Category: Internet

Libraries in the Age of iPads

If everyone owned an iPad would we need libraries?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the demolition of libraries, but with the advent of the internet and ebooks talk about the death of newspapers, magazines and books get more common every year.  If we don’t need those physical objects anymore, why do we need a building and institution to maintain them?  Think about it.  If books, magazines and newspapers disappear from our houses and move into Kindles, Nooks, and iPads, why would we go to the library?  Why would we go to bookstores, new or used? 

Modern libraries are about more than books, patrons also check out movies, audiobooks, music, and periodicals.  But all of those media types are now available on the iPad.  I know older people who grew up with libraries will immediate protest, but remember, us older folk are a dying breed and the up and coming generations are gadget afflicted.

Libraries used to be storehouses of knowledge and librarians worked to collect and preserve the printed word.  That’s still true of academic libraries, but public libraries have moved into an era of supplying what their patrons want, so as soon as a book is ignored for a specific period of time, it gets jettisoned from the collection.  Most people think of libraries as free books, free movies, free music albums, and free magazines and newspapers.  I think a lot of people think we should have libraries to provide a cultural outlet for the poor.  But the internet provides more free stuff to read and watch.

The death of libraries is pretty much unthinkable now, but don’t be surprise when city bean counters start making suggestions about closing them.  I grew up  loving libraries, and even worked in public and academic libraries.  They don’t seem as crowded with patrons as they used be.  I hardly go to the library anymore myself, not since the internet.  I saw the video of Steve Jobs presenting the iPad and showing off its ebook features and it struck me that devices like the iPad will be the library of the future.  When I was growing up futurists would talk about having a handheld device with the Library of Congress in it.  We’re getting spookily close, aren’t we?

The book is evolving too.  When it escapes the limitation of the page, adding multimedia and hypertext the book will no longer fit on a library shelf.  Printed books, newspapers and magazines might become extinct, but imagine what will replace them.  There is no reason to make a distinction between newspapers and magazines anymore.  That might become true for books and novels too.  Newspapers used to be frequently published information printed on cheap paper.  Magazines and journals had longer periods between publication and were printed on better paper, suitable for long term storage in libraries. 

The electronic page is not limited by time, paper quality or cost of printing.  Newspapers and magazines use to be text plus photographs.  Electronic publication is text plus photographs, video, sound recording, animation and other multimedia.  Go look at the iPad video and tell me if kids will even want to go to the library or read books and magazines.  And what about you?

ipad

I like the name iPad, just one vowel different from the iPod, but many of my friends have expressed a dislike for the name, and some of my women friends tell me the name brings up bad connotations with them.  I think Steve Jobs should have named it the iLibrary.

JWH – 1/28/10

There’s No Such Thing As Free TV

In the early days of television it appeared the shows were free, just put up an antenna and watch your favorite programs for nothing.  But as we all know, we paid for our viewing by watching commercials.  Then came cable TV.  We paid a small fee to avoid the hassle of messing with antennas, but we still watched a lot of commercials.  However, this started the upward cost of watching television.  Cable providers slowly added more channels and raised their fees.  They even offered commercial free networks like HBO and Showtime, but at an even greater cost.  It’s not uncommon today to pay over $100 a month for cable or satellite access.  Then they charged even more for DVR boxes and services so we could skip over the commercials.

Now people are abandoning their cable/satellite services to save money and going retro by using antennas again, and getting over-the-air (OTA) HD television.  They supplement their viewing variety with Netflix, HTPCs and now DLNA compliant devices.  Getting TV from the Internet gives the illusion that we’ve finally found a way to get free TV.  Don’t count on it.  We still pay $25-50 a month for broadband Internet access, and we still watch a lot of commercials.  And if the movie and television industry has their way, they’ll find new ways to charge us for watching our favorite shows over the Internet.

Netflix, at $8.99 for 1 disc service and streaming video via a Roku box is probably the cheapest way to get the most TV watching bang for the buck.  Now Netflix is under attack by the Hollywood Studios.  As the Business Week article points out, studios don’t like the all-you-can-eat streaming pricing.  They want a cut of the action for each movie you watch, because they consider streaming equal to cable/satellite pay-per-view movies, that cost viewers $4 a pop.  And the studios, like Warner Brothers, want to slow the access to movies that Netflix rents because Netflix is cutting into sales of DVD/BD discs.  I know I don’t buy discs anymore, so I can understand this.  And if you haven’t noticed lately, a lot of streaming content on Netflix started showing expiration dates.  Bummer.

