Business Pundit

Since Sunday is the slowest traffic day of the week, and I need just a few users to test something, I'll post this and take it down in a little while. Jay and I have been discussing the problems with the CotC for awhile. The primary issue is that it has grown so large there are up to 70 entries and it is difficult to know what is the best stuff. Plus there are so many blogs and other business sites now, I've been telling him we should do some sort of daily thing instead of just a weekly "best of." When Jay decided to redesign The CotC site, he inspired me to put up something to solve the new problems. After a few weeks of discussion, we came up with Jotzel.

Before I explain it, let me say this. I'm not done with it. The bottom of the site is all screwed up, we are still playing with color schemes, and we are trying out several different logos in addition to the Googlish one that is there now. So if you decide to check it out, please be patient.

So what is it? It's intended to be a "best of the business web" daily. It is built on a program called Scoop. The way it works is that you register, and then you can submit articles, vote on articles, and even keep your own diary on the site (if you don't already have a blog). When you login, you will see articles that need to be moderated. You can vote on these if you choose. Once an article reaches a certain threshold of positive votes, it gets displayed on it's section page. Once it gets a really high threshold, it will go to the front page. You can do the same thing with comments. Rate them on a scale of 1-5, then set your preferences to only show you comments with a certain rating.

How can you use the site? Well, if you are a busy person that just wants to see what users vote the best of the best, just check out the front page, or one of the section pages that interests you. If you like to see the newest stuff, check the queues, or the "everything" page. If you like to search and find good stuff to submit, then you can do that too. It's like many of the other user-news-voting sites out there except that they almost all have to do with tech, not business.

It solves a problem for the Cotc because now we can flag CotC posts that also made it to the front page of Jotzel. So readers can still use the Cotc to find the best of the best, and to find new blogs. It also solves a problem for me. I want to slow down the post pace here at BP and write more in-depth stuff, but I still feel like I should link to interesting business articles. Now I'll post those at Jotzel.

And where does the name come from? Nowhere. It was late and I was going through all sorts of domain combos with "business" in them and everything good was taken so I made up a word that was short and highly likely to be available.

I don't want the site to get too much traffic for now, so I'll remove this post later today. But I would like a handful of you to register and post some stuff and give me feedback. (rob_business-at-businesspundit-dot-com) Let me know what you like and don't like. Do the categories work? Too many? Too few? Stupid names? What about the site layout? What else would you like to see? I appreciate any feedback.