An Engine

[John Kalvin]

The engine behind BookLamp is very powerful, both actually (today) and conceptually (tomorrow).  The potential uses are almost limitless.

Going forward, it may be beneficial to separate, in a business model / organizational entity sense, the analytical engine and algorithms from the various applications and services derived from the engine's fruits.

Perhaps this could mean making the engine an open source project while various projects that make use of said engine becoming part of for-profit venture(s).  Or maybe it means expanding your team and dedicating some developers to the engine and other specialists to tracking down various means of monetization.

I don't know what I'm talking about, for the most part, but that is my humble take on this fascinating project.  Keep-up the amazing work!

[Aaron Stanton]

Actually, for supposedly "not knowing what you're talking about" you make a fair amount of sense. 

We've thought about how you'd go about developing the different applications all based on the same engine; we've played with the idea of just laying out all the possible applications, and then saying, "Hey, anyone want to work on these," and then build our team bigger and see where it goes.  That's probably the route we'd take if we were interested in open sourcing it.

You comments about open sourcing the engine but not the results is interesting, and something I hadn't thought of myself.  I'll have to think about that a bit.

Ultimately, as much as I love open source movements (and Paul and Brandon are far bigger fans than I), it'd still be nice be able to pay for my bread and water with this project - Open Source makes that a bit more difficult, though it has its ups as well.

Aaron

Aaron

[John Kalvin]

I agree, Open Source makes it more difficult to make cash on your hard work.  It may not be profitable to go down that road.

Yet the idea of separating the engine from what you can do with the engine may be worthwhile.  Kind of like separating content from form.  I say this because I think that no one can even begin to imagine all of the possibilities for BookLamp right now...  There are simply too many!

Plus, if one effort to monetize BookLamp fails, it wouldn't ruin the overall project.

[Joel Headley]

There are a number of social networking sites that focus on readers. Would love to see this service integrated into each of those sites. I'm currently on GoodReads and could see how this service can really improve that experience.

Definitely need to partner with someone who has a large number of books scanned - considering that content will form the database. It must be comprehensive to make the service truly useful.