Generations of television viewers who grew up after the Baby Boomers don’t remember “free” TV.  Every house had an antenna sprouting from the roof and you didn’t have to pay a monthly bill to watch your shows.  Of course, we didn’t have the power to skip commercials, and we only had 3-4 channels in our nightly lineup.  We had NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies showing new to broadcast films, and each station had a library of old films they could show at odd hours of the day, usually in the middle of the night.  Life was simple then.  Of course, so were the shows.

Decades later, television shows and movies cost untold millions to make, far more than what broadcast commercials and movie tickets can finance.  Movie makers want to maximize their profits by selling their films several times, in a standard tiered released system where they get the maximum revenue at each stage:

  • Theatrical releases
  • DVD/BD sales
  • Pay-per-view
  • Premium cable (HBO, Showtime, etc)
  • Basic cable
  • Broadcast networks
  • [Netflix streaming?]

So where in the hierarchy do they release titles to Internet streaming?  And if DVD/BD sales are hurt by rentals, when do you release titles to Netflix?  Right now, I pay the most for movies because I watch a lot of flicks on the big screen.  I could probably save $500 a year by waiting for movies to come to Netflix.  This is one reason why I don’t care about getting cable TV anymore, or when movies get to Netflix.  But if you aren’t big on going to the movies, this does matter.

The trouble for movie makers is Netflix is so damn efficient and cheap.  Even without streaming, for $8.99 a month you can watch about a 100 movies a year, and with streaming, your selection is overwhelming.  Who needs to watch more?  And if you count that Netflix rents/streams TV shows and documentaries, that makes $8.99 a month the cheapest form of TV watching other than OTA viewing.  Sports is the main thing missing, and probably why more people don’t give up cable/satellite.

Now Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is catching on, allowing you to stream video content off the Internet directly to your TV, without using a computer.  Geeks have been hooking up their computers to their TV for years, but it’s not an elegant consumer oriented solution.  All the major TV manufacturers are starting to build DLNA technology directly into their TVs, meaning you won’t need a Roku box to stream Netflix and Amazon videos.  Each manufacturer can choose which streaming system to support, or in some cases, they can support PC servers like PlayOnTv that will talk to your TV directly, or via your Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360, so you can watch Hulu and other emerging Internet TV networks.

Essentially, online TV networks like Hulu.com, CastTV and TV.com are ways to get broadcast and cable network shows free off the Internet, or free if you ignore your ISP bill.  But when content providers realize that these services will undercut services higher up the economic viewing ladder, will they continue to offer their content for free?  Will there be more commercials, or even subscriptions required?

I installed PlayOnTV on our Wii and played around with Hulu.  The Wii remote made a decent TV remote and worked well with the Hulu menu system.  This bit of testing provided an epiphany for me.  Internet TV is like cable TV – too many channels and too much to see!  Since I’ve given up cable TV and lived for a few months with just ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Netflix, I’ve learned to love simplicity.  I thought I wanted more documentaries which Internet TV might offer me, but it’s not worth the hassle of finding them. 

I like the higher quality of watching Blu-ray discs, or even DVD quality, over watching Internet TV quality.  Broadcast HD seems better than cable HD, and Blu-ray 1080p is even better yet.  I’ve gotten used to pristine picture quality, and for me at least, visual quality is better than viewing quantity.  I don’t mind waiting for BD discs to come in the mail.  I know my viewing habits aren’t typical.  My wife is a channel surfer and loves to see what’s on by flipping through hundreds of channels.  If you’re like her, then you’ll need to pay for cable/satellite, or spend the money for Internet TV options.

I pay $16.99/month to Netflix for 2 discs out at a time with Blu-ray.  That’s as cheap as I can get while getting the most TV watching for my dough.  If the movie studios force Netflix to charge more for streaming, I’ll live without streaming.  I’m a little annoyed that Blu-ray discs cost more to buy and rent than DVDs when they look physically identical, but the extra visual quality is worth it to me.  I don’t mind watching Big Love or Weeds months after their HBO and Showtime broadcasts.

