Auxiliary Memory

LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, Google Books, Anobii, WeRead

I’ve been a bookworm my whole life, and for as long as I can remember I’ve wished I had a list of all the books I own. I’d also love to have a list of all the books I’ve read. I think it would be impossible to create the second list, but the first list would only be a matter of typing. And now with the Internet and the ISBN book number, it’s even less typing than before. I could even buy a barcode reader that looks up information automatically online without typing at all. My first consideration was to buy a standalone computer program like Book Collector from Collectorz.com, or even design my own database or spreadsheet with Access and Excel, but I decided the fun solution is to use a Web 2.0 online book cataloging site.

The Internet has added an extra twist to this list making activity, called social cataloging. By entering your books into an online database it allows social network programs to compare your list to lists created by millions of other bookworms. The synergy of doing this offers endless social networking possibilities. The obvious one is to find other readers who have similar reading tastes to yours that will help you find great books to read that you’ve missed. For people trying to build big personal libraries, it’s fascinating to know the size of other collector’s collections. The largest on LibraryThing is 43,061 books. Also on LibraryThing, the most reviewed book is Twilight (1,386 reviews), the most owned book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (47,598 people out of 1,035,403 members), or that my favorite science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein has 72,427 books in those collections, as compared to my second favorite science fiction writer Philip K. Dick who has 46,991 books in LibraryThing user’s homes. That’s out of 48,365,418 total books catalogued.

The trouble is there are many wonderful book cataloging sites to choose from, each with their own plus and minuses. Luckily, all are free except LibraryThing, and it’s free for your first 200 books, so you can try them all. The sites I’ve found so far are (there may be more):

Each of the sites try to make it easy to enter books, but they all do it differently. They each have millions of books already catalogued, so the quickest way to add a book to your list is to find it first on their list by searching on the ISBN and then hitting the add button. This can be made even faster with a barcode reader, but I don’t have one. I’d say it’s taken me a couple hours to enter in 58 books at LibraryThing. This is slow because I like selecting the right cover photo to match the cover of the book I own, and I started with a shelf of old books without ISBN numbers. That means searching by author or title, or even entering in all the book info myself. I could probably do 60 books in 20 minutes if they were all recent and I only needed to use ISBN. Usually when you get a book with ISBN, the cover and all the other information is already there.

I’ve taken to LibraryThing, but when I finished building my list I could export my library to another site to see if I like their social networking features better. Or I’ve thought about using one site for listing books I own, and another for books I can remember reading. Or use another site for just my non-fiction science and history books to see if I can find readers with my exact interests. The different cataloging sites have discussion groups for books, or linking systems to Facebook and blogging sites, so if you like to discuss and review books, these systems connect you to other people who are looking to read reviews or talk about books too.

On one blog I read a post by a woman who said her family paid for three separate $25 lifetime subscriptions to LibraryThing, for herself, her husband and her kid, so I’m assuming there’s long term rewards for doing the work of entering a book collection into the system. I won’t know for awhile. I’ve got 18 more shelves of books to enter, and then I’ve got to try all the different features, but I’ll get back to you with more info.

I’ve added books with all of these systems and I find it easiest to add books to LibraryThing, especially when dealing with manual adds. LibraryThing was the only site to have any books by Lady Dorothy Mills, an author I collect. Her books are very rare, and they only had 3 of 15 I own. These systems are far from perfect, and the quality of the data is imperfect. It would be great if everyone catalog the precise edition they owned, but that doesn’t happen.

Anobii, Shelfari and WeRead are probably best for people with newer books and people looking for more social interaction since they have the largest number of members. They are slicker sites with more glitz than LibraryThing. GoodReads is in the middle. Google Books merely lets you tag books without any reporting features or social networking. It is good for links to the web, and if you’re a complete Google user in general.

One of the fun things about adding books to LibraryThing is it tells me how many other members own the book when I add it to my collection. For books by Lady Dorothy Mills, out of over a million users, I’m the only one that has any of her books. I really like it when I find just a few people who also own the same book, like the 2 other people that own In Search of Paradise a biography of Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the guys who co-wrote Mutiny on the Bounty. Are those two people much like me?

JWH – 2/7/10

I finished my data entry and my library can be seen here. To me, the fun way to view is by cover art. Open your browser to fill the screen and then click the Covers button. I have 706 books. I learned a lot by creating this catalog. For one thing, I have too many books, and I plan to thin my collection when I get a chance. The largest portion of this collection is unread by me. My bookstore roaming eyes are far bigger than my reading stomach. I really wish I had more time to read.

