The bookshop is dead

It's ten years since I started looking for computer textbooks in Dublin's book stores. It used to involve quite a lot of hunting, but after wearing the soles of my shoes a little thinner, I usually found what I was looking for. Hodges & Figgis, Waterstones and Eason's were the main players, but there were a few others. They kept a decent stock of books, usually around the cost of book + shipping from Amazon.co.uk, so if you needed the book right away, it made sense to try and get your hands on a copy in a physical store. At least you could leaf through the pages for a while and get a sense of whether or not it was worth the paper it was printed on. If it turned out to be cheaper online, then you could always do that.


About four or five years ago when I was working on several projects in college and work it made sense to subscribe to Safari Books Online, because I was going to need to build myself an up-to-date reference library, but you could still walk in to one of the big book shops and find what you needed - only it might just break the bank.


Just this week I returned to college to do some post-graduate study and got the usual reading list. Crossing most of it off my list, because having the very latest edition wouldn't matter, and I could just pick up older versions in the library, I was left with just one essential book. It was available on Amazon.co.uk and Waterstones.com. The lecturer thought it was safe to assume that it would be available in the main Waterstone's store in Dawson Street, so I planned to go in on my Sunday morning and get it.
Arriving to the store just before midday (still technically morning!), I was surprised to see an enormous café, where there once were a lot more bookshelves. Unperturbed, I strode on to look around the various anterooms and mezzanines where they used to tuck away the reference books. I saw that the computing section was down on the lower ground floor and headed there only to find to my amazement that it wasn't quite the size I was expecting.

One measly bookshelf. One solitary, lonely, neglected bookshelf with perhaps less than a hundred (not unique) overpriced books. The chances of finding the book I needed in that sorry collection were pretty slim, but I had a look anyway. Aside from the usual "X in 24 hours" I could hardly see anything of value.
The CCNA Exam Preparation boxed set seemed to be just about it. At just over €60, it wasn't exactly reasonably priced, either.



Feeling discouraged, I decided to leave and cross the street to  Hodges & Figgis, Ireland's largest book store (at least, as far as I know; it's certainly the best), to see if I'd have more luck there. I usually did in the past.
Their computer section used to be pretty large, and comprehensive too. Their buyers were obviously good at what they did, because I rarely had trouble finding any of the books that would be on the typical college reading list. Unfortunately, over recent years it seems as if shelf space for computer tomes has dwindled there too. What once covered a third of an entire floor has been reduced to perhaps 4 full bookshelves and 3 half-sized ones. About half the books are about Facebook, Twitter, or MS Office applications. On the plus side, they had most of the books I'd seen across the road in Waterstones at a lower price, and a lot more besides, and there were good books on many subjects, including the one I was interested in.
Needless to say I didn't find the book I needed amongst them.

It seems that the bookshop as we once knew it is gone, and what is left pales in comparison. Computers are now considered "niche", and the shelves are filled with pseudo-science books instead. Sadly, it seems we've dumbed down; way down, to plumb previously unknown levels.
Thank {randomDeity()} for Amazon Not to mention bit torrents.

Read on

• Waterstone's has forgotten what bookselling is about (guardian.co.uk)
• Waterstone may take back book chain he founded (guardian.co.uk)
• What's Your Favorite Bookshop Website? (bookshopblog.com)
• College textbooks: Forget the campus bookshop, shop online (zdnet.com)

New Look Twitter Takes a Step in the Right Direction

Perhaps a little late to the game, I got around to taking in the new look Twitter yesterday. With a single click, I was presented with what seemed like a bigger, better Twitter; at least on first look.
 
  

Promising to put everything in one place, this major facelift seemed to provide a better overall UI, with perhaps a few additional features to boot.
After taking a quick browse around, the first of the changes quickly became apparent - the new UI is essentially broken up in to four components:
- the feed or "timeline" (left hand side)
- the information section (right hand side)

- the menu, now across the top of the page, with a relative position (in css terms)
When you hover over a tweet, an > icon appears that lets you expand the tweet out across the information section onto the right hand side of the page, giving you a much bigger and better view of not only the tweet, but the user's last few tweets too, and, perhaps most importantly, replies to that tweet. Also, if there was, for example, a link to a YouTube video in the tweet, this could be watched from within this expanded view. The same goes for TwitPics, and being able to view those in the Tweet is a nice feature.
You'll also notice that the search box has moved to a more intuitive and sensible position in the "toolbar" across the top of the app. As I mentioned, the position of this element is relative to the browser window, so as you scroll, it "follows" you down the page.