TV isn’t free, but it doesn’t have to be expensive either.  How much you pay for TV depends on how impatient you are to see new shows and films.  As I get older I’ll probably stop going to the theater as much, because paying $10 to see a movie the first week it’s out won’t be as important.  I know a lot of old guys who stopped going to the movies altogether.  If you’re young, restless, twitchy and impatient, then you’ll probably love flipping through 300 cable channels and won’t mind paying $100 a month for that pleasure.

When I heard Warner Brothers wanted Netflix to wait a whole month before renting movies that had just gone on sale, I laughed.  At 58, a month is nothing.  To a teenager or twenty-something, waiting a month is probably unbearable.  I’m still finding new movies from the 1930s to watch, and I’ve seen thousands of them already.  I’d much prefer Netflix maintaining it’s low rates than getting movies sooner.  Let the young finance the movie and television industry – if you’re patient you can save your money for retirement.

JWH – 1/17/10

Roku HD – The Future of TV

I bought my wife a Roku HD for Christmas.  She works out of town and wanted Netflix streaming for her little apartment.  Before the Roku HD left the house forever, I thought I’d play with it and see how it compared to my Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 Blu-Ray player.  In a way, I wished I hadn’t, because now I hate my LG BD390 Netflix streaming.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have bought the LG BD390.  I spent $100 over my budget to get the highly rated LG BD390 because it had wireless-N built in and Netflix.  The BD390 is great for playing Blu-Ray discs, but has been less than spectacular for Netflix and wireless.  I would have been better off buying a basic Blu-Ray player and the Roku HD, spending the same as I had on the LG BD390.  But I might not even agree with this decision by next Christmas.

I hooked up both the Roku HD and BD390 to the same wired Ethernet.  The BD390 has never liked my Linksys WRT160N version 1 router – but that’s Cisco’s fault.  Cisco won’t update the original model of this router and it needs it.  I mention these annoying tribulations because anyone buying network devices to add to their TV need to be prepared for pitfalls and aggravations.  However, even after I hardwired my den, the BD390 would not consistently work well with Netflix.  My internet reception was usually one half of the gauge or a little over.  On rare occasions I got HD reception and things looked fantastic.  I keep waiting for a BD390 update that would tweak its Netflix feature, but so far I’ve been living with average quality Netflix streaming.

I set up the Roku HD, which was a complete snap.  It’s a tiny device, weighing just ounces.  (Here’s a peak inside the older model.)  I’ve been watching an episode of Farscape every night, streamed via Netflix through my BD390, so I decided to look at the next episode on the Roku HD.  I got 4 dot reception, that’s Roku talk for their streaming quality meter, the highest level of streaming.  I was overwhelmed by how much better the image was over the LG.  On the BD390 I assumed the show was old and the visuals were crude.  But no!  On the Roku HD the make-up, costumes, and sets are gorgeous.   And my wife leaves this weekend taking the Roku HD with her!  Bummer.

This morning I got up and played with the Roku Channel Store and found all kinds of extra content (Mediafly, Twit.tv, Revision3, etc.)  Techie shows I love that drives my wife from the room.  I was amazed by how good Internet TV content looked on my 52” HDTV.  Since I’m already planning on building a HTPC that would replace my BD390, I’m now worried that anything I build won’t be equal to the elegant little Roku box.

Now take all of my enthusiasm for the Roku HD with a grain of salt.  Go to the Roku Forums to read about other people’s experiences.  Not everyone is getting 4 dot reception.  Many fight with bad network connections, rebooting Roku boxes, bad updates, etc.  Also, remember, generally only users with a problem come to the forums to begin with, so we don’t know how many people have fantastic out-of-the-box luck like I did.

But I am in trouble.  I don’t want to watch Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 anymore.  It’s a shame that Farscape isn’t on Blu-Ray, but for now I just put the DVDs into my queue and I’ll be networking the show via USPS mail.  I would jump over to Amazon and order another Roku HD, but I want to wait and see if I can build a HTPC that does a better job instead.  The Roku HD box has a very tiny chip to process the Internet video stream, so I’m wondering if a powerful CPU and GPU can do a better job.  Watching the same episode streamed through my computer looks way better than the BD390, but not as good as the Roku HD, but that might be because I’m sitting twenty inches away from the LCD monitor and I’m sitting ten feet from my HDTV.  Like I said, everything is very iffy with Internet TV watching.  Twit.tv looked fantastic blown up to a 52” HDTV via the Roku HD box, but it looks just as great on my computer.

