reader2 (was: Re: ACTION: paulmiller to look at librarything)

Paul,

In wonder if you know this alternative:

http://reader2.com

I tried to go in, registered, and added some books. I can look at

http://reader2.com/tag/semantic_web

and gives me some info, including rating. It does have an RSS feed:

http://reader2.com/rss/tag/semantic_web

that could be used for mashups if needed. And the output can also be
sorted by date.

Caveats:

- the server seems to be pretty slow
- I am not sure who is behind this site, ie, how stable the system will be
- the page is pretty much full of ads:-( but it is fully free, no limits
on the books that one can use...
- a *major* caveat: it does not seem to integrate the tags from
different people (that may make the whole thing unusable for us):
because I added Tim's book to the list and somebody else has done it,
too, in the book is listed twice, instead of once with the rates somehow
averaged:

http://reader2.com/tag/semantic_web

Ivan


Ivan Herman wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> I began to play with this. I created a user 'ivan_herman' and added four
> books to test with. But, somehow, it still smells quite 'beta' to me,
> althought it might be a good service indeed.
> 
> For example, I tried to use your [2] click below. All I got is what
> seems to be a SQL dump rather than a list of real books. Also, I do not
> see my user id appearing among the ones who use this tag (although that
> is what I tried to use). I also tried
> 
> http://www.librarything.com/tag/semantic%20web
> 
> which seems to be the same...
> 
> [3] crashes:-(
> 
> It is therefore difficult to see how useful this is (but I will try
> again, after all, beta is beta!).
> 
> Another question: is it possible to search the books by the years? I saw
> the authors but, in our case, a bunch of books are edited by people,
> which is hardly relevant; if I want to find, say, ISWC2003, I would
> prefer to go for the year...
> 
> Also: it would be good if the data could somehow be mashed up with other
> data, like the RDF data provided by Chris Bizer (see the wiki page on
> books). Is there an RSS feed for a page like [1]? That could be a start
> 
> I am happy to continue playing with this for a while, though
> 
> Ivan
> 
> Paul Miller wrote:
> 
>>There was an action on me from last week to take a look at the suitability
>>of LibraryThing [1] as one channel by which to push out information about
>>Semantic Web books, etc.
>>
>>Taking a quick look, [2] 16 people currently tag 18 books [3] as being in
>>some way related to the topic.
>>
>>In each case, you can view descriptions of the book, find various ways to
>>get hold of it by buying or borrowing it, or look at related and recommended
>>works.
>>
>>Given the number of people claiming to own any one of these titles, the
>>really valuable network effects are not kicking in fully. However, if 'the
>>community' were encouraged to embrace this as a way of increasing awareness
>>and understanding then it could certainly serve as one useful tool amongst
>>many in our toolkit.
>>
>>Give it a try for yourself, maybe recording a couple of titles that *you*
>>own; registration is free, and you can catalogue up to 200 books for free as
>>well.
>>
>>See something like [4] or [5] for examples of the possibilities once the
>>crowd gets wise...
>>
>>See also [6] for one way in which a colleague of mine has been able to
>>further enhance the display...
>>
>>[1] - http://www.librarything.com/
>>[2] - http://www.librarything.com/tag/semantic+web
>>[3] - http://www.librarything.com/tag_allbooks.php?tag=semantic%20web
>>[4] - http://www.librarything.com/work/16738
>>[5] - http://www.librarything.com/work/11754
>>[6] - http://www.talis.com/tdn/greasemonkey/librarythingthing
>>
> 
> 

-- 

Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
PGP Key: http://www.cwi.nl/%7Eivan/AboutMe/pgpkey.html
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf