As you’ve probably noticed, my post frequency has dropped off significantly for the past couple of months. The reason mostly has been because I’ve been working hard to finish Stuffist, the new “stuff”-oriented social site project of mine.

Stuffist is based on two basic premises.

The first is that when you buy something - say a new shirt or a new cell phone - part of the excitement is showing it off to your friends and colleagues. There’s nothing better than showing up to class or the office with your new shirt on and getting compliments. In the online world, driven by this same motivation, people post pictures and descriptions of their latest purchases on their MySpace page, blog, forums, etc. On Stuffist, you can post your latest purchases for everyone to see. Others rate and comment what you posted.

The second premise is that when shopping, an important consideration in your purchase is what others will think of your purchase. Few people go to the mall themselves. Instead we go with others in order to feed off one another’s opinions. Similarly, before buying something online, you’ll often send the product link to a few other people to get their validation. Many stores provide a “most popular items” in order to help guide you to a purchase when you are unsure. The bottom line is often times, we just wanna know what the hot new stuff is. The goal of Stuffist is that you can search for “women’s jeans” and see what jeans other women have bought recently and how each was rated by the community. Or in your spare time you just can browse around by categories and tags to see what other people are buying.

Anyways, I’ll write when I return from the trip. In addition to Stuffist, I have a long backlog of topics I want to blog about. I’ve been neglecting my blogging activities lately and I’m not happy about that. I’m also going to be reading some selections from the Personal MBA reading list during the almost 40 hours of flight time so I’ll have some book reviews & notes to share. Have a nice Thanksgiving!

As is the case every year, my favorite car magazine, Car & Driver is preparing for it’s January “10 Best” issue. The C&D staff creates a list of nominees, rounds up the cars for one last assessment, and then decides on the final list of 10 cars to earn the 10 Best honor. This year, they are holding a contest. To enter the contest, you choose which cars you think will win the award and write a 50 word essay describing why you should be the winner if you are one of the contestants who guessed the list correctly.

I just filled out my contest entry form. If you’re curious, these were the 10 cars I chose:

Mazda Mazdaspeed 3 (displacing the Acura TSX as Best Sports Sedan - even though the MS3 is a hatch but it still counts)
BMW 3-series (a shoe-in with the new 335)
Porsche Boxster/Cayman (best luxury sports car)
Honda Fit (best K-car on the market..easy pick)
VW Rabbit (this recently won C&D’s comparo of all the cars in it’s class so I’m choosing it over the others)
Chrysler 300/300C/300C SRT-8 (best full size.. there’s no reason why this ‘06 winner doesn’t still earn the award in this category)
Chevrolet Corvette (best sports car… mustang gt500? please..)
Ford Mustang (it was either this or the RX-8… given the choice I would take an RX-8 but for the purpose of this list, I think the Mustang gets on the list as best muscle car. The RX-8 is getting long-in-the-tooth sorely needing a power boost to compete)
Honda Accord (best family car… I thought for a second about the all-new Camry but no way C&D editors will choose the boring Camry)
Mazda MX-5 (best roadster….neither the solstice or sky are good enough to replace this)

I really wanted to include the RS4 in the list but I just couldn’t quite get myself to do it. It’s a fantastic car that has gotten lavish praise from everyone but I just wasn’t sure if it would make it to the 10 Best list. I hope I’m right.

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