lists, sets and everything nice

Lists and sets, 2 very simple concepts but at the core of many many computer programs.

I simply love the idea behind listphile

Listphile is a powerful tool for organizing and collaborating around structured information. Call it a database tool, if you will (but please don't scare anyone away).

Listphile was borne of curiosity, and the belief that we learn more effectively when we have a framework for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Simple, yet opens up a whole new world for developing mashups. I have a couple of prototypes written in .Net that does something similar => get a list of stuff and simply make it consumable via RSS. Originally i wanted to use it together with in Mashup with Google sets to create basic catalogues that are ready for use in rapid prototyping (Think of it as sample Northwind database on RSS crack :P). But Listphile did it and added in a dash of collaboration, really cool.

The potential for growth in this is immense, imagine a nice list of blogs, eating places etc, before mashing it up with geotags, they can be used by dropdown boxes to query it live instead of either coding it in the html pages or generating it off a stored database. I have always personally felt that there should be a repository for generic list information for things like countries, cities, last names etc. The other aspect that this can really take off is in the area of metadata. One of the problem with metadata as Cory Doctorow mentions

People are stupid - Even when there's a positive benefit to creating good metadata, people steadfastly refuse to exercise care and diligence in their metadata creation.

Take eBay: every seller there has a damned good reason for double-checking their listings for typos and misspellings. Try searching for "plam" on eBay. Right now, that turns up nine typoed listings for "Plam Pilots." Misspelled listings don't show up in correctly-spelled searches and hence garner fewer bids and lower sale-prices. You can almost always get a bargain on a Plam Pilot at eBay.

Constrain the metadata to a collaborative list that is managed by a community will certainly be the first step to better metadata and eventually a more semantic web.