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Amazon Launches Full Text Book Search
m00nun1t writes "Amazon have launched a new service that allows you to search the full text of books. This sounds like an incredibly useful function as well as technically impressive at this scale. I wonder if a patent is in the works." Or if a patent is already owned.
You 'almost', but not quite, hear the book pirates, most probably because they don't formally exist. ebooks are widely available in unencrypted format, and the latest releases, while in secure formats such as Secure MS Reader or Adobe, are probably much easier to crack than creating a bot to collect a book online page by page.
ebooks are a pretty healthy alternative to normal books, but I don't see the publishers worrying too much about piracy. Perhaps it's because the average script kiddie who will spend 2 days downloading Matrix Reloaded from Usenet is just not the type to try and crack open a book, much less crack an ebook.
I tried the search again today and got nearly 5,000 results, with the capability to actually look inside the book and see if the reference is useful to me. Very impressive indeed, patent or no patent.
Peer Pressure
Bash Amazon all you want, but this is a very useful technology.
In five minutes I was able to find three books that talked about findings first listed in two of my own published scientific papers, yet these books did not cite me, or anyone else, as the source of that information. My lawyer is currently preparing three letters.
I also found two other books in which the author used verbatim quotes and original theories from various interviews I have given, yet both authors passed off the statements as their own. My lawyer is now preparing five letters.
Aside from being used to protect my own research rights, I have found the search system useful for finding topics of interest discussed in certain books which are not referenced in any of the descriptions about the books. I just ordered three books I would not otherwise have ever purchased.
While I don't think highly of all of Amazon's practices, I must hand it to them for whatever technical undertaking created this search feature.
You can read the page it is on and +/- two pages.
This is equivalent of the facility you have in a physical bookstore to open a book and browse a few pages before purchasing. I can see it might be very useful, if they get the majority of books in a field accessible like this.
I wanted a PHP book the other day, and it is very difficult to decidew which one of the plethora available I wanted. So I went to my physoical bookstore. Smaller choice, but I could open each and get an impression of whther ther were slow, detail by detail, dummies books or the sort of high-speed summary I wanted.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Article in December Wired talks about Amazon's book scanning, how they legally do it, who does it, how many books so far, and protections.
1. After a search, it gives you a list of "Customers who bought this also bought:". For instance, see this.
2. They have the concept of "Listmania" which allows every user to create a list of their own recommended products. If your search aligns with their list, Amazon will suggest that you look at it. Search for something you want and keep an eye open for the listmania section.
Doesn't this meet your criteria for "I'd like to find other thinks I might also be interested in.". And on top of that, I suppose the "browse" option is too complicated?
This new feature of searching the full text only allows you to find related items in a different way. If you have a better idea on how to search their site that they don't provide, send them a suggestion. It is in their best interest to let you find things you want.
I was stuck when working on a problem set; I Googled for a while and found out that there's a bunch of helpful info in one particular problems and solutions book. Curious about the book, I went on Amazon, and lo and behold, I can actually read the book. So, I look at the table of contents, find the relevant section, and search for the heading of that section. I can now read two pages from it. Not a problem; just pick a phrase on the second page and use it as a search query. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That, of course, would be impractical to do for more than ~4 pages (which was what I needed), but you get the point.
In a couple of hours I joined a few other guys working on the set, and it turned out they had just bought the book. There was a big "Doh!" when I showed them my printouts.
Now, if I actually found the book genuinely useful as a result of this experience, I'd buy a hardcopy. But I for now I think I'll stick with the current method. And I suspect many people might do just that: oftentimes there are references that aren't crucial to have, but convenient to turn to on a few occasions. The book search feature is perfect for those.