Actually, I’m struck with the overwhelming impression that the Roku HD box foretells the future of TV.  We watched a HD movie over the Roku box and maybe it wasn’t Blu-Ray 1080p quality, but the illusion was damn close.  I gave up Comcast cable to live with over-the-air broadcasts and Netflix and I’ve been very happy.  If I could get all my TV from a little box like the Roku I would.  I’d give up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs too.  In my post about building an HTPC I wanted to reduce my entertainment center from 5 electronic devices connected to my Samsung HD to one. 

If that one device could be something the size of the Roku box that would be even more elegant, but obviously, the solution is to put the little Roku circuit board inside of the TV and have just a TV and sound bar, and even then, why can’t they build a great sound bar into the TV too?  You can see where this is going.  A flat panel on the wall with a power cord and an Ethernet cable.  No HD antenna, cable or satellite cable, and if wireless improved, the future TV wouldn’t even need an Ethernet cable.  While I’m wishing, if they could also take the small circuit board from my Roku SoundBridge M1001 that streams music, and put it inside the TV too, we’d really be living in the future.

In other words, maybe I should hold off on building my HTPC.  By Christmas 2010 or 2011 such a simple elegant TV solution might show up on the market.  There are already TVs out with built-in Internet access, but they are limited.  Obviously, such an Internet TV will bring about a tremendous paradigm change in the TV business.  The Netflix model, of one monthly fee to watch exactly what you want to watch, and only that, is too powerful to ignore.  Why pay big bucks to cable and satellite providers for 250 channels you don’t watch?  Why hassle with HD antennas if the Internet provides better reception.  Why buy DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and mess with storing them when Netflix will do all the work for you?

The Netflix model for video and the Rhapsody model for music should be the standard for the future, but will the content providers allow so many revenue streams to be dammed up?  Will the Roku box change the TV world?  If on-demand streaming content can approach the visual quality of Blu-Ray, why not?

JWH – 12/30/9

HTPC Advice Wanted

I want to build my own Home Theater PC (HTPC) but I have a number of decisions to make that I hope readers can advise me on.  I want to build a low-cost HTPC that also uses as little energy as possible, especially since I will need to leave the machine on 24×7.  The demands of a HTPC can be high, so I’m worried that a green low-powered chip might compromise the project.  I’ve read reviews of a Polywell Mini-ITX HTPC with a  N330 Atom dual processor combined with an NVIDIA ION chipset, using just 23-30w of electricity, but is it powerful enough to do the job?  And is onboard graphics good enough, or will I need a discrete graphics card?  Finally, I’d like my custom HTPC to replace several machines connected to my 52” Samsung DLP HDTV:

  • LG Blu-ray player
  • Pioneer CD/SACD player
  • Toshiba DVD recorder
  • Yamaha 5.1 receiver/amp
  • Roku SoundBridge M1001 media extender

I doubt I can find an internal Blu-Ray optical drive for my HTPC that can replace my SACD player, so it might be time to give up on that technology. I never bought more than a dozen SACDs anyway, but I will miss them.

I want my HTPC to do:

  • Record over-the-air HD broadcasts
  • Offer an elegant program guide to work with the DVR
  • Burn DVDs from shows recorded with DVR
  • Play Blu-Ray and DVD movies
  • Stream video from Netflix and Amazon
  • Stream video from Youtube, Hulu, Boxee, etc.
  • Stream music from Rhapsody, Lala, Pandora, etc.
  • Play music CDs
  • Use the Internet in my den while sitting in my La-Z-Boy
  • Store 200 GB of digital media
  • Be my digital photo librarian and slide projector
  • Be my home file and backup server
  • Run everything from one remote

Question 1:  Can a sound card replace an standalone receiver?

Is it even possible for a HTPC to replace my Yamaha receiver?  My current system has Infinity main and center speakers, and Bose for the rear channels.  I never bought a subwoofer.  I’m wondering if I could replace my receiver and speakers with some decent PC speakers or an amplified sound bar?  I’m not a audiophile by any measure, but I like good sound.

Question 2:  What benefits will I get from a more expensive chip?

I’m happy now Windows Media Center is working on my AMD 64 X2 4200+ chip, but would things be much better with a higher powered chip?  For $50-75 I could get a very nice AMD chip.  For $100 I can get a low end Intel Core 2 Duo, or even a AMD X4 chip.  For more than double that I could get a high performance, low watt Intel mobile processor or i5.  What HTPC features benefit from a more expensive chip?

