I’m just posting to test my new custom-made RSS feed. My last 5 posts should be added to the rss file located here: recent.rss.

UPDATE: This is a post from the old blog, which was custom built. On the old system, it was a big deal that I managed to implement RSS feeds. With Wordpress, it’s built in. Here’s a link to the current blog feed, or just look for the orange RSS icon in the right sidebar.

Things are moving so fast in this “Web 2.0″ world. It is more crucial than ever to get your ideas to market faster than the competition. Because there is competition. No matter how novel your idea is, you have to assume that there is someone out there (probably a large group of someones) working on the same thing.

I just ran into standpoint and Predict Wall Street, which in their own ways do a lot of what I had planned for my rateThings site. [My Abandoned rateThings Demo]

The two sites listed above are developed by smaller companies. Still Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Amazon will always be a threat to any new Web 2.0 application. Of course those companies are also potential partners (buy me out!).

The goal of sole-proprietorship-like projects like mine should be to fill a niche so small that other players are overlooking it. I’m not going to be able to build a recommendation system better than Amazon’s. I just don’t have the time or the resources. However, if I can focus on just the wine-drinker’s experience, I might be able to gain some traction with the site before bigger players get in the game.

Hopefully I can slip WineLog out to beta before I miss my chance.

If anyone read this, I have two new toys up in “alpha” stages.

1) rateThings: This site allows you to rate and comment on items posted by me. The main idea of the site is to enable users to quickly view the best comments of people who disagree with their own standpoint. For example, if I rated Bush’s State of the Union Address a 5 I would see the comments of everyone who rated the address a 1. For people looking for reinforcement, you can also view comments that “agree” with your own.

2) Wine Log: This is a browsable DB of wines which allows users to rate wines and receive recommendations. You can catch up on the site’s development at the blog here.

Both sites are in the very early development stages, only partially functional, and tremendously ugly. But I am interested in your thoughts.