Mr. Amazon’s Bookshop: The Appeal of Amazon

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[The table of contents for Mr. Amazon's Bookshop is here]

After my previous visit to Mr. Amazon's Bookshop I was furious the whole way home, and wrote the man off as a charletan charlatan. But in a couple of days the book I had ordered (Special Topics in Calamity Physics, if you recall) did arrive with the post. Over the next few days I read it, and thoroughly enjoyed it despite the pretensions of the author (I do have a keen eye for pretentiousness), so my feelings for Mr. Amazon's bookshop were mollified a little.

Mr. Amazon's shop was frustrating, but over time I discovered that it also had an undeniable appeal. If I was shopping for a particular book and couldn't find it, I soon got used to dropping in at the odd little store and asking Mr. Amazon if he had it. And no matter what I asked, whether it was Nigella Lawson's How to Eat or Kieran Healy's Last Best Gifts, he would just reach down behind his desk and come up with the book, holding it up for me to look at. … Continue reading

Mr. Amazon’s Bookshop: First Visits

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[The table of contents for Mr. Amazon's Bookshop is here]

Whimsley Hall is never a salubrious place, but in the days
following Christmas it is truly disgusting. Mice chase spiders, earwigs
and silverfish over the piles of discarded plates and glasses that are
the inevitable aftermath of the annual party I throw for the villagers.
The children have played their last game of Pin the Tail on the Vicar,
and have vanished, thank God. I am sure some of the greedy little
bastards steal my silverware; I know that the older children use Hide
and Seek as an excuse to search through my erotica collection. And
their parents are worse; they pretend to be friendly but I know they
are only after the contents of my cellar, and to a one they seem to
have a huge capacity for drink and other forms of debauchery. But they
too are finally gone. People think I am fortunate, living in this
picturesque and rambling manor, but the duties of the landed gentry are
not easily shirked, and so year after year I spend the days between
Continue reading

Mr. Amazon’s Bookshop

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An unfinished seasonal confection from Whimsley Hall, in a dozen or so episodes. This post will be updated with links to each installment as I post them. Expect roughly one per week, starting today.

And if you read on, remember the motto of the Whimsley family: "Pay little, expect less."

  • First Visits
  • The Appeal of Amazon
  • A Conversation with the Butler
  • What is a Book?
  • Doubts About Amazon   
  • The Differ 
  • Down with Gatekeepers!
  • Mr. Amazon's Shelves 
  • Kylie Returns
  • Another Conversation with Google
  • Recommending the Big Sellers
  • Where is Kylie?
  • The French Lieutenant's Bookshop?

    • Continue reading

    I Am Part Of The Slow Movement. You Are Just Slow.

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    All this time I thought being unable to post frequently was a limitation, but now I find, thanks to the Sunday newspaper, that it is a virtue. In fact, I appear to be part of the slow blogging movement, which is why it took me two days from reading this to posting it.

    http://toddsieling.com/slowblog/?page_id=10

     See the top right of this page, which has stayed that way since before the formation of this movement, for my credibility. 

    I wonder what my aims are? No blogging at all? Maybe someone should start a Silent Blogging movement.

    I am no longer a lazy slob. I am now a practitioner of stillness. Continue reading

    I am a Champion of Authenticity. You are in the Vanguard of Corruption.

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    Here is a quandary in three parts. I don't know how to think about it clearly, much less how to resolve it.

    Part 1 is a letter in today's Globe and Mail from Charles Cook:

    Imagine settling down in a nice theatre
    seat only to have Marge Simpson sit in front of you. Thirty years ago,
    my balcony afforded a good view of Lake Ontario and the Toronto
    Harbour. Gradual infill building has blocked it all but I proudly boast
    of what is left, a view of the CN Tower.

    With a watchful eye on high-rise projects, I got wind of a new mega
    condo to be built between me and this Toronto icon. When (or now, if)
    it's completed, my iconic view will be gone. New condo buyers
    everywhere should not be influenced by artists' impressions of the view
    from an unbuilt living room. Marge Simpson may be their first guest.

    The letter writer may suffer from Marge Simpson's towering blue hairdo in front of him, but he seems blind to the fact that he is a Marge Simpson in front of someone else. And the first condo … Continue reading

    Apple’s Lemons

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    iPhone application developer Craig Hockenberry writes an open letter to Steve Jobs here, featured in Fortune magazine here, pointing out very reasonably that the 10,000 iPhone applications are experiencing a race to the bottom in terms of price. Charles Teague has put together some great graphs describing the state of the AppStore here.

    What Craig H sees is this:

    developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to
    get favorable placement in iTunes. This proliferation of 99¢ “ringtone
    apps” is affecting our product development.

    and here is how:

    Raising your price to help cover … costs makes it hard to get to
    the top of the charts. (You’re competing against a lot of other titles
    in the lower price tier.) You also have to come to terms with the fact
    that you’re only going to be featured for a short time, so you have to
    make the bulk of your revenue during this period.

    This is why we’re going for simple and cheap instead of complex and
    expensive. Not our preferred choice, but the one that’s fiscally
    responsible.

    The root cause … Continue reading

    Theses on Netflix

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    Pretentious enough title for you?

    I

    Recommender systems – those algorithms that guess what you may be interested in as you browse Amazon or listen to last.fm – are commercially important. Netflix claims that 60% of its rentals are driven by its Cinematch recommender system [link]; that’s over half a billion dollars of business in 2008. As online commerce continues to grow, recommender systems will only get more important.

    II

    Recommender systems are culturally important too. As more of our culture moves online, they will be responsible for more of our cultural experiences, and will play an important role in shaping the creative parts of our societies.

    III

    Recommender systems will get better. Ten years ago they were largely improvised. Now you can do a Ph.D. in recommender systems and there are international academic conferences all about them [link]. The subject is ideal for academics – it is algorithmic and yet open ended, with many different approaches and criteria for success. It’s an endless playground for exploration and simulation.

    IV

    Even though they will improve, there is no such thing as an optimal recommender system. Accuracy is insufficient. The … Continue reading