Justin Rittenhouse
Apprentice
Posts: 1
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« on: March 02, 2011, 08:08:14 pm » |
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I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned a similar project, Jinni. They've done a movie recommendation engine similar to Pandora/BookLamp. I think that their needs more closely match that of the book world. They've done a great job putting together a recommendation engine for movies. What I'd hope to see from BookLamp is an ability to search by title and author, but also by descriptors: genre, time period, period written, target audience, mood, and setting, and to be able to search by multiple parameters at once. I think these approaches make it much easier to find what I want to read. For example, last spring, I read Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic (by Terry Jones). A search for something similar (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) on BookLamp turns up a few Philip K. Dick novels. While this may be in a similar genre, and may even be written similarly, it is in no way what I'd be in the mood for. I'd really be looking for not only Sci-Fi, but comedy as well. This is actually one area where I feel Pandora is lacking. They don't really ever recommend based on subject or tone of the lyrics. If I'm in a lighter mood, sometimes I just want happy music, but other times I want funny music. The same can be said with books. Right now, I'd love a good not completely serious Science Fiction novel similar to Neil Gaiman. In movies, I might get something like Iron Man or The Fifth Element, something that is sci-fi/action but has a bit more humor thrown in than your standard action flick. Not being one that ventures too far outside of my comfort zone reading a whole lot, I really just wouldn't know where to look, and that's what I'd like to see from BookLamp: something to get me to explore new territory without feeling like I wasted a week or three at the end.
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