Thanks to Anol, I now have a virtual bookshelf, via Shelfari. Earlier this year, I had taken a photograph of one of my bookcases and posted it as, A few good books. Shelfari is much easier to use and share than photos of books, but it’s still in beta so there will be some glitches.
Creating an account was simple, and the search engine found all of my books quickly. This is a fun way for bibliophiles, teachers and learners to share interests and it’s a Web 2.0 application that I’m sure I’ll continue using.
Harold — In all of 5 seconds, my first glance at your Shelfari collection won me over. Both in terms of the range of texts you’ve identified as (I assume) ‘must reads’, and the way this service begins to visually orient viewers to dive into idea sharing and book buying in such an intuitive way. Brilliant in its simplicity. I’m surprised Amazon (who is obviously linked re: the buying option) hasn’t created a similar interface…or perhaps in a year or so they’ll buy Shelfari and it’ll all be part of one team in the end. Great tool, Harold — thanks for posting. Cheers, Christian
As Anol mentioned, Shelfari is missing an RSS feed, but it sure is easy to set up and the visual display of the books makes a real difference. Yes, the books are “must reads” but with a caveat that some books are only interesting to people in specific fields. For instance, “Systems Thinking” is not light reading (I also noted that system crashed today, as it’s probably getting a lot of hits).
Looks like Amazon thinks it is useful as well – the rumor is that they have invested $1M into it (just think if they added added the ability to create your own bookshelf from amazon.com).
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/25/amazon-invests-in-shelfari/
Sincerely,
Ben
Ben Watson, ben.watson@thomson.com
VP of Collaboration – Thomson NETg