PETRONA

A miscellaneous round-up, for a change

In the first couple of years of this blog, I regularly posted "round ups" of various bits and bobs I came across, usually articles on the Internet. About a year ago I more or less stopped doing this, mainly because I can post links to the relevant Friend Feed group if I come across articles of interest, and also because I share my Google Reader selections so anyone can follow those. In addition, of course there is always Twitter, where if you follow me you won't find out what I'm having for tea or think about the price of fish, but you will get links to various items that I find stimulating for one reason or another. (Typepad has a similar "following" service but it is pretty nascent.)

However, a couple of articles and sites came to my attention recently so I thought I'd share them here. First, I received an email from someone called Mike Norman about his website, ungrammatically called Thrillers4u. Despite the offputting title, this site is pretty ace, providing cover pictures and blurbs of recently published crime novels, "a showcase for exciting and engaging thriller fiction. Ignore the siren call of 'best seller' authors. Forget the publisher's hype. These are stories you may have overlooked or never even been aware of." Yes, it is true, there are some good selections on there, and no sign of James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell and others with huge marketing budgets behind them (though there are some of the better top-sellers, eg Harlan Coben). There is a welcome accent on translated fiction, and fiction from smaller publishers. So this is a site to which I shall be returning, not least for their tagline, "you'll find none of the usual suspects here".

On the more technical side, is this the end for RSS? I was not too sad when I read that Bloglines will soon close - this is an RSS reader that I used a long time ago (before I started a blog, in fact). Although it changed my world at the time, it is a sad fact that Google Reader, when it came along, was even better (and "up" a lot more!), so I switched. Ask.com bought up Bloglines, somewhat behind the curve, but it seems it has not thrived. I was not too bothered about Bloglines until I learned from a colleague that Google Reader use has declined massively too - by 27 per cent last year -  it seems that RSS readers have been superceded by the echo chamber that is Twitter. How annoying, I much prefer an RSS reader than having to follow people or hashtags or lists on Twitter as there is too much noise that needs filtering out. Still, there may be life in the young dog yet, according to the source itself.

If you are one of those considering an e-reader, there's a useful comparison between the latest versions of the market leaders, Sony's reader touch and Amazon's Kindle 3, at The Inquirer. My Kindle 3 arrived 2 days ago, and so far I am very impressed. I set it up and (wirelessly) downloaded a book within minutes of opening the packaging. (A book that has been on my Amazon wishlist for 2 years or so, but has never come out in paperback --- but is available in an affordable e-reader format.) I note that there is a "read aloud" option (where it reads the book to you rather than your eyes doing it); I also note that you can download audiobooks via the Audible website, and you can download your music files in mp3 format if you like to listen while you read, using the built-in stereo speakers and earplug jack. Thankfully, however, it isn't a phone.  I haven't actually started reading the book yet ;-), but the screen and print looks good, so the omens are promising. The choice of books on Amazon is brilliant; the selection of magazines, newspapers and blogs less so -- but it is early days. As ever with Amazon, I'm very impressed with the thought they've put into the customer interfaces and interactions between the device and the website.

Finally, for this post, returning to "proper" books - Robert McCrum in the Guardian totally misses the point in his widely reported article Waterstone's has forgotten what bookselling is about. (Incidentally, along with the present tense in novels, a pet hate of mine is assertions in titles. A better one here would have been Has Waterstone's forgotten what bookselling is about?) In the Guardian piece, the author confounds two issues - that of Waterstone's  being unable to deal effectively or well with a journalist's enquiry; and whether or not they are a decent bookseller. Dealing with media enquiries is not easy for anyone, but even the most silly journalist should realise that a company's policy on who can or cannot speak to the media is not relevant at all to what it stocks in its shops. I despise these petty attacks not only because they are prejudiced, unaware of the economics of bookselling and illogical, but because for many of us, Waterstone's is the only bookshop anywhere near where we live. Would not having a bookshop at all, or having to rely on WHSmith, be better? No. And, so far as my own local branch of Waterstone's is concerned, it is quite a nice place to browse and even buy books. Not as good as the old days before the Internet and when the National Net Book Agreement ruled, maybe, but still, not bad.

Merging internet personae, and the importance of relevance

As more and more of the internet gets hooked up, it becomes harder and harder to hide ;-). I now regularly (instead of occasionally) feel apologetic to colleagues and people I know through work for receiving my crime-fiction-related output, and to those I know through our shared reading tastes to be receiving scientific updates and commentary. It is all down to this "behind the scenes joining up" that is going on everywhere. 

I have been experiencing with interest all the ways in which Typepad, the platform that hosts Petrona, has been interconnecting me with Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, OpenID, the bit.ly shortener, et al. Most of the time I ignore this as to me, blogging is just something I do because I like it, I am not interested in going out there looking for lots of readers, "optimizing", wanting money or ads, etc. If people want to read what I write here, that is great, and even better if they want to interact about it,  but I take the line that they can find me easily enough if we share interests, the internet being what it is. Nevertheless, because it was easy to do, I did succumb to one of these offers last week and created a Facebook page for this blog. I have no idea what that is or what it is supposed to do, particularly as posts I write here are automatically exported to my Facebook account anyway (which saves me actually having to go there), but I was delighted [?] to receive an email from Facebook yesterday morning:

"Hi Maxine,

Here is this week's summary for the Facebook Page: PETRONA

0 fans this week (2 total fans)
0 Wall posts, comments and likes this week (0 last week)
0 visits to your page this week (0 visits last week)".

Oh well, either I am doing something very wrong or something very right. (One, or maybe two, of those ''fans'  is me, I am sure. I suppose I should go and double-check to make sure I have not enmeshed an innocent Facebooker, one of these days.)

To date, I am with John Tierney, who wrote in the New York Times fairly recently that in effect people set up their own online "niche networks" by sharing articles that they have read and liked with each other. Facebook et al. do it one (closed) way, but I prefer the open, Friend Feed-style "personal" approach (an example is our crime and mystery fiction readers' group, in which 133 (as of today) people chat about a bunch of self-selected RSS feeds, basically). 

I agree also with the NYT point that much of the news and comment spread and discussed in this way, as well as much better targeted and trustworthy than what you stumble across on Facebook, is positive or constructive. It's a very good, efficient way to filter out not just what doesn't interest you, but a lot of negative stupidity and rubbish (if you don't like stupidity or rubbish). And filtering is the key to getting the most out of all the wonders the internet has to offer you, the individual, whether you are in solitary or sharing mode. It is certainly much more important to me than how many visits to my blog's Facebook page I get (which is just as well!).

