess it is not very similar to what Glue does?
As for the name, Glue is a standard dictionary word. I doubt you can talk about stealing a name in that case.
@Steffan Thanks, I think we’re already friends on Glue
Richard,
I can send you a page with much more information along with our 10 minute demo video if you really want to see it.
How about I go and start a blog called “Stormgrass”. I’m sure you wouldn’t think it appropriate either.
Actually AdaptiveBlue made a product very similar to what Glue does. at least it’s in the same “space”. Of course during our rebuild we’ve taken down a lot of the information. but here’s a video of a 10 minute demo I put together before the rebuild… which is temporarily stored on my wifes server
http://seattlecattledog.com/glue_overview_iphone.m4v
It’s a moot point that there is little information on our site now.
Richard – Another link if you need it: http://seattlecattledog.com/glue_overview.mov
Since 2006… that’s all I am saying.
@Jordan I’ll check out the video, thanks.
As to the naming. Of course I wouldn’t like it, since Stormgrass is not a word found in any dictionary, it’s a word I made up (with quite a funny backstory too, actually. If you’re interested, I can relate the story to you sometime).
And regarding the lack of information, there’s not anything else I was implying except that there’s little information on the site. So even if I had, as you call it “done my homework”, the most it would’ve added to the review was the sentence “Apparently there already is a product out there by the name of Glue, I don’t know what it does, but just in case you’re interested”.
Since it says on your website, that “glue” is a trademark of your company, a naming dispute with Adaptive Blue would fall into legal territory, in which I’m about as well versed as I am in rocket science (actually, I think even about that I know more). So, to stress another phrase, you’re barking up the wrong tree.