Goodreads.com looks like a good tracking site of what books have been read or you wish to read. You can create multiple shelves that books can be stored on, for example Sci-Fi, Reading and Read for a Terry Pratchett book. It looks books up pretty well by author or title but it had a couple of issues trying to match an ISBN number that I got from one of my books, but typing the title in worked fine (probably a different edition). It has a widget plugin for wordpress and an image or flash plugin for other blogging sites and a facebook application too. I'm using the image plugin to the left here as flash is annoying - especially if you use flashblock like me. By filling in more details about your location it will show you information about other groups in your area and also links to upcoming for book events - there is one author appearing in downtown Columbus soon.
There is an option to import books using a text file using ISBN numbers - I'm not sure how well that would integrate with a cuecat but I would imagine that people with a cuecat have already scanned their books into a database already.
Naturally RSS feeds abound for various types of book categories such as the books I am reading, that are on my shelves, authors etc.
If you give it a try, my username is Absoblogginlutely.
Recently in Books Category
I just finished the free Electronic Discovery for Dummies booklet that Mike McBride blogged about. It didn't take long to read as it was 42 pages but it was quite interesting. Like Mike's review I found the book easy to read and a good start for IT Managers or someone who may need to talk to a CEO to explain implications of IT practises. In my case it will be useful to explain the implications of mail (and data) archiving policies. Several questions have arisen lately about archiving and deleting mail to reduce the load on the mail servers. Some of the reasons for doing this is cost, but then recovering all the data from all of the backup tapes could prove far more costly. However, having a short retention time for backups seems to be acceptable as long as the company has a strict policy for this and that it is adhered to.
I'm not sure what happens or if it is possible to have different retention schemes for different users (or management levels) but I do know that whatever solution is used, the ability to stop deleting things according to the policy must be possible in the case of an ediscovery request.
I passed the book along to one of our sales people as it is a good, quick primer and should really be required minimum reading for any tech dealing with backups, restoration and deletion of software.
Ages ago I wrote a feature on how to backup a cpanel account. Just recently one of my clients purchased a dedicated server that uses cpanel as the website hosting manager. I purchased cpanel
Naturally I now have to go back and make sure that the script still works and make any changes necessary.
At last, I've found a good online app for tracking what books I own, have read, borrowed from the library, ordered from the library etc. My Library Thing shows the four books that I had down in the basement to test with and the great thing is that adding a book is really simple. Just swiping the barcode with the cuecat scanner and the book was looked up on amazon and ready to be entered. I just had to add the tags that I wanted to use. It would be great if it showed the tags already used ala flickr, but I suspect that won't be long in coming. The service is free for 200 books and $10 for a lifetime membership after that which sounds pretty good to me.
The widget for recent books read appears below (which I am going to have to change the styling of)
I've requested that the library get a copy of The Dead Place by Stephen Booth as apparently its based around the police finding a geocache and contains some pretty realistic geocaching information.
Update Unfortunately I've just realised the book is only just out in the Uk and not out in the US for some time - next year :-( I'll have to get a copy when I go over to the UK sometime.
Chris has a very good article about Luna where you send them a word document and they produce it into a book. In Chris's article, Pretty Pink Ponies Edition… » For those about to rawk, We publish you! - Part 1 he has screenshots of some web content he produced as a book and the quality looks really good. The prices are not bad either and luna only take 20% of any markup you make on the book. For 2p per page black and white, its cheaper than most photocopiers (but not as instant). I'm looking forward to his next couple of articles and I'm tempted to create a book for this website as a historical record but I'm not sure how much use a book containing hyperlinks is really.......
A while back I requested the library to obtain a copy of Firefox hacks instead they have purchased 3 copies of the book Firefox and Thunderbird garage which seems to have a lot of fluff in it and aimed at firefox newbies.
I might just put another request in for the original book or the new one Hacking Firefox
I think I may have solved my reading list problem I mentioned earlier. By downloading and installing Open Media Lending Database into my Uniform server installation I now have a mini library system which even allows me to check out items to friends etc.
Installation notes in the extended entry.
Library elf is a good webpage that allows you to get email notifications and rss feeds of your books that you have borrowed/waiting to borrow from the library. Although the Columbus Metropolitan Library already has email notification, the good thing about this is that you can list all the items from all your family members in one place. That way you know who has what out (or if your wife has reserved something under your library card!)
I'm still looking for a book reading tracker app and haven't found one yet. However, this might be a good application to get started with .net
The preceding post was because I signed up for 43 things via allconsuming.net. I was hoping that it would give me the facility to have an online list of books that I've read from the library along with the ability to have a list of books that I'd like to borrow/buy. However it doesn't look like this 43things is the way to go about doing this. I guess I could always blog each book, pointing to amazon or something, but its not really a convenient way of doing things. I'm also looking at using MediaMan as a way of storing this information, with books that I've borrowed from the library going into a category called "From Library" and the books that I own going into another category called Own.
Mediaman is free tracking software for media and books and works fairly well and doesn't have ads in it unlike the free version of dvdprofiler. DVDProfiler works great and was very easy to import my dvds off the barcodes on the covers, but its export routine is not usable by MediaMan as DVDProfiler decides to use its own internal version of the barcode (dropping the first and last digit).
So, has anyone got any suggestions of software/websites that will allow you to keep an online reading list? Rss feeds would be great too.