Question 3:  Will onboard graphics be good enough or will I need a good graphics card?

In terms of power consumption and cost, it would be great to live with the graphics built into the motherboard.  I want to watch Internet TV, so how much does the graphics card affect the quality of Hulu and other streaming video sites?  I’m not a big video game fan, but if I could play games hooked up to my big TV that might be fun.  What’s a good green graphics card?

Question 4:  Would I be better off buying or building?

Are there any good HTPC makers that sell systems within the price range of building my own?  It’s a shame Dell can’t sell a Zino with a Blu-Ray player, 1GB drive and dual tuner TV card for $499.  I wouldn’t mind buying a HTPC if it was priced well and came with a warranty, but I’m figuring to get the features I want, at the price I’m willing to pay, will require building it myself.

Question 5:  Is there any reason not to base my system on Windows Media Center?

I’ve been happy with Windows Media Center in Windows 7 for TV recording, so is there any reason to consider another media center application?  I was disappointed that Windows Media Center needed hours to burn a DVD of a 1 hour TV show it had recorded.  Can other media center apps do it much faster?  I’m not sure that Windows Media Center handles large listings of recorded TV shows or MP3 albums very well.  What’s the best program for handling large libraries of media?

Question 6:  How does Hulu and other TV streaming sites look on a large HDTV screen?

I’m worrying about buying a decent video card to stream Hulu TV, but will that investment pay off?  Does TV streamed through Hulu look good on a big TV screen?  I’ll be very disappointed if I buy a video card and Hulu isn’t worth watching.

JWH – 12/28/9

Reviewing Science Fiction Books With Statistics

Before the Internet if you wanted to find a rip-roaring science fiction novel to read you’d flip through the books at your favorite bookstore and hope to stumble upon the next mind-blowing sci-fi novel to change your life.  Or you’d ask your best buds about which books knocked them into orbit.  True fans subscribed to science fiction magazines and fanzines, reading all the reviews so as to maintain their status as the Sci-Fi guru at their local Slan shack.

Back in the 1980s I wondered if there was a better way, and developed a statistical system that I wrote about for a fanzine Lan’s Lantern.  I describe the process at my Classics of Science Fiction website.  When the world wide web came along I put my lists online, and eventually revised them three times.  The latest list, Classics of Science Fiction by Rank, is now several years old.

Today I discovered SFFMeta.com, a site created by Eric Bouchard, that also applies statistics to the task of finding a great science fictional read.  Think of it as Rotten Tomatoes for science fiction, fantasy and horror books.  SFFMeta is the newest in a succession of websites that use statistics for identifying the best science fiction books.  An early endeavor was Tristrom Cooke’s The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, which is now maintained by a new list maker.  Years later came Sci-Fi Lists Top Science Fiction, an excellent polling type site from the land down under.  I wish their creators would take credit and write about developing their systems.

Each statistician of reading has come up with a different method for identifying good reads. All of us look for ways to cash in on the wisdom of crowds theory.  Bouchard’s site is built on the idea that collectively, a group of current book reviewers, will spot the best reads.  I love his simple and elegant web design.  And it will be one that will evolve with wisdom over time. 

Bouchard assembles lists of reviewed books from online reviewing sites.  This produces worthy information now, but not deep enough to show wisdom just yet.  In other words, his samples are too small.  Rotten Tomatoes gets over a hundred reviewers for each film, but SFFMeta is limited by surveying a much smaller industry, and many books on his list have just 1 review. 

SFFMeta’s 90 day lists are a helpful indicator now, but their all-time best books are iffy.  It might take SFFMeta 5-15 years to gather the data using their methods to show inherent wisdom in identifying all-time classics because they have to wait for old books to be reviewed in new editions.  And be reviewed in numbers more significant than new books.

Their best lists now are the 2008 and 2007 summary lists.  Statistically, it would be wonderful if we could compare them to sales figures, and other annual best lists, because it would further reinforce the wisdom of crowds concept. I’m looking forward to the 2009 list.

I made my lists before the Internet was well known, and I had to combine the wisdom of fan polls with the wisdom of cross-tabbing critic’s recommended reading lists, along with award lists, and other criteria.   We came up with 28 lists, and to get on the final list, a book had to be on at least 7 of those 28 lists. 