More about Crime Time

In response to an earlier post I wrote about Crime Scene, the geographical-based Crime Time series on translated (or yet to be translated) crime, Bob Cornwell writes: "Italy will be the next up in the Crime Scene series, complied by Gian Franco Orsi, once a director of Il Giallo Mondadori, the crime imprint that has been the backbone of crime and noir fiction in Italy since 1929 (apart from the early 1940s when Mussolini shut them down). Orsi is also a regular judge of the Giorgio Scerbanenco Prize, the top prize for Italian writers of crime, now awarded annually at the Noir in Festival, in the Italian alpine resort of Courmayeur. There is a short piece on this festival now on the Crime Time site as a kind of a trailer for the later article (which, hopefully, will be ready early in the New Year). I’ve been dropping in the occasional article on the Crime Time site on matters European just lately, for example on Vienna’s Kriminacht (Crime Night), the Austrian crime writer’s annual effort to publicise their increasing presence in the German-speaking market. I invite your readers to drop in from time to time." Another of of Bob's Crime Time pieces is about Ragnar Jonasson, "an Icelandic Agatha Christie?".

Index of interviews on Crime Time, including Arnaldur Indridason, Hilary MacAskill on Agatha Christie, Paul Cleave, Thomas H. Cook, Mehmet Murat Somer, N. J. (Natasha) Cooper, Colin Cotterill, Feye Kellerman, 'Michael Stanley' and many others. Crime Time also features many other articles, for example Ann Cleeves on what it is like seeing "Vera" (series character Vera Stanhope of Hidden Depths and other books) filmed.

Crime-fiction websites for readers

For those interested in international crime writing, Crime Scene is a Crime Time series edited by Bob Cornwell, which looks at "the very best of the international crime writing scene", country by country. Each country profile collects key facts, relevant figures, publishing trends, notable writers, crime fiction festivals and prizes. And each issue is compiled by writers, bibliographers, or other experts active on the Crime Scene in question. Each profile is available to download in PDF format and more will be added as the series develops. So far, countries profiled are France, The Netherlands and Switzerland, characterised by cover images of a mean street, a pair of legs wearing pink high heels, and a pile of sausages, respectively. These PDFs look like excellent resources, and just as soon as I can get my new(ish) computer to talk to the printer, I shall be downloading them to plan some reading. I'll also be checking the Crime Scene index page now and again to see which country will be added next.

Another crime-fiction website, CrimeSquad, among other riches is running an interview with Camilla Noli, who has written a highly controversial debut, The Mother's Tale, about the extraordinary pressures on a new mother and her desire to kill her own child. According to CrimeSquad, the book was deemed so controversial that it was delayed a year in publication in deference to public outrage at the Baby P case. (I can't find the interview with the author at the CrimeSquad site, but maybe others have better detective skills than me.)

Other crime-fiction resources include:

Mystery Readers Journal

Shots Ezine

Reviewing the Evidence, whose home page is currently featuring Sharon and Yvonne's top-ten reading lists for the year - with only one overlapping title.

Euro Crime  (my favourite! but they are all great sites.)

End of the line for science journalism?

Although I say it myself, there are some really stimulating, readable and fascinating articles in Nature this week (25 June issue) about science, journalism and communication with the lay public. Most of this post is taken from a Nature Network forum post: you're welcome to join in the discussion there.

Many researchers see science journalists as a public-relations service or as an ally in spreading the news about their work, asserts a Nature Editorial this week (459, 1033; 2009 – free to read online). The Editorial points out that there is a deeper value of journalism: to cast a fair but sceptical eye over everything in the public sphere — science included. This kind of scrutiny is easy for researchers to applaud when a news report questions dodgy statistics or dubious claims about uncertainties in evolution. It is not so easy when the story takes a critical look at animal-research practices, overblown claims about climate change or scientists’ conflicts of interest. But such examinations are to the benefit of society, which needs to see science scrutinized as well as regurgitated, and journalists are an essential part of that process.
This week’s Nature special issue, of which the Editorial is a part, shines a spotlight on the profession in changing, troubled times, and is published to mark the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists from 30 June to 2 July 2009 in London.
Scientists can do little to stem the current bloodletting, in which readers and advertisers are deserting publications that are downsizing or folding at fast pace. But, argues the Editorial, they can make worthwhile attempts to ensure that questioning and informed science journalism persists in whatever new forms might emerge from the carnage. If the future of the media truly is a dire landscape of top-100 lists, shouting heads and minimal attention span, then such efforts might at least defer the grim end. A good start would be to have a look at the advice for academics speaking to journalists provided by Brad Delong and Susan Rasky. And from the other side of the coin, the Washington Post‘s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and its executive editor Marcus Brauchli discuss the future of science coverage in their newspaper in a Nature Books&Arts Q&A.
But do newspapers even matter? Blogs and microblogging services like Twitter are opening up conferences to those not actually there – how is this direct to web exposure affecting science journalism, and indeed scientists themselves and their options for peer-review and publication of their research? A range of angles on these questions are covered in a Nature News feature, including the story of a recent ’blogostorm’ about a Cold Spring Harbor meeting in which scientists seemed free to report what journalists could not.
In other articles in this week’s Nature, Toby Murcott in Toppling the priesthood argues that the process of science needs to be opened up to journalists; Boyce Rensberger (Too close for comfort) tracks the progression of scientific correspondent from cheerleader to watchdog; and Nadia El-Awady in The Arab boom suggests much room for improvement in local journalism in Arab countries. The bottom line? To what extent should scientists help — or care?
(All the Nature articles mentioned and linked here are part of the science journalism special in the issue of 25 June 2009. The three Essays and the Books&Arts article are free to read online for 2 weeks from the publication date.)

Individuality in the online age

General interest is out, niche is in - according to an article in The Atlantic on why the Economist is thriving while Time and Newsweek fade. "The Economist has reached its current level of influence and importance because it is, in every sense of the word, a true global digest for an age when the amount of undigested, undigestible information online continues to metastasize. And that’s a very good place to be in 2009." Michael Hirschorn describes how the Economist (by accident or design) more or less ignored the online revolution and the desperate urge to be "relevant" on the web, and has hence remained a valuable print product  - valuable that is to readers and to the owners, an enviable double-whammy for publications these days. The Economist is not innovative or intellectual, according to Hirschorn: "The “leaders,” or main articles, tend to “urge” politicians to solve complex problems, as if the key to, say, reconstituting the global banking system were but a simple act of cogitation away. A typical leader, from January, on the ongoing Gaza violence was an erudite, deeply historical write-around on Arab-Israeli violence that ended up arriving at the same conclusion everyone else arrived at long ago: Israel must give up land for peace. The science-and-technology pages tend toward Gladwell-lite popularizations of academic papers from British universities." However, the magazine cleverly distils the world into a compact survey every week - so you really can keep up with what is going on everywhere. (The other publication that is succeeding for similar reasons is The Week, an addictive digest of everything but without any orginal content.) "Knowing what and who you are, and conveying that idea to an audience, is the only way to break through to readers ADD’ed out on an infinitude of choices."

