Ten Minutes With Wakoopa May 2, 2007

What is it: Wakoopa is “software gone social” — a sort of software equivalent of Last.fm. Share with the world what software you’re using and see what other people are using too. Official version here.

Executive summary: Very geeky, but kind of compelling.

My tenminut.es: Straightforward registration, you need to download a very small applet (Windows and Mac) which will then monitor what software you use. You can see this quickly take shape in a list in your profile:

Those programs in the list with an icon next to them link to a dedicated page containing information put together by other users about the software in question, including a link to the program’s own website, and any reviews that may have been written by other Wakoopaites:

If nothing has been written on the subject you can start the ball rolling. Beyond that you can add contacts, teams and reviews to your profile, building an ad hoc network of fellow software users. The idea here is that, as with music, individual usage and recommendations will be aggregated, allowing others to find good software and generally get ideas from other users about what to try out.

I know it’s horribly geeky, but it’ll be interesting to see what software other people are using, and, who knows, it might be, like Last.fm and its ilk: a good way to hunt through the bewildering array of software on offer and find the good stuff.

I can be found here and you can also see a Wakoopa badge somewhere on the tenminut.es page.

Downsides: It’s early days (the site was only launched today). Navigating around wasn’t as intuitive as I’d have liked, and there are probably too many lists.

Verdict: Simple enough, but with some interesting elements. Only worth trying if you really like software.

Score out of 10: 7