If SFFMeta could find more reviewers and up their green cutoff to 5 reviewers their accuracy would improve dramatically I think.  It would also help if they could factor in other indicators besides reviewers – such as sales numbers, awards and nominations, Google citation numbers, and critical articles, foreign editions, audio book editions, for instance.  

SFFMeta also faces the problem that most of their cited reviewers are either overly kind, generous, or just plain hate to trash a book.  One positive review can get a book on the list, but it takes three reviews to get a highlighted green score.  Because their site is new, their 90 day list has only two green highlighted titles.  Their all-time list covers 100 books, with all getting the green rating, and one book having 14 reviews.  Statistically that’s better than the 90 day list, but not good enough for identifying true classics.

As their database of reviewed books grow, I’d like to see SFFMeta allow the viewer to manipulate the lists – for example, to see a 90 day list made of books getting more than 3 reviews, or more than 5, etc.  You can eyeball this now, but their programmer is obviously talented enough to do this for us.  I hope SFFMeta can find many more review sites too.  Here is their current list.  Print reviewers, I encourage you to reprint your reviews on the web if possible.

Bookmarks Magazine collects statistics on books via reviewers too, but uses print reviewers.  In their annual best of the year grid.  Their standout books will have 7 or more reviews, and the best of the best will have 12 or more, from the reviewers they use.  This illustrates why writers lust after reviews – any kind of attention helps.  There are so many books published that it’s hard for most books to get noticed at all, and for some to get noticed by several reviewers is a triumph. 

SFFMeta is a dream come true for genre writers because its results further emphasizes the best reviewed books.  SFFMeta is also a positive force for book reviewers.  Be sure and click the titles to drill down to where you can read the reviews.  There’s a major amount of work that’s gone into this site and I hope it becomes a huge success.  Hopefully, SFFMeta will bring more readers to the reviewers too, and that should help educate the audience for SF/F/H.  It should promote the value of reviewers and maybe bring more into the field. 

I’ve always dreamed of doing something more with my lists, but it’s so much damn work.  The latest books on my site are three from 1992.  I’d love to find enough lists to make it practical to identify books through 2000, but that will be hard.  I have 28 lists now.  If I could find 5-7 newer lists it would catch a lot of new books, but if I left the cutoff at 7 the final list would be far too long.  I’d need to make the cutoff 8-10 lists, and that makes it even harder for new titles to get listed.  My system has it’s limits.  It tends to recognize the very best of the very best of older books in the bell of the curve, dropping older titles that are being forgotten, and making it very hard for newer titles to be recognized.

If I used a 10 list cutoff, my current list would be 116 books.  If I use 11 lists, I’d get 94 books.  By using 7 lists, I get 193 books, far too many to be a real Top 100 SF Books, but look what gets left off (scroll down to #94 and see).  The Top 100 Sci-Fi Books site have a great overlap with my list and they do have a few newer titles.  When SFFMeta collects enough reviews and start matching those two lists it will be a powerful system with a lot of built in wisdom.

SFFMeta, if it becomes popular, should help sell books.  I watch way more little movies after the advent of Rotten Tomatoes.  I was overwhelmingly surprised by how many unknown authors (to me) I saw listed on SFFMeta.  For old SF farts, stuck in the 1950s science fiction world of Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov triumvirate, it’s quite a revelation.  Using the wisdom of crowds should push book reviewing into a new paradigm, but it will make it even harder for a new writer to break in.  One book review will sell books, but now buyers will expect books to be positively reviewed from a database of reviewers.  This could become a dangerous trend.

Books have always competed in a survival of the fittest competition, but now the internet will push that competition to newer heights.  My Classics of Science Fiction web site gets on average 92 hits a day – not that many, but it builds up over time for people looking for a list of SF books to read.  I’ve gotten lots of emails over the years from people telling me they use my list to find new books to try out.  This helps maintain fans for these older books.  SFFMeta will also create a momentum for popular new titles, and hopefully it will help find new readers for the genre by helping them to discover exciting books.

Will the wisdom of crowds increase the number of overall readers though?  Harry Potter books certainly got more kids to read for pleasure, but I’ve often heard kids say they couldn’t find anything exciting after HP, and gave up reading.  It’s hard to find books to love, so systems that identify top reads should create new bookworms.  Let’s hope so.  Be sure and add SFFMeta to your Blogroll.

JWH – 12/20/9