Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

If you're reading this blog, you probably know about Last.fm or iLike, two services for sharing what music you listen to, and how much you enjoy it. Some bright folks in Amsterdam have come up with the idea of doing the same thing, but with the applications you use, rather than music. In a nutshell, that's Wakoopa — a service for letting everyone know what software you use, and what you think of it.

At the moment, Wakoopa is still somewhat beta. It works, for the most part, but a lot of fine tuning is still required, and various things don't work (or work poorly). Typical for a newborn social network. However, the team behind the site are doing a great job of keeping on top of matters, and fixing problems as they come up. In a month or two, I think they'll be set.

Of course, the usual warnings about social networks apply, especially for this one. Unless you explicitly set your profile to only show tracked applications to friends or nobody but yourself, anyone can come along and see how many hours you spent playing World of Warcraft (or in my case, Dwarf Fortress), and it doesn't say when you played it. This could cause some trouble come time for job interviews, or during your annual review. Then again, if you have drunk photos of yourself all over your Facebook profile, Wakoopa's tracking is probably the least of your worries. ;)

Fortunately, the service does allow you to hide particular applications from the public, or even your friends. However, at this time, you still have to run the program first, you can't pre-emptively block it. (Fixing this is hopefully on the to-do list.) As well, for those of us who create our own software, the company is working on a way for letting us submit our program information ahead of time, to avoid embarrassing situations where your program ends up being recognized as someone else's.

Check it out, and enjoy! And, like any good Web 2.0 company, if you have problems or just want to congratulate the team on a job well done, check out their Get Satisfaction portal as well.

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