It's Monday 1 pm, time to go home for the week.

On my currently reading bookshelf at the moment is "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. The thought of leaving work for the week at 1 pm on a Monday is a big incentive to speed through this book, and the speed-reading tips Tim offers makes it even easier.

In the early pages, Tim introduces the 80/20 principle, based on the work of economist Vilfredo Pareto, and suggests that 80% of our results at work come from only 20% of our efforts.

This reminds me of writing my thesis, where 20% of my time seemed to produce at least 80% of each chapter and too much time would be spend tidying up figures. Why not eliminate tasks that consume too much time and yield too little results? Tim also gives tips on how to beat Parkinson's law, where tasks always swell to take up the time given to fulfill them.

Tim keeps a blog with many tips for efficiency, aimed at giving you more time to travel and enjoy life. Ironically, he suggests going on an information fast for five days (no web surfing, no news, no tv), but I can't do that until I've read his intriguing posts on how to learn a language in one hour and get super fit in 4 weeks (with a total of only 4 hours gym time!).

Breaking records on the daily commute

Booktagger users are probably regular readers of book on their daily commute, but how many have used the time to write one?

Italian Roberto Bernocco tapped out a science fiction novel on his Nokia and published it on Lulu.com, making him the first author to write a book using a mobile phone. Roberto composed short paragraphs in perfect italian, which he later uploaded to his computer for editing.

In Japan, a new genre of book has become established, with five of last year's best-selling novels originally cell-phone novels. These are composed in the unique emoticon-punctuated style that friends text message each other with. Rin (pictured) has sold 400,000 copies of her novel "If You." This surprised her mother, who was unaware her daughter had texted a novel and, I am sure, surprised Rin herself by making it to fifth position on the nation's bestseller list.

(Further details on Roberto and Rin.)

A Booktagger Myspace Application

I'm pleased to announce we've just released a Booktagger application for Myspace! We'll be improving the functionality of it over the next few months. If you use Myspace please add the application and let me know what you think.

In the next week or so we'll be adding the ability to

• match up your Myspace bookshelf with your existing Booktagger profile


• improve customisation such as Myspace profile photo import, friend import and much more

What else can we do to improve it?

Get Ready, New Booktagger Application This Week

We believe Booktagger as a niche social network is a great idea. We believe porting it to existing large social networks will only make it better. I'll expound more on our goals when I'm sure of our launch date this week.

Ranger's Apprentice Series

As a Sydney based company we're interested in promoting Australian Authors such as John Flanagan. His Ranger's Apprentice series which is now up to 7 books with an 8th rumored for release in 2008 has frequented the New York Times best sellers list. Of interest is that the series is set to be filmed by the Academy Award winning director and producer Paul Haggis at United Artists Films. Paul is most known for his director work of the Oscar-winning Crash, and the screenplays for Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers. Let us know what you think of the series.

Booktagger Search Upgraded

The Booktagger search engine has been upgraded and we've noticed quite an improvement. We'll be refining the search parameters over the next couple of weeks. It still needs improvement. * Ok after more testing, it's slowed down again. Back to the drawing board.*

We've also been quietly working on a special release of Booktagger this week. More on that later.

Search Improvement Maintenance

This is just a note to say that the Booktagger site is undergoing maintenance to improve its search engine. Our developers tell me the site should be up and running in 30 minutes. I'll check back soon with an update.

Time now in Sydney, Australia: 2.45 pm

Online Shopping: Books Are Number One

A recent global survey released by AC Nielsen has found that books are the most popular sold item on the internet.

"Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are Books (41% purchased in the past three months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36%), Videos / DVDs / Games (24%), Airline Tickets (24%) and Electronic Equipment (23%)."



“Recommendations from fellow consumers – whether they are people they know or fellow online shoppers – play an enormous role in the decision-making process. The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last year means that this reliance on word of mouth, over other forms of referral, looks set to increase...”



A summary of the report can be found here and a detailed PDF download here.

Booktagger Search is Sometimes Painfully Slow

This is just a quick note to acknowledge that Booktagger's search, at times, can be painfully slow. We're working on a permanent fix.

Self-Publishing

I find services that allow self-publishing quite interesting. Take Lulu.com for instance. All you have to do is write a book, upload it to Lulu and then start selling copies that are printed on demand (not that writing a book is easy). A perfect example of this can be found with Getting Real by 37signals. If you haven't read the 37 signals blog (origin of Ruby on Rails) and you're into web design, check it out. www.37signals.com

On a side note, books published on the internet don't require ISBNs, Getting Real doesn't have one.