JWH 2/16/10

Repairing Broken iPhones

Everyone loves their iPhones, and until they drop their iPhone and smash the glass screen, they won’t know just how much they really love their iPhone and how much they can hate Apple and AT&T. The iPhone isn’t engineered to be repaired, and its especially not designed for the average user to repair. It could have been. Until people get addicted to smart phones, and learn how easy it is to break them, and how expensive they are to replace, they’ll never ask why they can’t be repaired. They should be easy to repair, but they aren’t. Our throw-away society doesn’t promote that. It’s a shame, because these elegant devices could have been easily engineered to allow owners to replace a broken screen, or a broken screen/LCD combo. Actually, the glass touch screen and LCD should be one unit that could be quickly replaced with only a small screwdriver, for about $30-40, or at a repair shop for $60-70.

I’m a computer guy at work, so people tend to bring me their smart phones to configure for the Exchange server or ask for help and advice even though it’s not part of my job. And some people have a knack for breaking their smart phones repeatedly. The other day a young woman brought me her shattered iPhone and a repair kit she had bought online. I told her I had no experience at repairing iPhones, couldn’t guarantee my work and iPhones weren’t designed to be opened by users. She had seen several films on Youtube and urged me to try. So I did – and we almost succeeded.

It’s an extremely tedious process to replace the glass touch screen on an iPhone, and we succeeded, but unfortunately, in the process we damaged the LCD. One online repair site kept telling us to use a hair dryer to soften the glue that holds the glass screen to the frame. They should have warned us not to use the hair dryer before we had gotten the frame off the phone. Here’s the best Youtube video we found. It runs 5 parts. Watch all 5 parts before thinking about doing this repair. This video does cover the missing steps that other videos and web sites don’t cover, which is how to carefully remove the broken screen from the thin frame, and then how to remove all the old adhesive. Even if you don’t need to repair an iPhone, these videos are an education in how smart phones are put together.

The iPhone I was working on was the third one this lady had dropped, and understandably AT&T wasn’t going to replace it. They wanted $199 and two more years. But since this woman is a poor graduate student, she couldn’t afford the price of replacement. She started looking around the net and found various repair kits and videos. Don’t be fooled, these are not easy and cheap solutions. You can also shop around and find repair services that run $60-250 to repair an iPhone, including at your Apple Store for $199. I would really advise using one of these services before going to the do-it-yourself route unless you are very patient, have great skills dealing with small parts, and are willing to risk failure. We got everything back together and working but the LCD was blurry because of heat damage, so she had to order a replacement LCD.

The young woman I was helping is buying a second touch screen now because the first one got a tiny crack in our first repair that got much larger in the second LCD repair, which she had found a Mac repair guy to help her with, and then got completely damaged in her day-to-day use. I’m not sure these glass touch screen replacements are as sturdy as the original Apple screens. She wants me to help her with the third repair, but I’m mentioning this because they teach another lesson. If you start fixing iPhones, you’ll probably have to keep fixing them. I’m urging the young woman to hone these skills herself if she remains poor and keeps breaking her phone.

Another warning, it takes a lot of careful pressure to disassemble an iPhone and reassemble it, and you’re working with two very delicate parts: the touch screen and the LCD. If you break your iPhone regularly, developing the skills to replace the touch screen or LCD might be worth pursuing, otherwise, I’d recommend paying a service company to do the job and hopefully get a repair warranty.

Also the repairs are iffy at best because they require taking glued together parts apart, and then reassembling them with bits of two-side adhesive, and the results aren’t as solid as the original glued assembly. They phones really were NOT meant to be repaired, but sadly they are easily broken.

The iPhone is a beautiful device on the outside, but on the inside its just a bunch of ordinary parts. It’s a shame that it wasn’t designed in a modular fashion so replacing the screen/LCD only involved a few screws. Ditto for the battery and memory. If we’re going to save mother nature we need to build machines that last and are repairable. The current design of the iPhone is obviously meant to sell more iPhones, and keep users tied to contracts.

