Kookaburra

Cheap books for Oz? Buy them in UK!

Stumbled across http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ - a UK based bookseller who offers 'free shipping worldwide'.

Once you take postage out of the equation (which they do) then I still prefer a paperback to an ebook (though ebooks also have their advantages)

Sampled a few book prices vs Dymocks (as they are one of the leading Aussie booksellers) and Seekbooks.com.au. In the case of Dymocks you need to add cost of time and fuel needed to get to a store. For Seekbooks.com.au you still need to add postage costs.

Recent bestsellers, if discounted at Dymocks are about line ball but still worth testing the difference on.

Here's some that show the stark difference

Ian Rankin's Doors Open - published 6 Aug 2009 paperback
GBP7.19 A$12.72 from Book Depository in UK
A$22.99 from Dymocks
A$20.69 from Seekbooks.com.au

Val McDermid - Beneath the Bleeding
GBP6.29 A$11.13 from Book Depository in UK
A$19.99 from Dymocks
A$17.99 from Seekbooks.com.au

Tim Winton's Breath - paperback
GBP7.19 A$12.72 from Book Depository in UK
A$24.95 from Dymocks
A$22.46 from Seekbooks.com.au

The last one is crazy - you can buy an Australian author's book in the UK and ship it to Australia cheaper than you can buy it from a local bookshop. Even the hardback version from UK is cheaper than the Australian sourced hardback.

I haven't used Book Despository to date but I will be placing my first order ASAP.

Works really well at moment given strength of A$ vs GBP but there is enough margin in there that it will still make sense when/if A$ weakens.

Update: Should have found booko.com.au first - it makes the comparison
shopping for books across multiple sites really easy and automatically
converts back to A$. I can myself buying more books - but what about
the great pile of unread ones to tackle first. Need more hours in the
day.

Dave Barry - what unites humanity

"The only thing that unites humanity is, deep down, we all think we're better than average drivers."
American writer Dave Barry, quoted on ABC's Enough Rope

Slashdot | Reminding Customers Patented by Amazon

Slashdot | Reminding Customers Patented by Amazon:

"When your little Hogwart checks out the latest Harry Potter book at Amazon, he or she may be reminded that they've already ordered the book. It's all part of CEO Jeff Bezos latest patent for the Contextual presentation of information about related orders during browsing of an electronic catalog, which also covers warning customers about drug interactions ('you previously purchased Drug ABC'). The USPTO allowed the patent after four years and five rejections."

You can't blame Amazon from trying hard to grab what it can. It is the system (US Patent and Trademark Office) which is screwy.

This is the same sort of stuff that Microsoft's 'Clippy' offers - "It looks like you are writing a letter...". Yet again Amazon gain a monopoly on some relatively obvious aspect of online selling. Now the burden shifts to everyone else - you need to hire a phalanx of your own lawyers to ensure you don't infringe on Amazon's patents. It's probably one of the reasons why Australian online bookstores are lame compared to Amazon.

Read the slashdot thread. This is lunacy.

Handwriting tips

On the basis that it's never too late to improve here are some handwriting tips. My own handwriting is so bad that I learnt to type (well sort of) so I could actually get my work marked at Uni. Have I improved? Well it doesn't matter so much as I mainly type these days but there is still something deliciously tactile when putting pen to paper.

GBS on the unreasonable man

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw

The quote is worth dwelling on, as is this site. www.unreasonableman.net

Wired News: Monster Fueled by Caffeine

Delicious Monster is the Mac software company behind the hit Delicious Library, a program for cataloging collections of books, movies and games. The software is selling like hot cakes and has garnered rave reviews and awards, yet the company's headquarters is a Seattle coffee house ... its four main employees meet every day at the popular Zoka coffee shop in Seattle's university district. (full article at Wired News)

Maybe perhaps one day I will deploy Delicious Library -- need to unpack 20+ boxes of books first.

Malcolm Gladwell's new book 'Blink'

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of 'The Tipping Point' has new book out - 'Blink'. This one is going on my must read list.

This is the author introducing the book on his website - gladwell.com:

What is "Blink" about?

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

You could also say that it's a book about intuition, except that I don't like that word. In fact it never appears in "Blink." Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings--thoughts and impressions that don't' seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It's thinking--its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with "thinking." In "Blink" I'm trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on in inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?

The Absurdism of Perennially Extending Copyright

Best. Story. About. Copyright. Ever. No public, no domain. [ via theshiftedlibrarian.com who found it on Boing Boing]

Revolution in The Valley - book

A belated addition to a list for Santa. Here's the ultimate book for long-term Mac fans, from a time long ago before Apple became the iPod company - Revolution in The Valley [Amazon Link]

Here's a bit of the blurb from the publisher:

There was a time, not too long ago, when the typewriter and notebook ruled, and the computer as an everyday tool was simply a vision. Revolution in the Valley traces this vision back to its earliest roots: the hallways and backrooms of Apple, where the groundbreaking Macintosh computer was born. The book traces the development of the Macintosh, from its inception as an underground skunkworks project in 1979 to its triumphant introduction in 1984 and beyond. The stories in Revolution in the Valley come on extremely good authority. That's because author Andy Hertzfeld was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software, and a key creator of the Mac's radically new user interface software. One of the chosen few who worked with the mercurial Steve Jobs, you might call him the ultimate insider.

Pedant's on parade

For the pedants among us that apostrophe in the headline is a red-rag and clearly wrong. Lynne Truss, via her best-sellng book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, is venting her frustration at the decline in our written grammar. [SMH article]

Lynne Truss will be the guest at an SMH/Dymocks Literary Lunch in Sydney (Australia) Tuesday, August 31, at 12.30pm. Bookings: 02-9449-4366.