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It’s very, very hard not to love a startup that not only goes to the trouble of linking to one of your things on the first post of their new blog, but then takes the time to track down your blog and personally comments on it, and as if that wasn’t enough, sends you an email telling you about how their new innovations would be good for you. Oh, and the CEO has created a Wish List page for me.

I repeat, how can you not love a company that does all that?

I do hold by what I said in that previous post about Kaboodle. The lack of search is a big issue for me when I bookmark the quantity of stuff I do and have the appalling memory that I have. I’m still not sold on it for the Sunday Roast, though yes, for pretty much the same reasons as I have niggles with del.icio.us (the interrupted nature of when people are pointed at it for one). Basically, I’d love a way to flag past posts without deleting them from the archive – you could see all things I’d ever Sunday Roasted if you were curious/wanted to find something you half remembered from a month before, but you would have an obvious visual clue as to what was new and what wasn’t.

With regard the Must See Movies, I’m leaning toward Kaboodle again. There’s more room for commenting than you get with del.icio.us, you can include the picture which is a great way of quickly identifying a film, and you can vote.

Which brings me to something that bugged me straight away last time I used it – when someone votes, you had no way of finding out about them. I’ve just noticed that they have instituted it so now, when someone votes, their name is now a link back to their own pages. A great way of fostering community.

The Wish List, on the other hand… Now the Wish List might just be moving on over to Kaboodle. (Though I can’t get the images to show that mach did when he created me a wish list ).

Score card? Well, big bonus points have to be given for the sheer stalkerish glee with which they are selling themselves. On top of that, the implementation is sweet, there is no doubt about it. (Though I am running out of room for all my bookmarklets, they’re getting so ubiquitous now). In Kaboodles favour is that you have much more room to comment on something than you get in, for example, del.icio.us. I do like having room to explain why I have this desire to see what is guaranteed to be an appalling film.

On the downside, the lack of search is really really bugging me. It would also be nice to see, maybe, “see who else kaboodling this” for example. And tagging. Yes, I know we’re tagging anything that sits still long enough these days, but it has its uses. As already mentioned, some flagging mechanism would be nice as well. RSS would, of course, be a must at some point down the line. Maybe someway of controlling how many items appear on one page?

(Just re-read the email, and it turns out that both search and RSS are being worked on as we speak – woot!).

I don’t know. I think I want Kaboodle to be something that it isn’t designed to be. I have my issues with del.icio.us, and I want Kaboodle to fill the gap. It isn’t really fair or realistic to compare the two – one is a social bookmarking site, the other is designed to compare things. Yes, there is overlap, but one shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for the other.

In conclusion? I’m greedy and unrealistic, but I want an uber-program that will solve everything for me. I want a social bookmark site, a comparison site, an RSS reader, email, something for images, some easy way to do my Sunday Roasts, search, (that isn’t Google-branded), etc, all in one place. And it will make me a nice cup of tea and give me a neck massage every few hours just to show me the love.

Is Kaboodle such an application? No. Is Kaboodle a great program? Yes. Will I keep using it? I’m not sure. I want it to succeed, I really do, but for me it’s just easier to stick with the fudged del.icio.us & blog & traditional bookmarking combo I use now than add a fourth to the mix. I want to be using fewer programs and solutions, not more. I’m a fundamentally lazy person. Something has to be demonstrably better before I will switch.

Whatever happens, you can be sure I will keep you informed. Why don’t you go and have a play with Kaboodle for yourself? The way something like this gets bigger and better is when a community of people start using it, tweaking it, and just generally having fun. Take a piece of software, make it your own.