Neuromancer, review of a review system
David suggested that my Neuromancer review would be a “natural for the TeleBlog”. Why not post it there?
Well, here’s why: no longer will I spread reviews over the web like a sailor children over the planet. I don’t like not knowing what’s happening with them, I don’t like not being able to edit them when necessary, I don’t like giving up that much control. If you want to read my reviews, including my take on William Gibson’s pivotal SF novel Neuromancer, you’ll have to visit the reviews section on my blog.
I used to like posting reviews on sites such as Manybooks.net, IBList, et cetera. But this new method is better. My reviews can still be found, although if you google for “Bad Medicine” you’ll find lots of Bon Jovi stuff, but not my review of the short story. Nevertheless I am number four for “Uncle Oswald”; Google still loves blogs. (Uncle Oswald is not the official title of the book, Switch Bitch is.)
Meanwhile, I am still slowly trying to convert my reviews to hReview, a microformat for reviews. The idea is that this makes it easier for people to search for reviews. Technorati has an hreview search engine: so far, “review of title” in Google seems to be a more useful approach.
Stumbling blocks for this conversion process are:
- hreview author Tantek Çelik seems to over-structure slightly
- Technorati’s hreview search engine uses the first few words of the review text as link text instead of the title of the thing you are reviewing
- Technorati’s hreview search engine seems to link to a blog’s main page rather than the review entry
- no Wordpress plug-ins for hreviews, so that I need to tag by hand
- my Wordpress version is getting old and ruins nested spans: time to upgrade!
August 16th, 2006 at 3:28 am
Well, Branko, I’m sorry about your frustrations and realize you’re expressing them against a variety of sites.
Here at the TeleBlog, editing of your items have been light; and via WordPress you’re able to make instant changes. I know you care about capitalization—sometimes a source of disagreement. But I’ve tried to be very tolerant in your case. What’s more, I feel that editing can go in both directions. I’ve encouraged you to stamp out any obvious glitches you see in my copy.
Meanwhile I hope you continue posting nonreviews here and doing good work publicizing the good work of groups such as DP. I’d actually like to see more items of that kind.
As for the WordPress plug-in you describe, the very best of luck with that cause. Perhaps someone will oblige you after reading your thoughts here. - David
August 16th, 2006 at 5:21 am
Branko, here’s an additional thought. The idea shouldn’t be just to publish reviews but, I’d hope, get some reaction and have them appear in a broader context. In the near future, for example, I’m going to take a passage from a Stross novel and use it in the context of the OLPC discussion. I may well want to do the same from one of the books you help us discover.
Maybe what you really need to do is focus on sites where your reviews can be appreciated and digested—benefiting you, among others. I consider the TeleBlog not just a form of expression but one of learning, from other people’s reactions. Via the Teleblog, we’ve got some very sharp readers—including fellow contributors ready to tell me when I’m full of it. Sometimes I’ll agree, sometimes not. But I will say this: I’d hate to be writing just in a vacuum. While interblog links can help, so will comments on different sites and in a variety of contexts.
Thanks,
David
August 16th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Branko, you’re exactly right, and I think that hreview has a vital role to play in helping people to find out reviews. The problem is that the microformat seems too generic–it is intended for restaurant reviews and consumer reviews. That makes the microformat a bit cumbersome.
The project I’m working on will use hreviews sometime, and you’re right; I expect weblog people to write plugins eventually. The problem with weblog software is that (mainly) you just have “posts” with tags, not special kinds of pages for each kind of topic.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
“As for the WordPress plug-in you describe, the very best of luck with that cause. Perhaps someone will oblige you after reading your thoughts here.”
Ah, if only I had seas of time, I’d try and write one myself.
“Branko, here’s an additional thought. The idea shouldn’t be just to publish reviews but, I’d hope, get some reaction and have them appear in a broader context.”
Less attention is indeed a problem–assuming I will be getting less attention by staying away from Amazon and the like. Blogs who want to draw attention to my reviews can of course easily do so using the RSS channels for my “books” or “Reviews” categories. You could actually get a nice aggregator going that way. I won’t patent this idea! Anyone, please, start a book review aggregator! I have always felt that next to the Teleblog (e-libraries), and Mobileread, (e-readers), there is room for a third blog that does just reviews of e-books.
Anyhoo, I’d like the attention, but I prefer the control. Even when I have plenty control over what happens to my articles here, it still means I’d have to manage duplicates. Sometimes I am willing to do that, other times I am not.
“The problem is that the microformat seems too generic–it is intended for restaurant reviews and consumer reviews. That makes the microformat a bit cumbersome.”
Quite frankly I like the genericness. Formats tend to get bogged down in minutiae, after which they lose popularity.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I’ve started using Andrew Scott’s hReview plug-in. I don’t know if it’s any good yet, I am testing as I go. So far it seems to work; I don’t like the style, but that’s something I can fix myself (and that I just fixed).