Author Topic: Borders Book Suggestor  (Read 1512 times)

ChrisO

Borders Book Suggestor
« on: 10 July, 2008, 11:53:44 am »
Borders online have a thing they rather boastfully call The Borders Spookily Accurate Book Suggestor.

Enter the title of a favourite book or something you've enjoyed and The Suggestor will recommend other great reads you will enjoy.

It sounded like a good idea. A more advanced version of Amazon's People Who Bought This... the semantic web applied to books.

I like Iain M Banks Culture novels and I would like to read other science fiction but a lot of it is pretty dire so I thought I would enter Matter, his latest novel and currently in the bestseller lists.

The Borders suggestions.
The first three were all the same book, Matter, just in hardback, audio and paperback form.
Followed by a book also called Matter by Sally M Walker but I can't tell you what it is about because there is no link to follow.
Then six suggestions such as:
A One Particle Theory of Matter and Energy
Principles of Matter and Thermodynamics
Electric and Magnetic Interactions

So it's basically nothing more than a simple word search of titles. They could retitle it Borders Spookily Useless Marketing Suggestion.

Classic case of a good idea with hopeless execution.


jellied

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Re: Borders Book Suggestor
« Reply #1 on: 10 July, 2008, 11:56:46 am »
how annoying.

quite the reverse of Pandora [RIP] music system. you entered a few songs which it duly played and then it would start to spread its wings and give you stuff that was related/listened to by other people who liked your "seed" songs. it was shockingly good
A shitter and a giggler.

tiermat

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Re: Borders Book Suggestor
« Reply #2 on: 10 July, 2008, 11:58:31 am »
how annoying.

quite the reverse of Pandora [RIP] music system. you entered a few songs which it duly played and then it would start to spread its wings and give you stuff that was related/listened to by other people who liked your "seed" songs. it was shockingly good

Last.FM does a similar thing, does get a bit confused some times and go round in (sonic) circles, but I found it a great way to find unusual bands and gendres (Russian Punk, Japanese Ska).
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: Borders Book Suggestor
« Reply #3 on: 13 July, 2008, 07:44:31 pm »
how annoying.

quite the reverse of Pandora [RIP] music system. you entered a few songs which it duly played and then it would start to spread its wings and give you stuff that was related/listened to by other people who liked your "seed" songs. it was shockingly good

I hated Pandora, for me it seemed to work as 'enter an artist I like, and get a load of random crap that sounds vaguely similar'. I only remember hearing one new song that I liked the whole time I had it, and that was one by the artist I entered for that station anyway. The reason I got it in the first place though was because a couple of people recommended it to me, so I think I was in the minority in not liking it.