Along similar lines, here's a video of Christopher R.Weingarten talking about music criticism and the web at the "140 characters" conference in New York a few days ago. It's an entertaining rant, making the point that using Twitter (etc) to find information relevant to you is the problem, not a solution, because all you find is what you already know. He writes music reviews on Twitter, and says he makes an effort to make every one poetic and infomative. His line is: don't just say "I like/hate this" and make it about you, in common with everyone else on Twitter, but be a critic, let people know the "why and the how" - there is enough room in 140 characters to elaborate and have good writing, and that way you might actually discover something new rather than following the bland majority. Those of us who read and review books know this already (the principle, rather than the bit about the 140 characters!), but I think it might be news to a few.

Twittering the Apollo 11 Moon mission, 40 years on

Nature News twitters the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened -- 40 years on. Follow them at ApolloPlus40 ; location, the Moon.

 
Via twitpic.

Two hours ago: #Apollo 11 passes 9-hr flight readiness review: 16 July launch date approved.

Robert left a comment to my "puzzled of Twitter" post the other day recommending a service called Thwirl, which I've duly downloaded. It seems to do for Twitter what the Friend Feed notifier does for Friend Feed and other similar pop-up notifiers do for their services (eg the dreaded email notifier which I have turned off). This pop-up route is apparently "the" way to use Twitter, not RSS (I have probably been told this before by other helpful people but only just got round to focusing on this pressing issue). Once Thwirl was installed (very easy, but requires Adobe AIR, as does the Friend Feed notifier) I immediately found out that the Apollo 11 programme had started (40 years on) so I can tell you about it - and I have also found, via Andreas (whose Twitter name is, I think, @Trabesinger - follow him if you want to know lots of things about physics and probably motor racing - he is very nice), 18 beautiful rainbows from around the world. I would certainly have missed seeing those without this Thwirly thing, so I'm grateful for that.

By the way, Thwirl also lets you include other services, including Friend Feed - I think I might find that level of integration just too confusing, though, because the only people who are allowed to appear on my FF notifier are the crime-fiction room members - so if I see a FF pop-up I know it is crime-fiction related (or OT!). And I imagine that everyone else I know on Friend Feed is also on Twitter so they will all be Thwirled, now.

While I've been writing this post, the Apollo 11 programme staff have been busy, popping up regularly with updates about their preparations for launch. It's so exciting, reminding me vividly of the tension, massive public interest, and sense of awe at the sheer scale of the ambition back in the "olden days". Then, I cut out pictures and articles from the Times's coverage (they ran various special supplements) and stuck them up on my bedroom wall. I had to visit a friend's house to watch the news on the day it happened because we didn't have a TV -- waiting to see the film of the landing on that day was unbearable! How times have changed in terms of instant, constant, pictorial news reporting. (And my bedroom wall isn't the same either, believe it or not - but although this year it features a calendar of scenes of Yosemite national park, next year I just might go for planets and satellites.)

Tweetfic for CrimeTwitterers

Twitter is currently very hard to avoid if you go anywhere on the internet (even though the sums have been done several times and only 40 per cent of users return for a second visit). A post at The Guardian describes a new craze, Tweetfic, which mashes up Twitter with novel plots. (Not to be confused with Debra Hamel's longstanding Twitterlit.)  Some examples of Tweetfic:

Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

Orphan given £££ by secret follower. He thinks it's @misshavisham but it turns out to be @magwitch

Vladimir and Estragon stand next to tree and wait for Godot. Their status is not updated.

Man walks around Dublin. We follow every minute detail of his day. He's probably overtweeting.

Inevitably, upon reading this and with yesterday's discovery of an @crimefiction "person" at Twitter (who has nothing to do with NextReads, my assumption about that was due to my almost complete confusion concerning Twitter - however, I think I now have an inklingette about who he/she/it might be), made me wonder if we could do the same for crime fiction. How to summarise a book in 140 characters (max) without a spoiler? I'll have a go but I challenge readers to come up with three CrimeTwitters - and let us guess the book.

My attempts:

Interest in entomology reveals to hidden half of duo cause of ancient family curse. Misty environs.

Reluctant detective prefers jokes and booze. Keeps girl and dog anyway but acquires legendary mismoniker.

A dozen moving suspects in private Jury group. Case closed.

I am sure that you can do better than this (and easily guess the novels I've summarised). Just as well I don't write them for real.

Have I finally found something useful on Twitter?

I should add to the title of this post "that I hadn't already found out simultaneously or soon before/after from somewhere else"? When Twitter opened up its search function last week, Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise set up a #crimefiction tag, which I duly entered into my RSS subscriptions. Until today, the only items picked up by the RSS reader are items written by Kerrie (even though I have been applying the #crimefiction keyword to relevant Petrona posts, these aren't showing up, so I must be doing something wrong).

Yesterday, however, I found a Twitter entry in my RSS: "Welcome to @crimefiction, the Scandinavian crime fiction portal!" The profile states that it is a "user-friendly and extensive Scandinavian Crime Fiction portal. Up-to-date and relevant information on books, audio books and e-books." I have clicked on "follow" and discover that the Twitter "personage" is in fact a website called Scandinavian Crime Fiction: your foray into Northern deviance. I quote: "a user-friendly portal for everyone interested in crime fiction. If you are looking for up-to-date and relevant information on crime fiction writers from Scandinavia, you will find it here. You have read Henning Mankell, heard about Karin Fossum, and seen Stieg Larsson’s name on top of best-seller lists. But you want to know more. This is your website. If you want recommendations, you will find your next book, e-book and audio book here! Editions and publication dates vary by country. This is the US homepage for Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Click on the flag to the left to get updated information for the UK. " The whole enterprise seems to be a subset of NextRead books. [Correction: no it isn't connected to NextRead - see comments to this post.]

The Scandinavian Crime Fiction website is quite preliminary still (the Facebook and "blog group" links are to placeholders), but it looks to be a useful addition to existing resources such as Euro Crime (Karen Meek), Scandinavian Crime Fiction (Barbara Fister), the Friend Feed crime and mystery fiction group, and the Scandinavian Crime Fiction group that already exists on Facebook - not to mention the excellent blogs that discuss Scandinavian and other crime fiction, as listed in the blogroll here.