What’s needed is a smart phone that’s completely modular in design so it can be easily repaired and upgraded, and one that isn’t tied to any phone service. Phone and broadband data service is expensive because the cost of the phones are subsidized in the contracts. We need to separate the phone from the service. Remember when AT&T owned your household phones?** Remember how cheap phones got once we got to own our own phones? There’s no reason why smart phones should cost as much as they do other than that’s what the industry wants. Cell phones are a commodity sold in the millions, so they should be cheap to make. I’m hoping Android phones will bring down the price of the smart phone and the monthly cost of broadband service.

I hope we can get phone makers to go green by making their phones repairable. The iPhone I worked on should have had the touch screen and LCD as one solid piece that snaps onto the phone body, held in place by four tiny screws. If the user breaks their phone, just buy that piece and replace it. That way the phone could last years, making it a much greener device.

JWH – 2/6/10

**Kids, a long time ago phones were rented from Ma Bell, the affectionate name we gave AT&T, and when you cancelled your phone service you had to give back the phone. This was before cell phones. Most homes had only one phone, and it was tied to the wall with a stout wire. Kids and parents would fight over sharing the phone. Oh, and it came in one color, black.

Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick

“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” is the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella from 1994, that was produced as an audiobook two years ago by Audible Frontiers. I read the story when it came out and remembered being impressed, but I just couldn’t remember the details, so I listened to audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Jonathan Davis, and now it’s etched into my brain again. I wonder how much I’ll remember about the story in 16 years? I hate that my mind is a sieve. And maybe, since I’m writing a review here, that will further reinforce my memory.

“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” is available to read online at Subterranean Press, and reprinted in these anthologies. “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” is a fantasy allegory in science fiction drag about alien anthropologists finding seven artifacts at Olduvai Gorge that tell the story of extinct mankind. Mankind had conquered the galaxy and the aliens both admired and hated us. They wanted to know what drove humans to destroy everything we touched. You can think of the recent film Avatar as an eighth story about homo sapiens’s impact on the galaxy.

I really hated the way Avatar painted humanity so thoroughly brutal and selfishly uncaring. When I tell friends about this, they tell me that’s how they see humans too. It’s certainly the way Mike Resnick paints us in “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” but he does it with more finesse than James Cameron.

The audio production of “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” runs two hours and twenty minutes and is seven short stories encased in a fictional frame. Resnick infuses his firsthand knowledge of Africa into this tale, and uses Olduvai Gorge as the touchstone setting for the seven visions and the frame. It works fantastically well on audio, and reminds me of a shorter version of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. I’ve always considered Bradbury the anti-science fiction science fiction writer because he fears the future, and sees so much horror in the nature of man. “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” could be a homage to Bradbury. I always like Mike Resnick’s prose because he’s better than most science fiction writers at blending emotion into his stories. One of my all-time favorite short stories is his “Travels with My Cats.” [Also on audio at Escape Pod.]

I review a lot of science fiction, but the story review that gets the most hits is “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury. My guess is the story is often taught in school, and if it wasn’t so long, I’d suggest teachers should replace “The Veldt” with “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge.” Both are cautionary tales about the evil side of humanity, a perfect Rorschach test for young minds to contemplate our reality. How do you judge humanity after reading “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge?” Are we inherently flawed? Are we evil? Not only do we threaten all other life forms, we lean towards the self-destructive. And if we’re not evil, are we just stupid, aggressive and unrelentingly unaware?

Robert A. Heinlein used to brag that mankind is the most dangerous animal around and any intelligent life on other planets should get out of our way. There’s a lot of extinct species on this planet that would agree with him. “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” agrees with this sentiment, but who is Mike Resnick warning? I don’t think his message is to aliens from outer space. Are we merely meant to accept this story at face value? Or does Resnick expect us to smarten up?

JWH – 2/2/10

Books versus Ebooks

I love science fiction and futuristic ideas. I love computers and neat gadgets. I love reading. So, you’d think I’d love ebook readers. I’ve owned several, including a Kindle, but I’ve sold or given them away. I’m still anxious to have another ebook reader, but I’m not so much waiting for the ultimate ebook reader as I’m waiting for the revolution in publishing that will create super-books that have to be read on an ebook reader. Right now ebook readers have a few conveniences that might appeal to some bookworms, like being able to change the font size, carry many books around at once, going green and saving trees, but for the most part, reading an ebook isn’t different from reading an old fashion book.

