If you’ve been following the Can Google Hear Me? story about a entrepreneur and his quest to make himself heard to Google, you’ll probably know a lot about this already — their first project as of Chapter 3, Booklamp, has been unveiled to the public. In three words, it’s Pandora for books — analyzing and matching books with their similar type of writing style.
Free to register for any one, you can do three main things with Booklamp: analyze books, take part in their forums, and request new books. While at first it seems like nothing much, digging into a book through their collection reveals some complex technology behind the service. They literally analyze books word for word and present graphs correspending to their pacing, density, action, description, and dialog. Additionally, they recommend similar books that match their analytical fingerprint.
Since the project is in “technology demonstration” mode and with an unproven idea, one thing they’re asking for is feedback. Users can participate in the forum and give suggestions as to where the service should go from here and any general reactions they might have.
Admittedly, I’m not at all a fan of their interface and presentation. It took me several minutes to realize that weren’t just a forum and a few clicks to get to their real substance — analysis of books. Also, their presentation of catalogued books is horrible — an alphabetically ordered dropdown box. However, when it comes to the core technology and idea, they do a good job of kick starting an unexplored concept. The idea definitely has legs and I could see someone like Google taking interest, but for now, it’s as much of a “technology demonstration” as it can be.
