For those consumed by lists! (allconsuming.net)

Member Name: calypte

Product:	allconsuming.net
Date:	29/03/09 (228 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun, easy to use, way to keep track and get suggestions

Disadvantages: perhaps a little pointless, overall

For my 100th review, I wrote about a website called 43Things - a site geared towards setting and achieving goals for yourself. The creators of that site, known collectively as the Robot Co-op, are actually responsible for several little sites, each of which could be thought of as trying to help you organise your life. Don't worry, though! There's nothing remotely serious about All Consuming! :) Perhaps one really for the list-lovers among us, All Consuming let's you keep track of... urm... things you've consumed. Yes, that really is about it! (And I thought I could get a review out of this?! Eep!)

Okay, let's start back a bit. I always think of 43Things as the main site, a place where people set up goals. Perhaps it was the number of goals along the lines of "Visit Italy", "Travel across Europe", "Go to New Zealand" that encouraged a spin-off site - 43Places. So, instead of cluttering up your 'life goals' list with places you want to visit - put them all in a separate list!

Perhaps slightly less obvious, then, comes All Consuming. This is a site to track things you have, are, or would like to consume. Consume? What do you mean 'consume'? Read, watch, eat, listen to - there are categories for books, movies, music, food and 'other' (which I, of course, have filled up with Lush products ;))

Why?! Well, the front page offers three suggestions:

First, and probably weakest (unless you're a listy geek like me (!)), is "Catalog your books, music, movies, meals and more". This is what it says on the tin: recording what you read, watched and ate. You can look back over your 'consumption' by type or date, and I suppose that can be vaguely interesting. Maybe! And if you can't find what you want already listed on the site - just add it to the database, complete with picture.

Secondly there's "Share your excitement". When you tick something off as consumed, you get a choice of marking it as 'worth it', 'not worth it', or the relatively new 'wishy washy' for those 'meh' moments. When you visit an item's page it'll tell you how many people - and what percentage - thought something was worth consuming. Handy for making a quick decision.

Further, once you've tried something, you can write about it! Ah, can the opinionators in the audience start to see the appeal? ;) Of course, you can come and wax lyrically here on Dooyoo about that film you saw, or the meatballs you had for tea, and get paid for it. All Consuming doesn't pay, but then you also don't get irate comments if all you want to write is, "Absolute rubbish" and leave it at that! There are no real rules (well, keep it clean and no advertising, I suppose!) and although I've yet to hit a word limit, the thing is just to write a sentence or paragraph or two, rather than an essay (ahem.). All of these comments from all users are then listed at the bottom of the product page - under a list of who is/has consumed it - so it's nice and easy to flick through. Urm, not that I'm trying to do Dooyoo out of any business, of course! However, I find that I try to leave a comment about most things I consume, since it's so short, and what I find really useful is leaving myself some initial thoughts that then go on to help if/when I decide to write a 'full' review for Dooyoo.

The final suggested use for the site is "Get suggestions" - ah, now this is the bit that Dooyoo doesn't provide! :) Every member has their own "What should <your name here> consume next?" section on their profile page. You can add as many things as you want to your own list - each item page has options for 'Have consumed', 'Am consuming' and 'I intend to consume this' - just pick the latter.

However, anyone else can also add things to your 'should' list - these will show up as suggestions, with optional notes from the 'suggester' - and you can accept or reject the recommendation. Or, you can agree with suggestions for other people, adding weight to the proposal. Further, you can actually put out a call for suggestions - you'll see some of these on the homepage. Pick your category, write a few notes about what sort of thing you're looking for, and see if anyone can come up with anything for you! I must admit, I don't use this section of the site much, but it has the potential to be useful.


Using the site is relatively easy. Signing up (via the 'Login' link at the top of the page) is a case of providing a unique user name, password and email address (and I can confirm - spam free!). If you're already a member of 43Things (or Places or People, etc) then you'll have the same login details here - of course, that works in reverse, so creating an account on All Consuming will automatically set you up on 43Things, etc - you'll see the links to these sites at the top of your profile page. Those 'sister' accounts will remain empty, though, unless you decide otherwise.

Navigation is fairly straight-forward, too - the site is, I think, pretty obvious to find your way through, and relatively uncluttered. Searches can be done by member, latest posts, or via a search box for specific items. The search box feature can be a little flaky, defaulting to user-input items rather than the main (Amazon-driven) database, but this can be overcome with a refresh or two. My only real criticisms would be that every format of every item is listed - so, the widescreen, fullscreen, special edition, blu-ray and region 2 versions of a film might all show up in there! Small beans to me, but it does seem to infuriate a few people!

So do I recommend All Consuming? Sure - why not?! It's either going to appeal to you or not, with very little depth to sway you one way or the other. Personally I do like lists in general (I know!), so this started out as a bit of daft fun. However, I find it useful for both taking notes on my first impressions of things, later to show up in Dooyoo reviews, and also tracking how long it's taking me to finish something. And, since I'm a member of the whole 'Robot Co-op world' community, I often trade suggestions with people I 'know' from the other, related sites.

So there you go - where I spend my time when I'm not on Dooyoo ;) All in the name of research, of course!

Summary: Track and talk about books, movies, food and everything else!