Okay, so many Web applications start with i, end in r (but not er) or break up their name with dots. Knowing all this I have determined that the epitomic 2006 Web application would be called iR.us, would launch as version 2.0, and would spend its entire life cycle in beta.

But I kid the entire universe. Actually Nextr, at http://www.nextr.com/, has a 2006 name but an unusual premise — a community of people creating orders in which they’ve done things: driven cars, read books, bought music, and so on. The idea is that if enough people do that, patterns of usage will be discovered. Right now the site is in extreme alpha, however, and there’s not enough data for pattern-assembling

And it’s an interesting thought; to note not only what we do but in what order we do it. Years ago I used to read a weblog called “Swallowing Tacks” (it’s long gone.) I would always read it in conjunction with Heather Champ’s blog, the name of which I don’t remember (sorry Heather.) I always read them at the same time. When Swallowing Tacks became defunct, I stopped reading Heather Champ’s blog. (sorry again Heather.) Even now I read Mighty Girl and Defective Yeti at the same time. It’s odd how we’ll get into habits, even for such small things like reading blogs.

Um, yeah, so back to Nextr. From the front page you’ll see a group of “Collectives” — sequences arranged around a particular topic. (Tech, Media, Food, etc.) Sequences in Tech include cars (what car will you buy next?) laptops (what laptop will you buy next?) and scripting languages (what scripting language will you learn/use next?) There are very few items listed for each of the sequences; the creator of the site invites you to add your own. I don’t know if it’s not available or just not being used, but I’d like to see a space for more discussion/commentary on the order of events/languages/foods/items/activities. So you went from Perl to Ruby. Why? What was your logic? What are some external resources that would facilitate this change? And most important … did it work?

I can imagine Nextr successfully hooking into a lot of external resources, including opinion and how-to sites, and maybe even sites like 43 Things. Maybe a Nextr pattern would arise of people moving from Windows to Ubuntu. Perhaps there’s some 43 Things people out there who have moving from Windows to Linux as a goal, and could make contributions to Nextr sequences.

In addition to the categories on the front page, Nextr also has a keyword search engine, lists of popular and recent sequences, and of course an RSS feed. Alas, there isn’t nearly enough information accumulated here for Nextr to be fun to explore, but I like the idea.