BookLamp - Pandora for books

http://beta.booklamp.org/

by technoguyrob • 18 years ago

19 9 18 years ago

beta.booklamp.org

Sam_Odio• 18 years ago

Anyone interested in this project should read the story behind it: http://www.cangooglehearme.com/chapter1.php

Actually, the way I found this is by typing "Aaron Staunton" into Google. I was wondering if his "idea" ever came into fruition.

TrevorJ• 18 years ago

So did he get picked up by Google or is this him doing this on his own?

DocSavage• 18 years ago

It'll be interesting to see if readers like the system, because I imagine there's a number of problems with the metrics and then establishing a good personal weighting function. What about books that have mixed perspectives, 1st and 3rd person? Most of the writing style metrics would be far less significant than interesting plot and good characterization. Let's say someone liked Jurassic Park. Chances are they liked it despite the slow start, yet the structure analysis apparently recommends other books partly on a criterion ("slow start followed by fast pace") that should be negatively weighted.

Pandora's music DNA matching might be more successful because listening to music seems more visceral and less cognitive than reading books. The dimension space of book recommendation feature vectors could dwarf that of music and even movies. I wonder how the system would do in the Netflix challenge by turning the analysis on the production screenplays for the films.

sah• 18 years ago

Pandora's matching doesn't have a very good hit rate recommending music to me. But it's okay for automatically generating a radio station, so that I don't have to be involved in selecting every song.

With books, I can't listen passively while doing something else. I'm involved in each and every book selection I make. When I'm involved, I'm already better at narrowing down my selection to things I might like than Pandora is.

technoguyrob2• 18 years ago

Indeed. I've found last.fm to be better than Pandora.

paulgb• 18 years ago

If you choose George Orwell's 1984, the #1 match is the USA Patriot Act.

It would be an impressive demonstration of the algorithm, except that it appears to be an easter-egg.

lacker• 18 years ago

Could you make the site usable by people who don't want to sign in?

Pandora had a feature where you enter one song, and they tell you what they'd recommend. That intrigued me enough to sign up. That might be useful for BookLamp too.

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

music is the most shallow of all art forms. the way people interact with music will not work when applied to other art forms.

BookLamp - Pandora for books

Related Stories