I finished reading Hacker Cracker last night. The first part of the book deals entirely with the authors plight of growing up in a very rough area of town and the struggles that he faces with on a day to day basis. Apart from the first 4 or 5 pages, which contained a fast moving account of what happens when a rogue Chief Technology Officer gets sacked, for the first 71 pages I was wondering whether the book that I was reading had been slipped inside the jacket of hacker cracker as there was no mention of computers at all. The story was still pretty interesting though. Eventually he gets round to his first experience with computers and his encounters with hacking and the addictiveness of it all. Eventually the story ends up with a moving account of being at the site of the twin towers on 9/11 and a very touching part about a strange whistling noise (which I won't explain as it is a bit of a spoiler). An easy read and not really the usual hacker biography type book. I think this is partly due to the fact that the author is assuming his readers are not technical as some of the explanations (IRC for example) are very basic and some are almost "media stereotypical assumptions" of what really goes on.
As the theme of the book is the struggle to overcome and make life a lot better for his family, the target audience for this book is increased beyond the geek and I think even my mother would like this book!
I watched most of the first season of 4400 yesterday as USA was holding a marathon rerun of the first series before the premiere of the 2nd series later on in the evening. It was a good series, similar to the x-files but not as spooky but with more of a focus on the real life effects of being dumped back onto earth after being away for x number of years. The funny thing is that at the moment I am currently reading Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten and the main character is struggling with the exact same issues. I wonder whether Jasper watched the tv series too.
One of the annoying things with watching that much tv is the amount of adverts you have to sit through and you would have thought that they DON'T need to advertise the premiere of the 2nd series EVERY time there is an advert break. After all, if you are sitting there watching a whole series, it is extremely likely that you are well aware of the premiere and you just want them to get on with it.
I had tried to get the dvd out of the library and blockbusters, but neither of them stock it. I'm surprised as blockbuster had a whole stack of tv series but not this one. (It was available on bittorrent though but its too risky to start using that sort of network)
A long time ago I worked out the script needed to look up books on the Cheshire Library system from an amazon page with the Library lookup page.
Now that I'm living in Ohio, I needed the same for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, so here it is. Just drag CML to your link bar, find a book on amazon and then click the link to open the page on the library system.
Now that we are in Dublin, we can get books,cd's, dvd's out of the library for no charge AND reserve books for no charge too. This is great as it means you can choose what you like and as all the libraries are linked it typically means you don't have to wait long until you get the item you want. However if it is a recent dvd then you might have to wait a long time. One of the items that Kristen reserved we were the 667th person on the list so I cancelled the reservation. However on other books that we have reserved I've got the items in 2-3 days.
Anyway, Wee Free Men was on the shelf in the library and was the next Terry Pratchett book that I needed to read. Oddly enough it was in the teens section and not in the fiction section but I guess it is a kids book. It was still pretty funny and very similar to the rest of the Discworld series and Granny Weatherwax even makes an appearance. The only downside about reading the books in america is that you don't get the good cartoons on the front cover (as in the amazon link posted earlier) that you do with the uk editions. Actually in this rare case I prefer the US cover. After Josh Kirby died, the illustrations on the books haven't been as cartoony as they used to be. It only took me a day or so to read whilst cuddling cats so it goes back to the library later this week.
I also got Teach yourself MovableType in 24 hours out to see what it is like. I skimmed the first few sections as obviously I know how to install and use MT otherwise this blog wouldn't exist. It did seem like a fairly good tutorial although the troubleshooting section was pretty vague. In the authors defence, I wouldn't want to write a troubleshooting section on installing MT - like most software packages there are an awful lot of things to go wrong.
I'm more interested in the template section of the book but I have not had time to get to that bit yet and I'm resisting the urge to skip straight to that section as there might be something useful in the earlier bits.
Just finished reading Dave Gorman's googlewhack adventure. Its a very good story of how he flies around the world, several times and is especially interesting as part of his journey takes him to Columbus and to areas that Kristen knows about.
Just finished In the presence of the enemy by Elizabeth George. This is the first of the Inspector Linley novels that I have read and all because it was one of the books from the library that Kristen got for 10p in their pre-christmas book sale. It's taken about a week to read in the evenings before bed and it has been a good read. If you like your murder mysteries then you will like this series. Problem is there are loads of books in this series so you'll either get hooked and have loads to read or you might that the series are very formulistic - I don't myself but will find out when I read another one.
The funny think about the amazon affiliate link is that the book lists at £6.99, amazon themselves are selling it at £5.59, yet there is one seller who has it on sale, new, for £2.49
Whilst I was in America I took a couple of books out of the library. I only managed to finish reading one of them, Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements. Its a "biography" of spammers and the story behind how they work(ed) and the antispammers fight to get them brought to justice and stop them spamming. Its very entertaining and you don't need to be a net nerd to understand the book either. At some points,when it tells you how much they were making a month, it shows why it is worth being a spammer....until the jail sentence catches up with them!
If you've ever read Cuckoo's egg by Clifford Stoll then you will know what to expect (this book is about the tracking down of hackers) and is also a recommended read. The other book that I didn't get a chance to read was Dave Gorman's Googlewhack adventure but as that is available at Congleton library I'll get it out from there now.
For those of you in Cheshire who want to see if books available from amazon are in your library, drag library to your links/toolbar and then click the link when you have a book from amazon.co.uk in your browser.
Finished reading the 2000+ pages of Underground on the pocketpc last weekend. It's been a really interesting read about hacking and has kept me entertained whilst waiting for tape restores/backups to run, dinners to be served in hotels etc whilst i've been out on the road. Interestingly one of the hackers lived in Salford at the same time I was there as a student and he got busted for hacking.
