Comments on: Geeking out with books…

By: ronbrinkmann

ronbrinkmann — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:31:49 +0000

Congratulations Stevep, you’ve just submitted the dumbest comment I’ve ever received on my blog. Actually I’d say that your ridiculous comparison to slavery probably crosses the line from stupidity to offensiveness. There was no forced labor here. Plenty of people bid on the project and nobody had to bid unless they felt that the time they’d spend would be worth the money they’d receive.

I’m not oblivious to the very real issues of sweat-shop labor, etc. This has nothing to do with that.

Let’s be honest here – the obvious between-the-lines point of your message is really about you being critical of paying money over to some ‘damn foreigner’, isn’t it?

By: stevep

stevep — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:23:21 +0000

Would you condone slavery? Recommend serfdom to your family and friends?

You are doing the moral equivalent by your gleeful engagement of people for sub-living wages.

You would laugh at the prospect of working on such terms, but you do not mind subjecting others to it.

Do not tell me about the low cost of living in the third-world as legitimating your exploitation.

Every time you or others (e.g., multinational companies) outsource to these third-world serfs, you bring third-world conditions and miseries closer to western shores – and to you and your children’s future.

Thanks to your greed and laziness, you and your children will soon be working for the same peanuts you are now gleefully throwing to these beggars.

By: Building an online book-shelf « finally{}

Building an online book-shelf « finally{} — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:36:25 +0000

[...] via Tim O’reilly’s tweets, I came across someone who already built an online bookshelf in Shelfari. As soon as I read about it, I immediately [...]

By: luzer

luzer — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:37:30 +0000

i actually started a project to build an app that can do this.
via shelfari api, ocr, etc.

By: deniz

deniz — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:52:27 +0000

What a great post! This is *exactly* how I felt and – almost – the process I went through to get my own catalogue up and running. I kept saying “I need an intern” but no one ever told me about Elance. So I did all the work myself, over many months (because it was so boring!! and involved moving lots of books out of bins, and out of other rooms, to piles near the computer), using LibraryThing.com – I needed about 12 different accounts, because they had a limit as to how many books you could add for free. Then I exported each account into an Excel file, merged them together, and voila! Then I took the whole thing and copied it as a text file onto the bottom of my blog (www.thegirdleofmelian.com) cos I couldn’t be bothered linking to all 12 LibraryThing accounts :-)
I’m going to put a link to this post on my blog… Thank you for writing about this! :-)

By: Steve Leveen

Steve Leveen — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:44:27 +0000

What a super idea to photograph your shelves. This could benefit so many people. It’s an idea that should be spread widely.

All best,
Steve Leveen

By: Foy!

Foy! — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:02:39 +0000

I have a disgusting amount of books, too.

Here’s a neat mac app for keeping tabs on books:
http://www.bruji.com/bookpedia/

They have separate apps for DVDs, CDs & video games.

By: Tuesday linkdump

Tuesday linkdump — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:55:02 +0000

[...] Geeking out with books (this link is mostly for Emily’s benefit) [...]

By: ronbrinkmann

ronbrinkmann — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:34:18 +0000

@rahaf – my shelfari profile is linked to in the post. :-)

By: ronbrinkmann

ronbrinkmann — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:33:36 +0000

@SteveToth – yeah, doing this manually via barcode scanning would’ve taken me days I think. Not to mention the fact that ISBN barcodes on books weren’t common ’til sometime in the mid-late 70’s at least so a LOT of my books older books (and ones I bought used) don’t have barcodes on them.