I’ve started working on a project called Book Kismet. The initial seed for the idea was this message I posted to a Google Group devoted to an innovative “social books” project housed at the University of Toronto, and it’s my hope that BK will wind up being a useful tool for them.

The functionality I want to see in version 0.1 is as follows:

user supplies author name, book title or ISBN

system provides list of ISBNs & titles from one of:

• Amazon API
• Google Book Search API
• LibraryThing API
• OpenBook API

user selects either author or book (by ISBN)

system provides (some of):

• cover image via one of {Amazon, LT, GBS, Open}
• link to Amazon detail page; link to Amazon reviews for boook
• link to GBS title page; link to GBS reviews for book
• link to LibraryThing detail page for this book (all ISBNs); link to LibraryThing book reviews
• link to Google API answer set on “author lastname” “author firstname” “discussion forum” “booktitle”
• embedded Google Trends widget with book title and author name as keywords
• Google Groups (old Usenet) search results

etc.