FiledByAuthor, another online book network

It's not safe to get back in the water yet: I just discovered, via Read Street, another social networking site, FiledByAuthor, marketed as for authors but I think readers might enjoy it too, despite a plethora of existing social sites and online groups for readers. The hook for readers is that you can "connect with your favourite authors" - but although J. K. Rowling has a page, I am not sure what "connecting" with it does in that regard (James Patterson and Stephanie Mayer have pages that are featured prominently, also). FiledByAuthor could, however, be a way to connect with other people who like reading a particular author's books. Some categories include Women sleuths, Police procedurals and Hard boiled - or you can search by an author's name. Here's Stieg Larsson, for example.

What's in it for authors? Well, apparently you can have a profile, promote your work, "add content" etc. I am not sure if that is significantly different to social sites such as Book Place or Crime Spaceon Ning, but if you are an author I suppose it is another venue for getting known. (More about the site is here.)

I think I will check out FiledByAuthor as a reader, to see if there is any crime-fiction discussion on offer. I will let you know if I find any! I have set up a group for crime and mystery fiction readers, so please join it if you want. (I have not put anything in it yet, but contributions are welcome.)

There is also an associated blog, FiledByBlog, which looks to be a useful source of publishing news.

Wikipedia and Britannica modes of editing

Via Dave Lull, Wikipedia is considering introducing "flagged revisions", a way for the organisation to review content to avoid a repeat of incidents such as the incorrect report of Senator Ted Kennedy's death at an inauguration lunch. (Reported by Cnet news.) Is Wikipedia a news organisation or an encylopaedia? If it is an online encyclopaedia (as I thought it was), it doesn't need to bother about "breaking news" and scoops. It could set itself up not to have instant changes or additions to its content. If, on the other hand, it is a news organisation, it needs resourcing appropriately, otherwise the site becomes just like a comment thread on a blog - everyone, however ignorant, can get a moment in the sun (and cached in Internet searches). What of the question of speed with which user-generated content and edits appear on the site? In the article at the link, there are complaints that the German-language Wikipedia site took days for its moderators to approve content. This is not critical for an encyclopaedia. It is for a news publication.

Again via Dave, Encyclopaedia Britannica is continuing its efforts to remain relevant for the web 2.0 world by inviting user-generated content and edits (again). (Reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.) What's the difference between the two rival publications? "Wikipedia, which ranks among the world's top-10 most visited websites, is maintained by volunteers from all over the world and anyone with an internet connection can create and edit articles and publish them on the site. Would-be editors on the Britannica site will have to register using their real names and addresses before they are allowed to modify or write their own articles." I had a go but did not get very far in the complex system. I did learn, however, for free, that it is Oprah Winfrey's birthday.

PS Non-sequitur, but Howard Shore's score for Lord of the Rings remains brilliant however many times I listen to it. I've just heard the part when the Fellowship escape from Moria, and are struck by the emotional realisation that they have lost Gandalf. Wonderful. Sublime.

Time Life photo archive now online

Did everyone know that the LIFE photo-archive is now available via Google image search?  From the Google official blog: "This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s. Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos."

You can search the archive, as well as see some example pictures, from the Google blog post. Some bloggers have already been busy picking out their favourites. See selections and favourites at

The Great Beyond (Nature news blog)

Discover's Cosmic Variance

Symmetry Breaking ("gorgeous physics")

The Hairy Museum of Natural History

Clinical Cases and Images

Flags and Lollipops

Drawn

Lifehacker

 

Rare book room of delights

Via Friend Feed:

"The Rare Book Room site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world. Over the last decade, a company called "Octavo" digitally photographed some of the world’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page). This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution." You can search by category, author or library.

The picture shown here is from Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, by Louis Renard. "In 100 plates containing 460 brilliantly colored engravings that represent a dazzling multitude of fishes, along with crustaceans, grasshoppers, a dugong, and a mermaid, Louis Renard’s Fishes, crayfishes and crabs, of diverse coloration and extraordinary form displays the most fantastic evocation of exotic aquatic life ever produced."

Other books included are Shakespeare's quartos and folios from various libraries; issues of Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and his major work Experiments and Observations on Electricity; books of hours; works by Galileo and Copernicus; and The Choix des plus belles fleurs by Redouté, also very pretty.

Maps of crime

Richard Akerman of Science Library Pad draws attention to a crime map (of Ottawa as it happens). If you happen to live in that fair city, you can use the map to see which streets are most popular with criminals. They don't really need to have such a map for Kingston upon Thames as there are only two sites for crime (two "nightclubs", O------ and The W-----), as well as the river itself of course which is convenient for dumping the bodies. (Three people who met premature ends have been found there in the 18 years I've lived here, according to the local paper.)

I wonder if someone could make, or has made, such a map for fictional crime?

However, as Richard points out about Ottawa's latest: "If this doesn't seem too novel, keep in mind that chicagocrime.org was one of the original crime map mashups, and it was only created in May 2005 (see In memory of chicagocrime.org )".

The days of our scientific lives

Google's latest launch is a new homepage for Google Blog Search "so that you too can browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere. Adapting some of the technology pioneered by Google News, we're now showing categories on the left side of the website and organizing the blog posts within those categories into clusters, which are groupings of posts about the same story or event. Grouping them in clusters lets you see the best posts on a story or get a variety of perspectives. When you look within a cluster, you'll find a collection of the most interesting and recent posts on the topic, along with a timeline graph that shows you how the story is gaining momentum in the blogosphere." Much feedback I've seen is positive (and it does look nice), but not all are enthusiastic: "The new Google Blog Search is very nice. It's a big improvement to the old one. But it's like a lot of Google's services. All algorithm and no "voice". It may attract a mainstream audience the way Google News has and that's fine. But for me, it's not close to the value that I get from aggregators with an angle. It's like a mainstream newspaper versus a blog. On one you get the news and on the other you get insight." More Google news: Pierre Lindenbaum notes that Google is now enabling a timeline view. See what you were searching for 10 years ago!

As well as improved searching for science blogs, you can now see the scientific life as it is lived, by checking out Science news - as it happens. (Or, if you are a scientist, sign up and join in.) We've been having a discussion at Nature Network about why science isn't as popular and exciting in media and public terms as sport. Some scientists feel that their daily lives are just as exciting as the doings of your average superstar soccer player or golfer, and they are putting their money where their mouths are by liveblogging their days - and occasionally nights - to show the world what it is really like to be a scientist.

Web browser to block recession

Via James Long:

The Recession Blocker. All this irresponsible talk of recession only makes it more likely. Do your bit for the economy by only reading the news through this web browser, which blacks out unwelcome words. Type in the address of your favourite news site to the window, and relax at the results!

