Thursday, July 05, 2007

Virtual Bookstore

So I had this crazy idea last night. What if someone takes photos of the shelves of the various bookstores? And then they'd update it when new stocks arrive (which isn't as frequent as you'd think). Kind of like Google Earth or Google Street, except you know, it's books! There'd even be a zoom-in function so that you can take a closer look at the spines of the books on the shelves (or their cover art depending on how the books are arranged).

Is it the same experience as browsing the shelves yourselves? Of course not. You can't even leaf through the pages. But I think it's one of those curious methods of delivering a service.

Of course a more functional website would simply list the new stocks that arrived in the bookstore. But despite the fact that several local bookstores have websites, not a lot of them provide that service. What I like about the idea of posting pictures of bookshelves however is that you're not limited to titles that just arrived. You also catch a glimpse of older stocks that you didn't know you were interested in.

I guess it's something to work on. When someone buys me a digital camera.

1 comment:

beth.fer.ves.cence said...

I was just thinking the very same thing! I like reading the spines of books -- it is much less intuitive for me to scan a webpage. For goodness sakes, I need writing from top to bottom, not left to right! :-) And I'm no tech genius, so I'm suprised this hasn't happened already. I did get a digital cam for my BD tho!