Archive
  • Bookcubes: Souvenirs of Digital Reading
    I was recently asked by the good people at Proboscis to undertake a virtual residency, exploring their Bookleteer suite of tools. Bookleteer is described as “a platform for public authoring and cultures of listening—creating and sharing knowledge, stories, ideas and information”, and also as a form of samizdat for the twentieth century. I’ll be further […]
  • Amazon API Changes, Bookdata, PHP (Sorry)
    Warning: deeply dull post ahead. But, we’ve had a lot of discussion about bookdata, APIs, and Amazon on this blog, so it would be remiss of me not to post this. From August 15th, Amazon requires all API requests to be signed, which to the layman means that you need to add a timestamp, and […]
  • Inter-operative bookmarking; Gracenote for books.
    Shared bookmarks are one of the primary drivers of conversation and socialisation on the web. Simple pointers to information are the basic currency of networked communication, and one of the most desirable functions of the future book. But, in the book, they’re pretty hard to achieve. I’ve hit this problem already on bkkeepr, and that’s […]
  • The Velocity of Reading (powered by bkkeepr)
    The above is a graph of my reading for the last year from bkkeepr, as generated by the first application powered by the bkkeepr API: The Velocity of Reading. TVR calculates statistics and draws graphs based on your reading habits, counting pages read and hence your average reading speed. All you need is a bkkeepr […]
  • Away
    I’m off to India for a couple of weeks: don’t expect too many posts, but I’ll have lots to tell on my return. No time to write up the excellent experience that was Bookcamp last weekend – keep your eye on the Penguin blog for more reports. There will be more to come. Very pleased […]
  • Get Satisfaction
    It’s rare that I out-and-out praise a service, particularly here, but if you’re running any kind of customer-facing service on the web I can’t recommend Get Satisfaction highly enough. In fact, if you’re not using it, you’re doing it wrong: it’s up there in a select set of absolutely essential tools like Google Analytics, Feedburner […]
  • The bkkeepr API
    I’m pleased to tell you that bkkeepr, my project to create a Last.fm-alike for reading (and more besides) now has an API. An Application Programming Interface (API) is essentially a machine-readable version of an application, and more specifically, the data in contains. bkkeepr is first and foremost an application that does stuff with data, and […]
  • Introducing Bkkeepr
    Back in February, I sketched out this idea on the back of an envelope. I’m pleased to say it is now a reality. Bkkeepr allows you to track your reading and make bookmarks via text message and the web. It uses Twitter as it’s source, generating a timeline of everyone’s reading, as well as pages […]
  • For Hire

    Booktwo.org is the blog of James Bridle, a book and technology specialist with specific expertise in planning and producing web and new media projects for clients in publishing and the arts. If you'd like to hire me, have a look at my CV and portfolio, and feel free to get in touch.

    I am also a member of the Really Interesting Group.

    You can follow me on Twitter.

    Speaking Engagements:

    I am available for conferences and other events. For examples, see my talks at Interesting, Playful, South by Southwest, dConstruct and Tools of Change Frankfurt.

    A complete list of talks, with links, is available.