Example: BBC news.  Financial Times.

(Thanks, James, first time I've smiled today.)

Happy first birthday, FriendFeed

Another birthday to celebrate: FriendFeed is one year old today. Happy birthday. At FriendFeed you can import your blog posts, Flickr photos, "Twitters" and so on; join or create "rooms" based on special interests; post links and messages; and discuss ideas arising from linked articles, either in a room (topic-specific) or just with your friends. Some examples:

Crime and Mystery Fiction

OWL (links from an omnipresent Wisconsin librarian)

The Book Room

Sunday Salon (one-day-a-week blog posts about what people are reading)

Science Online (formerly ScienceBlogging 2008 conference, now for more general discussions about online science communication)

The Life Scientists

Please join me, others and the conversation. (My FriendFeed is here.)

Happy 10th birthday, Google.

 

Ten years and counting.....

Alternative histories website

This is by no means news, but I'm fascinated to learn of a website for books about or set in alternative histories. I've enjoyed some books in this genre in the distant past, for example SS-GB by Len Deighton and, some years later, the eerily similar Fatherland by Robert Harris. Maybe the rest of the world knows about this site and I'm the last to know, but in case there are a few others like me, here it is: Ucronia, the alternate (sic) history list. In short, the site is "a bibliography of over 2900 novels, stories, essays and other printed material involving the "what ifs" of history......one or more past events are changed and the subsequent effects on history somehow described. This description may comprise the entire plotline of a novel, or it may just provide a brief background to a short story. Perhaps the most common themes in alternate history are "What if the Nazis won World War II?" and "What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?" For more about alternate history and this bibliography, please read the extended introduction."

One listing is an anthology of alternative history crime stories by Lou Anders (see here). Looking round the site, I can't always quite see where science fiction ends and alternative history begins, but there are plenty of gems to be found. Here is one title by an excellent author that sounds intriguing: Robert Barnard: Mozart Mysteries. "What if during a visit to England to show off his prodigy son to the English court, Leopold Mozart decided to remain in England as a result of being accidentally overpaid by a royal courtier?" I've never come across these titles, possibly because they were written under a pseudonym, but I shall have to look out for them now.

London as a thermal city

I read today about Thermal Cities, London, a gallery of images of London from space, the air, or just from some high-up building. You can see lots of lovely images, and read more about the project and how the images were created, here and on the other bits of the thermal cities website, which is apparently due to have a lot more pictures uploaded into it. From the "about" page of the website, the aim is: "To look at London from a FRESH! (Thermal) perspective. Had the idea of borrowing and experimenting with a state of the art thermal imaging camera, out and about in London, to see if anything interesting could be captured and then presented on a non-engineering website." You can see thermal images of animals in London Zoo, people, transport, patterns and the alarming category of "experiments", as well as being able to download screensavers and the like.

When falls the Coliseum

Via Scott Stein:

"When Falls the Coliseum is now live. Let’s consider this a “soft launch.” We’ll still be adding some graphics in the coming weeks and working out any remaining bugs (if there are any), but our contributors are now invited to post entries and we welcome any readers who have the misfortune of stumbling upon our pages."

Contributors include Frank Wilson, Katie Haegerle, Scott Stein, and others. "Welcome to When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture (or lack thereof). This site can best be described as a conversation about America. A sometimes loud conversation. An often funny one. And, some might be bold enough to suggest, an important one. We are not that bold. It would be pretentious to claim that this conversation is the voice of America. It would also be inaccurate, implying that America speaks with one voice. The writers of When Falls the Coliseum certainly do not. The disclaimer, “Opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor” has perhaps never been more appropriate. Be warned that free speech is the guiding principle of this site. Contributors with very different perspectives have been recruited, and humor and debate are to be found here in abundance. About the only speech prohibited by When Falls the Coliseum is boring speech. We hope our readers will get in on the action and comment on blog posts and articles. A few arguments might ensue, but at least no punches will be thrown."

Making readers happy

Reactions of three groups of typical readers to a web redesign (in this case, Dilbert.com):

"The first group is the ultra-techies who have an almost romantic relationship with technology. For them, the new site felt like getting dumped by a lover. Their high-end technology (generally Linux) and security settings made much of the site inconvenient. Moreover, the use of Flash offended them on some deep emotional level.

The second group objected to the new level of color and complexity, and the associated slowness. They like their Dilbert comics simple, fast, and in two colors. Anything more is like putting pants on a cat.

The third group uses technology as nothing more than a tool, and subscribes to the philosophy that more free stuff is better than less free stuff. That group has embraced the new features on the site and spiked the traffic stats."

I think Scott Adams missed the group that are never satisfied with anything. They weren't satisfied with the old design and don't like the new either, for all kinds of reasons which they provide in exhaustive and exhausting detail (and, probably, with great pleasure). Maybe he doesn't get those kinds of visitors.

DigitalLit and innovation

A piece in the Currents column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, Visit to LibraryThing can bring together readers and collectors, highlights Library Thing, the most famous (to me) and well-established book sharing site on the web. Similar sites include Revish, Bookshare (on Facebook) and Dust Jacket Review, all of which which I use, albeit sporadically. There are plenty of others, of course.

Library Thing has a strong advantage over these newer services in that many of its users are professional librarians. Katie Haegerle, writer of the Comments column, reads a lot, "but I don't keep all the books I read, nor do I keep a record of them. I do, however, treasure my zine collection, both for the zines' content and for their value as cultural artifacts." Katie describes her delight at discovering that Jenna Freedman, zine librarian at the Barnard College library (and subject of a Petrona classic post from April 2006) has catalogued more than 1,700 zines from her collection in her Library Thing area: ...."my heart got a little fluttery. Each time I entered a zine that lives in Barnard's collection, it popped right up, and all I had to do was click on its title to add it to my catalog. And wow, was that satisfying."

But of course, that isn't the end of it: "Once my zines were added", writes Katie, "all the other users who have them in their collections got linked to my page. Some of these, I soon saw, weren't personal collections but small libraries, infoshops, and other public collections that are using the site as a catalog."

DigitalLit is a column on digital and online literature written by Katie, appearing every other week in the Philadelphia Inquirer's Comments section. Previous articles include gems such as how computer science meets embroidery (a somewhat imaginative connection involving Ada Lovelace!); an innovative collaborative interaction between musicians, artists, writers and programmers, prompting the question of how new media can change the way artists work; and many more stimulating highlights from poems to podcasts and beyond.

The DigitalLit column is a great example of how a major newspaper publication can regularly stimulate its readers by interacting with the "new media" of bloggers and other assorted 2.0 types, and also showcase what's lively and exciting at the interface. I congratulate Frank Wilson, the book review editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer who enabled this project, for his vision. Would that there were more book review editors like Frank (who blogs at Books, Inq.).

