{recs}

I'm just going to springboard off of my last post about not knowing what music to listen to lately and tell you about a fairly geeky thing that I did this week that I'm simultaneously a little embarrassed of and kind of excited about. 

When I texted Jannaya and Robyn a few days ago asking for their top music recommendations they both, almost simultaneously, texted back, "Fun!" before sending me their top picks. And it was fun. When you're really into something, sharing it is fun. When I finish a good movie or a book or find an album that I just love, I'm pretty sure I tell at least twenty people about it. And on the flip side, having someone recommend something that they really love to me is...also fun. It's all fun, and fun is good. 

Sooooo...

I took to Twitter to find out if there was an app for that. An app kind of like Instagram, but solely for recommending music to your friends and having them recommend their choices to you. I know that there are apps like Songza and Grooveshark, but I wanted something more concise and personal - not a playlist compiled by a computer, but something where you recommend one thing at a time, as you're enjoying it. Something with a newsfeed that you could scroll through and see what your friends were listening to that day. A place where you could find other people who like what you like and be further introduced to new things. 

Rachel, from Big City Quiet, chimed in about how she'd be interested in the same thing but for books, and I thought, "Hey. Why not throw movies and TV in there too?" And a few people commented and retweeted and favourited and all that stuff that you do on Twitter, and I started daydreaming and feeling like this could be a good idea. I don't know; maybe it's not, but that's the thing about ideas: at some point you just have to throw it on the wall and see if it sticks. Like spaghetti. 

So that's how I found myself googling 'how to get somebody else to make me an app.' 

I found three websites. One which seemed like it was run by really old and/or boring people who didn't know how to make nice looking apps, one which was very promising but which wasn't taking any more ideas "indefinitely" due to the high volume of applications, and one which I really liked, called Applits. As far as I can tell, you can pay a lot of money to get them to make your app, or you can enter their monthly competition and if you win they'll make your app for free, plus you get 15% of the profits. 

That, I thought to myself, could work. 

So I drew up a very rough sketch and proposal and I named my app "Recs" and I entered the app contest. I felt like a ten-year-old, quite honestly, but I'm still so excited. Contests are so dang fun. 

And fun, as we have previously established, is good. 

Here is the thing. If you are interested at all in the idea, if you would like to someday download the Recs app and be my friend on there and share stuff with me and vice versa, you can vote for me(!!) by clicking the link below and signing in with your Facebook account (which is much faster and easier than making an Applits account, but you can do it that way too). Because if nobody votes for it, then it will not happen. Which is okay too, obviously. I'm pretty laid back about the whole thing. You can also see "screen shots" and the "logo" on the app page. (It's all very, very rough.)

http://applits.com/index.php?p=app-voting&id=10349

Anyway. That is, as they say, that.