What I want is an ebook like the magical books we see in Harry Potter movies, where the pages have moving photos and words and letters dance with animation. I love reading about science and history and I believe that adding multimedia to the words I read would create a quantum leap in learning fun. Actually, web pages are heading more in this direction than ebook pages. Take for instance my blog here. I can add videos, photos, maps, music to my page to spice it up. I can link to other pages all over the web. These additions are still clunky, so the page isn’t seamlessly animated like a book in a Harry Potter story, but I’m sure WordPress.com is working on that.

Last year I was at a book giveaway where I picked up several modern high school textbooks. They were stunning productions, taking the potential of the printed page further than I’ve ever seen before. No current ebook reader can come close to duplicating what they can. If the iPad had a 15” screen it could, and if the layout was adapted, its 9.7” screen, it could theoretically compete well. The iPad represents a new generation of ebook readers, and it has the potential for being a fantastic device. Will it become the fabled Dynabook, we’ll have to wait and see. Tablet computers have been around for awhile, but no one has really programmed the content to showcase the design. The iPhone is a huge success because programmers maximized the design of their networked programs for the 3.5” screen.

Whether writers and publishers jump on the tablet ebook potential is a whole other story. I was thinking about buying a Kindle 2 or a Sony ebook reader, but after seeing the iPad I doubt I will. The iPad’s larger full color screen, able to show high definition video, play sound, and computer animation makes me think I could have a Harry Potter magical book. But remember, the iPad is worthless without the content. I’m surprised Steve Jobs didn’t commission a writer to produce an ebook that showcased the iPad’s real potential. If I was just going to read novels, I’d get a Kindle.

I recently reviewed The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong. It has 34 pages of footnote citations. I own this book in hardback and unabridged audio. I’d like to have an iPad edition that has both the text and audio narration built in, and hyperlinks to the full pertinent portion of the texts to all the footnote references. Armstrong summarizes the work of hundreds of individuals over thousands of years. I’d like links to their original work (it should all be in the public domain). Also, if her research for the book included documentaries and interviews, I’d like the videos and sound recordings added.

But most of all I’d want two extras that I haven’t seen before, even on the web. First, since the book is about The Bible, I’d like her annotation of The Bible presented and for each verse I tap with my finger I’d want Armstrong’s text related to that passage, and a listing of links to all the people who offered commentary on that verse that Armstrong reviewed. Second, I want a time-line. Armstrong is summarizing thousands of years, so I’d like a year by year listing of when various portions of The Bible was written, related history happened, or commentary took place. That way I could read the text of Armstrong’s book in three orders: As it was published in print, in time order, and in Bible passage order.

I’m sure other people can think of other features to add to this super-book version. For example, having a fun trivia type game to test me on content would be an another extra feature. Hell, another cool idea just popped into my mind. Since The Bible has spawned endless denominations of Judaism and Christianity, I’d like a family tree of denominations showing how each sect got started and by whom. All the philosophers and theologians Armstrong mentions created a spider web of interconnected ideas, with many branches forming new churches.

Essentially what I’m asking for is what’s already in the book that Armstrong wrote and her notes, annotated with what she read and studied to write the book. I’m just asking to see the same information from a variety of angles, and to follow different paths through the information. For example, Armstrong gives us a taste for many Christian thinkers, like Origen, but because her book is short, she flies by these philosophers rather fast. Including the Wikipedia entry for each person mentioned would also be helpful. This is the second book I finished this month that mentions the Christian theologian and heretic Origen, the other being The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid. Neither paint him as well as his Wikipedia entry.

This would not be practical as a printed book. I’m not even sure if EPUB formatting can handle it. But when publishers start selling books like this, then people will see the obvious value of an ebook reader like the iPad. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the iPad is special. I think HP, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Samsung, MSI and other computer makers will quickly take over the market and create iPad like devices that are better and cheaper. They might all be called iPads, like all copiers are called Xerox machines.

Ebooks should revolutionize the textbook and non-fiction book industry. Each book should have multiple ways to read through the content, and reading might take place with the eyes or ears or both. Can you imagine a fully multimedia math book? Or what about textbooks for studying French and Spanish? What about a detailed history of astronomy?

So far I’ve been talking about super-books. But what if a publisher took the 10 best books on a subject, like The Bible, and blended them together to for a super-super-book? Certain books would have fantastic synergy is woven together. This would be perfect for college courses too. Also, use the same techniques to annotate fiction. Imagine what could be done with On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

The reason why ebook readers haven’t been convincing buys to many bookworms yet, is because they haven’t presented the potential of Reading 2.0. Or is it Reading 14.0 by now?

JWH – 1/31/10

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?

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