Web metrics in the Economist

Web metrics | Many ways to skin a cat | Economist.com.

The Economist this week (above) gets to grips with the puzzling world of web visitors, page views, download stats, "time spent", and what they all mean for the curious publisher, blogger or author in terms of how many people are reading their output. The piece gets it right to my knowledge -- for example a "hit" is a less useful statistic than a "page view" because the former measures every graphic on a page as a separate visit. However, page views themselves, as well as session-length metrics, have their own problems, as outlined in the Economist article. And don't forget the stories of the hard-to-navigate websites that pride themsleves on the length of time visitors stay -- while all the time the visitors are desperately looking everywhere, not being able to find the information they need.

One thing is for sure: only believe a publication's visitor statistics claims if the statistics are independently verified -- for example "Counter compliant". (Here is some information about Counter.)

Future of social networks

From O'Reilley Radar: "there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. The bad news, alas, is in our report: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users."

From Content Matters: "one of the obstacles to using Facebook for business purposes is that there’s only one class of friend.  If I wish to link to another Facebook user, I become their Friend.  There’s no way to differentiate between whether it’s a personal friend, a co-worker, a client or a partner."

From The Long Tail: .."Right now the world is focused on stand-alone social networking sites, especially Facebook and MySpace, and the fad of the moment is to take brands and services there, as companies build Facebook apps and MySpace pages in a bid to follow the audience wherever they happen to be. But at the same time there's a growing sense that elements of social networking is something all good sites should have, not just dedicated social networks. And that suggests a very different strategy--social networking as a feature, not a destination." ..........I think about the current Facebook craze and the notion of it as an all-encompassing platform, sucking in functionality from other sites across the board, I find myself skeptical. With my Long Tail hat on, I think that one-size-fits-all will fail in social networking, just as it has everywhere else. ....Instead, I think focused sites that serve niche communities will extract the best lessons from Facebook and MySpace and offer better social networking tools to the communities they already have. I'm sure huge and generic social networking destinations will continue to do well, but I'm placing my bet on the biggest impact coming when social networking becomes a standard feature on all good sites, bringing community to the granular level where it always works best."

Mass digitization of books

Google has redesigned its books search homepage. Instead of looking like a straight search page, you can see book covers in one of four categories: “interesting”, “classics”, “highly cited” and “random subject" (rotating between subcategories -- and there are now more of these, displayed down a vertical column on the left of the page). The selections change with each page refresh, presumably to encourage the user to browse rather than just search for a preselected item. From an article at webpronews.com:

"When you hover over a book, a dynamic layer with more information shows. Click on the book, and you’ll land on its detail view containing instant previews of some of the pages. (Note not all books stored in Google Book search have such a preview feature enabled.) Plus, the “classics” section only contains works which passed into the copyright-free public domain zone, so you can view every page – including a plain-text variant of pages – as well as download a full PDF. Ironically, the public domain PDFs are watermarked with a Google logo and preceded by a long usage guideline asking you to not make commercial use of these books – even though that is perfectly OK for works which passed into the public domain."

At the same time, more than 100,000 old books (mostly nineteenth century) have been digitized by the British Library -- 25 million pages will be digitized over the next 2 years. The books will be full-text searchable, either using Microsoft's or the library's search engine. (Microsoft is a partner of the British Library in this project: Google is embarked on a similar programme with several other huge university libraries.)

From the BBC article linked in the previous paragraph: "Texts which are hard to get hold of will particularly benefit from the digitisation. For example, authors who were only ever published outside the great centres of literary life have tended not to remain in print and have often been forgotten. Now, these authors will have a second chance to reach a readership.  "By digitising the whole collection, we give access to the books without the filter of later judgments, whether based on taste or on the economics of printing and publishing," Dr Jensen [of the British Library] said. "

Still waiting for wisdom of the crowds

According to an article on TechCrunch, USAToday’s Social Network Experiment May Not Be Paying Off. Michael Arrington writes that when USAToday relaunched its site in March as a social network around news, he and others thought it was big news. Despite investing in social media technology, monthly visitors have dropped from 14 million in March to 10 million in July (graph at TechCrunch posting) -- perhaps news and networking don't mix, wonders Mr Arrington. These figures did not stop USAToday issuing a press release saying that traffic is way up, mainly due to a feature on The Simpsons movie and an interview with J K Rowling. So it is up to you whether to believe the Comscore data used by TechCrunch, or the press release issued by USAToday quoting Nielsen ratings.

There are 42 comments to the "figures are down" TechCrunch post at time of writing. Everyone concurs about the lack of success, and there are several explanations put forward. One is that USAToday is under pressure from Google, Yahoo and co for news coverage, and cannot meet the competition from local papers. Another is that the big media such as USAToday aren't trying to meet a real need or build an audience, but are just copycatting (Digg et al). As a commenter to the TechCrunch post says: "My comments on USA Today are meaningless. They add nothing, are seen by very few people, and don’t produce any movement in the earth’s gravitational shift. People want to participate because it makes a difference. If that is not the case, well then who really cares. It’s a novelty that soon wears off." Another view is that USAToday content isn't good enough for anyone to want to read or comment on it. "I think this was a valiant effort to provide a more interactive user experience to a website whose users have no interest in it."

Interview with a Twitterer

So I learn from Bryan Appleyard -- see Thought Experiments : The Blog: Twitter -- that he isn't a fan of Twitter (or Twittr as might have been a trendier name for the mini-blogette). That doesn't surprise me. Bryan points to an interview with Twitter's founder, Evan Williams, at Technology Review, to which I subscribe but had missed this article.

"Launched in March 2006, Twitter lets people broadcast short messages from computers and phones to anyone in the world. The idea has generated a fair amount of buzz, but while some people love the idea of a constant stream of updates, others are appalled. "

I still find it hard to gain access to Twitter and hence have never really got into it. From the little experience I have had, I can see that it is a great resource for one's online circle of friends, if one has such a thing and if they are all the Twitter type. But although in principle I might like knowing what they might be up to at any given nanosecond, I would not be interested in knowing what everyone in the world is doing at the same frequency. Even if my day wasn't full with my job, I don't have the time or patience for the permanent distraction from a longer-term task, maybe something that would take a whole five minutes.

But the flip side is that I bet Twitter is great for people who are isolated and who have time to kill -- it probably prevents a lot of nervous breakdowns. Hence I would not call it a "vision of hell", as does a certain person. I am definitely not an "instant messaging" kind of person, particularly when I do manage to log on and I see a message from the Twittermakers saying "what are you doing  to help with our climate crisis? Live Earth has great tips". In 140 words max, I presume.

