It’s been a little over a year since we wrote about a site called Can Google Hear Me? As a refresher, the site was started by a guy on an adventure who used it to document his journey trying to get Google to hear his “great” idea. He got on a plane and headed to California so he could pitch his idea to the folks at Google, hoping they’d like it and bring him on to help make his dream a reality. People including myself and some of you, were following the story pretty closely to see how it would all pan out.
Fast forward to today when Jack of all Trades sent us a tip about a service that recently launched into beta called BookLamp.org. I went to check it out, scrolled down the page, and lo and behold there was the “CanGoogleHearMe.com” logo. As it turns out, this is the project that Aaron Stanton went and pitched to Google. Apparently Google didn’t see the value that Aaron did because they never brought him onboard. He finally launched the service on his own last week.
So what is BookLamp.org? Well, it’s described as “the Pandora” of books. Just like Pandora recommends music based upon your tastes, BookLamp.org recommends books that are written with the similar tone, tense, perspective, action level, etc., as other books you’ve read and enjoyed. They created the service by coming up with a way to scan a book to determine the writing style of the author, which they say is arguably the most important way to determine if you’ll like a book or not.
This could potentially be an awesome service for book-lovers, however they only have 179 books in their database. If you haven’t read one of those books, you’re pretty much out of luck. At this point they’re trying to determine if there’s enough interest in the service to seek venture capital or partner with a company who already has a database of scanned books. While it sounds great, I’m doubtful they’ll be successful, and I’m usually one to be optimistic. The bottom line is that more people listen to music than read books which is partially why Pandora is such a hit. Any thoughts?
Thanks for the tip Jack of all Trades!
I love to read books and though not nearly as popular now days as music you must consider what a booming business audio books are becoming, because it makes books accessible to busy people who otherwise would not take the time to read. I think it is very plausible and would be a great service. It might help to begin with specialized books aimed at a specific profession and then work your way to the general population.
@Ashley:
I think E-books are becoming a growing trend and Amazon is taking advantage of this new interest. They even created a reading tool which took over like a NASA rocket, (i.e., Kindle).
If I were Aaron, I would take a plane and talk to Jeff Bezos; maybe he has a friendly ear than Google.
the big difference between pandora and book lamp, is that book lamp does all the analyzing, or at least a very large portion of it, automatically. as pandora requires humans to listen and analyze every single track. this means that book lamp needs less human resource, but more books. and since so many books are either pure electronic, and many others are being scanned and OCRed, then it should be easy to bring book lamp up to speed.
company like amazon, which already offer parts of books online, and not to mention e-books for kindle, can get even more ppl to buy them, if they r sure they will buy something they will like.
they can even link their service to libraries who are willing to pay some money, so you will get both a link to buy a book, and a link to rent one in ur home town.
so sure, more people listen to music then read books, and yes, pandora is not limited in the language of song, and book lamp is. but it is still a gr8 service, and i am very excited about it.
Yeah, I don’t like books
Ever since you wrote about it a year ago I have been following it. This is partly why I love Cybernet!
I love books! This is a cool read:
[amazon.com]
Ur missing out
Books = knowledge and imagination, two wonderful things in life that Xbox et al, don’t give 
Ahh yes, Mr. Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Not a bad thought at all!
You are missing out! Although, I do know plenty of people who just don’t like reading whatsoever. I never really liked books while I was in elementary school because they were usually picked for me. Today I find that I can easily get into non-fiction books and I enjoy those the most.