Looking at my username on the right hand side of the toolbar, I started getting excited: was Twitter finally going to offer us multiple account switching? Google have done it, and of course, there are many Twitter clients and web apps like Brizzly that can handle multiple Twitter accounts, unify their timelines, allow for tweeting from more than one account at the same time, and more besides.
Sadly, when I clicked on the drop-down menu, I saw no such feature.
Shame! If Twitter had provided this functionality, I'd have use for Seesmic, TweetDeck or Brizzly, save for the way they allow you to add your Facebook account as well.
For a nice run through of the new features, watch the new Twitter demo.

Read more:

• A Comprehensive Look At The #NewTwitter Changes To Twitter.com (just-ask-kim.com)
• Hands On with New Twitter Design: What's New? (shoutmeloud.com)
• The New Twitter is an Attack on All Desktop Apps (mashable.com)
• Twitter unveils major redesign (bbc.co.uk)
• Twitter facelifts its homepage (go.theregister.com)

Facebook is down... no wait, it's up again

Image via Wikipedia

You have reached the end of the Social Internets.

Move along now, there's nothing to see here.






For a couple of hours there, the world nearly got some work done.

Prioritise this, Google!

Image via CrunchBase
Google Labs: isn't it great to see the rate at which they churn out new features and new products. Some hit, some miss, but they keep busy. They get things out there.

 Gmail was a huge hit, and I loved it right from the start. It's been the class leading webmail since the day it was released, and soon overtook the best mail clients once labels, filters and Calendar integration came together.

Many of the labs features have made it into the product, and many other features seem indispensable to me. The keyboard shortcuts were such an importaam nt step forward - being able to use the keyboard as much as possible is very important to every power user, and they recognised that. Various changes to the way label links were presented, to help to clean up an increasingly cluttered layout, I could understand why they would do that.

In short, all was well, until I saw the invitation to try out their new Priority Inbox feature.

At work, I  have to use Lotus Notes. It's OK, or at least, I'm so used to it that it doesn't really bother me. It does a job. I used to have urgent mails at the top, because, like most email clients, that's where they go.
However, define urgent? What's urgent for you, may well not be urgent for me. Just because you put "!" all over the mail doesn't make it so special. Especially if everyone else does the same thing.

Now I know what you're thinking: this isn't the same thing at all; Google aren't letting the sender mark a mail as high priority, they're letting YOU do it. That's the difference, and that's why it's cool.

While this may be true, I'm not sure the end result is all that different. When I decide something is important, and mark it as such, each and every mail of that type (that same sender, or same subject) gets marked as priority mail. Great. Thing is, I already have this. Thanks to labels I can categorise and taxonomise my emails to my heart's content. Thanks to filters, I can auto-label certain types of mails, have them skip the inbox, or get starred, or auto-forward them, or auto-delete - I could go on. I have all sorts of control, and can change my mind whenever I want. The really beautiful thing is that I can decide to look at those mails as and when I want to. They aren't shoved in my face until I either remove the priority label, or read them.

My Lotus Notes inbox is not sorted by priority. It's sorted by date. Screw what the sender thinks is important. Put a sensible subject in the email, let me prioritise ad-hoc, I have a brain after all.
Thanks to Gmail, I have labels and filters and that's more than enough for me, so after giving Priority Inbox a good trial run, I'm turning it off again. I don't need it, and find it a distraction that actually wastes my time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why GMail's Priority Inbox Needs to Get Off the Web (And Why It's the Future) (techi.com)
• Three New Tricks for Gmail's Priority Inbox (gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Graph Your Inbox Graph Gmail Activity Over Time (mydigitallife.info)
• Read this! Gmail now prioritises your inbox (guardian.co.uk)