Second Nature and a history lesson

Link: A Natural Fit: For Science Journal, Web Is 'Second Nature' - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News.

Above is a link to an article about some new and not-so-new online activities of Nature and Nature Publishing Group: according to the article,  "as shocking as the Queen moving to Las Vegas". Timo Hannay, director of web publishing, responds:  "The core business of Nature is not to produce a magazine," he says, "but to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scientists."  More and more nowadays, that exchange happens to be taking place electronically." "

The article continues:

"Would you like some coffee?" Hannay asks, as he sits down at his computer and directs his digital representative, Timo Twin, to the Magic Molecule Model Maker, which looks vaguely like a gumball machine. "Let me make some caffeine," says Timo Twin, and soon brightly colored atoms begin bursting onto the screen, combining to form a coffee molecule. As big as scaffolding, the molecule floats in cyberspace in front of the Timo avatar, three-dimensional and easily rotated. All it takes is a mouse click and the virtual machine starts spitting out other molecules: adrenaline, Viagra, aspirin -- just as requested. "The Magic Molecule Model Maker sounds like a game," says Hannay. "But chemists use it a lot when they need a three-dimensional image that can be rotated for a presentation or a discussion." "

The article goes on to describe some of Nature's online activities, not so modern as some might think, perhaps, in concept at least:

"The digital pub, with its green-haired avatars and podcast chatter, may seem futuristic. But it is also strongly reminiscent of the generation of Nature's founders. At the time, more than a century ago, there was bitter competition among various young, often underfunded and short-lived scientific publications (Nature's current competitor Science almost went out of business several times and frequently changed ownership). But Nature had a decisive advantage. Its publisher, Alexander Macmillan, loved a good party. He would routinely invite the cleverest thinkers of his day to his house for what he called "Talk, Tobacco and Tipple." This principle also served as the basis for his magazine. Science, Macmillan reasoned, simply had to be fun."

However, my local Nature history expert reports:

"Alexander Macmillan did indeed host the famous 'tobacco parliaments' in the 1860s and 70s with scientific heavyweights of the day where art, literature and science (particularly Darwinism) were debated with much drink and cigars. It worked in the sense that Macmillan cared enough about science to found a journal, and support it for three loss-making decades!

History pedant corner: the para afterwards is not really correct:

"The generation of people who founded Nature continued to meet for decades in London in a sort of offline community for meals, drink and talk. The group called itself the X Club because it accepted only one rule: that there would be no rules."

The X-club was different. Macmillan was not a member, nor was Norman Lockyer (Nature's first editor). And most, if not all, of the X-club members would write for other journals too. In fact, it was Lockyer's non-association with the X-club that allowed him a free reign as editor to stoke controversies -- a tactic to increase circulation and keep the journal on people's lips when there was much competition around."

Ocado video recipies

I've been using Ocado, the online delivery arm of Waitrose supermarket, ever since day 1. I've only just noticed, however, that the Ocado website features videos of recipes and, I presume, how to cook them. If you are someone who, unlike me, has time and inclination to cook "properly", it might be worth checking out, as the recipes certainly sound nice -- and based on my experience of those Waitrose recipe cards that you pick up when you actually go round the supermarket in person (long-ago days!), the end results will be good. I like the idea of watching the recipe video, then ordering the ingredients and having them delivered, all from the comfort of one's own desktop. (Only theoretically, in my case, of course!) Some examples of the videos on offer:

Bangers with grainy mustard or horseradish mash

Children's pizzas

Parma ham wrapped figs with raspberry dressing and a dolcelatte and rocket salad

Gremolata lamb rack with Hasselback potatoes

Butternut Squash Soup

Mediterranean Vegetable Lasagne

Traditional Greek Salad

Pasta with meat balls in tomato sauce

Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Rice and Mushrooms

Lamb burger in ciabatta with salad and relish

Simple chicken Caesar salad

Steamed smoked haddock, green beans and crushed new potatoes

Crêpes with flambéed caramel maple bananas

Fast and slow lanes on the Internet

From yesterday's Times:

Cheese web frenzy: More than 400,000 cheese lovers have visited the website www.cheddarvision.tv to watch the maturing process of a round of cheddar cheese. Viewing is expected to reach a frenzy tomorrow (i.e. today, 29 March) as the 44 lb (20 kg) cheese is subjected to its first quality check. The project is based at a farm in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.

Stunt man films himself skiing down Underground escalator: A man who filmed himself skiing down a London Underground escalator is being investigated by police. The 60-second film, which has been viewed by more than 100,000 people on the internet, shows the man hurtling down the 100 m (300 ft) escalator at Angel station in North London at a speed of more than 30 mph. In the footage, shot from a camera in the man's helmet, passengers can be seen strolling past as he fixes his skis at the top of the escalator. He then launches himself down the stairs, arriving to applause at the bottom seven seconds later. British Transport Police said that the "naive and reckless" skier was liable for prosecution. John Spelman, who produced the Norwegian DVD, insisted that passers-by were not put at risk because friends of the skier had warned passengers away.

Moral of the story? Maybe it is that a maturing cheese is four times more popular with viewers than someone skiing down an escalator. Oh, and the Times needs to sort out its house style for imperial/metric conversions -- is it metric first, imperial first, or imperial with no metric conversion; units and quantities spelled out or not?

Worrying about important matters

Language Log: Is he friends of a copy editor? Is he friends of a prominent couple in Columbus? Or is he a friend of a prominent couple in Columbus? Yes, some of us spend a lot of time worrying about questions like these, elucidated with painful precision at the link. I suppose it beats getting het up about global warming, inner-city crime and who will win the FA Cup Final.

Search for the cranky generation

Here's a new one on me: age-relevant search. A site called cRANKy (TM) is specifically designed for the silver surfer. On its home page is a list of the most popular search items among the over-50s:

1. Sex; 2. longevity calculator; 3. sudoku; 4. eat healthy; 5. jobs after retirement; etc. I suppose they just made these up, as there is no information about how they arrived at these numbers or, indeed, how they know that the people doing the searching are over 50. I didn't try it out so I don't know if the speed of search is also age-related (i.e. slow and creaky).

If you go to the cranky site, though, you can find all kinds of things that over-50s are said to be interested in, complete with picture of smiling couple with white hair and lots of ads for anti-ageing devices of various kinds.

Crimespace

I received an email from the exceptionally cool Tribe today, inviting me to join Crimespace, part of yet another social network, this one called Ning. Crimespace is: "A place for crime fiction writers, readers and lovers to schmooze, booze and draw up plans for the heist to end all heists. Find new authors to delve into, make friends and plan that heist, discuss the latest in crime fiction and make the place your home. Join up and enter the forums, add photos, videos and make some friends. Pull up a chair at the bar and share your poison."

