Group project idea

I would love to create a site that focuses on entertainment, food and cultural events in the U district. Two different approaches to something like this are www.flavorpill.net and www.vita.mn.

www.flavorpill.net is basically a weekly e-mail newsletter that lists different events going on the area depending on which city you choose (Seattle is not an option). You can navigate by date or by genre. There are also links to other cool sites and original features material. The site also includes cd and book reviews, as well as videos. It's well organized and the content is pretty good.

An approach I like better, however, is www.vita.mn. While flavorpill's content is mostly staff written, vita.mn gives readers control over the site by relying on user-generated content and wiki models. Vita.mn is an entertainment and food site for the Minnesota Twin Cities metropolitan area. It strives to be everything that young people in the Twin Cities area could want. Users can personalize their page, save material, create profiles and network with other users, in addition to writing reviews and rating movies, restaurants and other venues in the region. Users can even read and edit Minnesota guides. Users can also tag items, though that doesn't seem to be quite as popular. I think this model would be a great starting point for an entertainment site in the UW area.

A question for all you Seattleites (especially UW grads): What are the entertainment sites that people already use? Are there any specifically focused on the U district? I did a google search and the only Seattle calendar I found remotely navigable and interesting was The Stranger's www.thestranger.com/seattle/Calendar. Though it doesn't look like there is any user-generated content there either.

Interoperability of IM
For instant messaging to be useful to an individual, friends of that individual must use a compatible instant messaging service. It's interesting that Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN Messenger) now allows e-mails from hotmail, msn, yahoo and even gmail. Maybe there's more I'm missing. I'm not sure. Because it allows more people to participate it is likely more useful and will be adopted more quickly. It's certainly more convenient to only need one messenger. Though it may be more difficult for improvements in the technology to be adopted if there is not competition from other services. On the other hand, having more resources could push the company to continue to improve its messaging technology.

IMs can occasionally be more confusing than e-mails. Sometimes two different conversations are going on at once. You're trying to answer a question one person asked while the other person is starting to go on to another topic and all of a sudden - you have two different conversations going on! Also, people tend to be less thorough when explaining topics via IM so it could take longer to get the information across after three or four clarifying questions have been asked.