Wazitat Means Where is it At, yo!

Wazitat is a web service I made to help people organize and to share their stuff. I came up with the idea in August 2007 when I moved from Hoboken to Manhattan, but was leaving some things in the basement. I realized I also had things at other locations throughout the many states.


And a hurricane hit the Gulf again, reminding me of the importance to know where your things are at, to re-allocate and share resources, and to reconcile with insurance agents.

LINKS
Wazitat Web Site
Wazitat Flash Demo

The general structure of Wazitat is:
Things belong to a space, spaces belong to a room, rooms belong to a place.

Wazitat was always meant to be a social application, perhaps even a parody of a network. I.E. "Gary declared you have his blue sweater. Click to confirm or deny."
"Your son, Matt, said that you have an attic and that it contains his yearbook. Click to confirm that you have an attic...."


But as I finished the first release, I realized how much more powerful Wazitat could be if tied into a network such as Facebook. FB offers a terrific API which provides for photos, notes, and connections, and events and a marketplace. Ideally, you could search your network to borrow an item, and to arrange for a move.

I began a FB version of Wazitat but did not finish due to lack of resources and incentive. It was mid August 2008, and I was pounding away at code each day... I asked myself: am I prepared to be responsibile for the movement of goods throughout the country? I let the domains expire and have shelved the project...but I might make a FB app that handles one of the specific functions such as "Arrange a Move."


Developing Wazitat was a great way to learn Jquery, and Facebook's platform. It also forced me to grapple with philosophical issues such as: Do things derive meaning from how they are used, or is meaning a condition for action? I also had to mediate upon and work through a strategy for the integration of virtual and real worlds. I'm sure that my findings and practice will be helpful to me.

Technology: PHP, Mysql, Jquery / Javascript / Prototype