I have joined Crimespace but have not explored it yet. I am not sure if anyone can join or if you need an invitation; if the latter and you would like to join, let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can work out how to send you one.

Wiki wars

In an attempt to counter Wikipedia's "anti American, anti-Christian" bias, there is now a conservative version, called (imaginatively)  Conservapedia.

Take "global warming" as an example of Conservapedia's "content you can trust":

On February 2, 2007, an internatonal panel of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments issued a report concluding:

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone."^[3]

It should be noted that these scientists are motivated by a need for grant money in their field of climatology. Therefore, their work can not be considered unbiased, though no more than any scientist in any other field .^[4]. Also, these scientists are mostly liberal athiests, untroubled by the hubris that man can destroy the Earth which God gave him.^[5]

Is this hilarious, dangerous, or just plain sad?

What is text?

Link: John Battelle's Searchblog: Wonderful.

An increasing number of blog posts in the rss reader come with video clips. I don't watch them and have the volume on my computer turned permanently to "off" (being a victim of ever-increasing noise pollution). What made me watch the example at this link? I don't know, but it works fine on silent. All John Battelle ("king of search") says about it in his post is: "I love it that this was done by a professor of anthropology". Go on, take a peek -- I loved it too.

We are not amused

Amazon has joined the (soft) p*** brigade. I was not impressed to receive this email from them today (from which I have removed the product links):

Dear Amazon.co.uk Customer,

Valentines Day is nearly here, and as a previous sex and sensuality or erotica customer, we thought that you might like to know about our more adventurous gifts for Valentines Day...treat the one you love...or even yourself or browse the rest of the Sex and Sensuality range in our online store.

Order today and start saving:
++ Adult Toys
++ Adult Sex Games
++ Erotic DVD
++ Up to 40% Off Erotica Books

Happy shopping
Brian McBride
Managing Director
Amazon.co.uk

I wouldn't complain if I was in fact "a previous sex and sensuality or erotica customer", but I am not.  Just as well I am not a sensitive little old lady or a Church of England vicar, though. 

Metacritic's book choice

Metacritic is a site first bought to my attention by Dave Lull. As you might guess from its title, it is a resource for "aggregated" reviews of books, films, TV, music and games. It is a great site (see here for the excellent "about" page), and I'm only sorry I don't remember to visit it more often. The reason is probably because I have ample recommendations of books, films etc from my blogging friends and acquaintances these days -- but if I ever retire from this activity, I will be a more frequent reader.

Metacritic works by assigning weighted, normalised scores to the book, film or other "entity"according to the reviews it has received. These reviews are from the US national media, so won't capture the long tail of bloggers' and other internet reviews, or what is popular among reviewers in the "rest of the world". (More about the scoring system can be found here.)

Here are Metacritic's "top 10" books for 2006:

1. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

3. The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos

4. The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis

5. The People's Act Of Love by James Meek

6. The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

7. After This by Alice McDermott

8. Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg

9. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

10. Intuition by Allegra Goodman

An impressive list. I compared it with the UK Bookseller's top 10 "Christmas books" for 2006 (by sales):

1. The Sound of Laughter by Peter Kay (seems to be a TV comic?)

2. Why Don't Penguin's Feet Freeze? (from New Scientist's "feedback" column)

3. Cook with Jamie (Oliver, a "celebrity chef")

4. Q1: The Book of General Ignorance (no author's name provided)

5. The Dangerous Book for Boys by C and H Iggulden ("how to build a tree house" type of thing, I think)

6. And Another Thing.....by Jeremy Clarkson (a TV "celebrity" of some sort)

7. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

8. Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay (another "celebrity chef")

9. Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

10. Guinness World Records (which I thought was called Guinness "book of.." but no longer seems to be)

Radical transparency at Wired

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired, author of The Long Tail (insert comma), and ex-colleague, writes a couple of excellent posts about what radical transparency means for magazine publishing -- part 1 is here, and the second part here.

My sympathies are with Chris when he describes the attempted creation of a modern content management system. And my admiration that he is still shooting for it. Putting that to one side, it is fascinating to read his comparison of our expectations in the mid-1990s (aeons ago on the Internet timescale) and now. Then, it was all about portals, driving traffic to your site, creating content for people to come to read, and editors as gatekeepers. Now, search rules (as do blog links!); the web is a conversation conducted via rss; and readers share the control. Or as Chris aptly sums up, the motto is "catalyze and curate".

In the second post, Chris writes about a "fully transparent" media and six tactics it might use -- the upsides and the disadvantages to each. These are truly excellent posts; I highly recommend them.

Metaxucafe and brainiads

From an email I received yesterday evening:

"MetaxuCafe announces the launch of brainiads, an ad network for culturally
oriented Websites.

Brainiads emerged from three blogger's [sic] dissatisfaction with many of the
current options for placing ads on our sites. We want to earn money for all
the effort we put into our writing, but we want to do it on our own terms.
Our focus at brainiads is on aesthetics and personal attention. We want ads
that are complimentary and unobtrusive and we want only to deal with
advertisers that we think are relevant to our collective readership.

Brainiads also acts as a firewall between you and advertisers, eliminating
any conflicts of interests you may feel arise about writing about products
like books or music. We at brainiads are bloggers ourselves and believe we
understand your concerns and wishes and we want to represent you so you can
concentrate on your site's content and not worry about business details.

Please stop by the brianiads site ( http://brainiads.com ) for more
information. We have 26 sites as of today and will be capping membership at
various levels, so join up as soon as you can.

While we've been talking to potential advertisers for some time we expect it
to take a few months to get a critical mass of ads on our sites. Don’t let
that stop you from signing up, though. The stronger the network, the more
attractive we will be to the high-caliber advertisers we are targeting.

Join up and be a brainiad today: http://brainiads.com

Bud Parr,
MetaxuCafe
Chekhov's Mistress

Max Magee,
The Millions (a blog about books)

Scott Esposito,
Conversational Reading"

Metaxucafe (or "meataxe" as spell-checker would have it) is a network for literary blogs and bloggers. Here is its mission statement:

"MetaxuCafé is devoted to highlighting the best content from the community of bloggers who write about books. We serve both the writers and readers and intend to drive traffic to member’s sites and create context around and give permanence to their original writing."

I can recommend joining if you have a relevant blog and haven't already joined. I'm not sure I will be applying to brainiads, not out of principle but because putting ads on my site is not a high priority among my many other priorities -- I calculate I would make a dollar in about 50 years.