Some weeks ago, I heard about Redis from Chu Yeow’s tweet. Redis is a key-value database, similar with memcached, but with the persistence feature. And one of the first things that popped up into my mind was, this is going to be handy to extend Singapore National Library Board (NLB) catalog search on BookJetty.

So I stopped my adventure with iPhone for a while to work on this hack. After all, BookJetty was built to be a proxy to plug-in other catalogs easily. With the plug, all vertical features found in BookJetty such as importing books to your shelves, tagging, book reviews, ratings, the social networking features, Google Books preview, author pages, cross libraries search, and other vertical features will be immediately available for the catalog. Well, with just a plug or an adapter.

I was lucky that Redis 0.900 (1.0 RC 1) was just released, though not a production release, I took my chance. It was very Ruby to work with Redis; download the codes, read the documentation, bam bam and you got it working, one of the reasons why I chose Redis over Tokyo Cabinet (What a name!). More about the differences between Redis and Tokyo Cabinet here.

There is an issue with NLB search result, it does not return ISBN and some other information BookJetty needs to perform the matching and to display the information nicely. Thus, it needs a second call, and it is expensive. A fast database is required to cache this kind of information, and Redis is the answer.

Previously on BookJetty, you can only search Amazon catalog, and BookJetty will find matches in NLB catalog based on the book ISBNs. But due to data discrepancies, some books found in Amazon are not found in NLB.

As a library user myself, I had always wanted to search the other way round. And today, I’m glad to announce to you, and I hope you are as excited as me. We can now do the other way round; search NLB catalog, and BookJetty is smart enough to find matches in Amazon and probably from other sources in the future. I dreamt about this, and today that dream is fulfilled. Click image or here for a sample search.

There is one limitation though, the search API does not sort by the newest books as in NLB online catalog. Hopefully there will be an upgrade to the API soon, and we would be close in our quest to find the holy grail for our local library search. Meanwhile, let’s cherish what we have.

May the books be with you.

There has been a lot of buzz about un-conferences lately with the events organised by Barcamp and Enterpreneur 27. But this month, the event gets slightly bigger, it’s back to a conference style, called Nexus 2007, organised by Digital Movement.

If you have heard of Barcamp and Entrepreneur 27, you probably should have heard about Digital Movement, if you are not, well, they are basically a bunch of young people who are craving for technology and business, they are the new generation of technology enthusiasts who are ‘curious, fun, informal’, and avoid ‘hierarchy and formality’. Yeah, I don’t like those two as well.

Nexus 2007 aims to discuss fundamental changes happening in business and technology, and how to take the lead in them. Though I have my doubt I’ll be able to take the lead by just attending one conference, I still hope so. Irregardless, I believe it is going to be an exciting event.

It is probably the first conference Digital Movement organise (I looked at the past events, none seems to be a conference), yet I’m already impressed with the people they have lined up:

• David Miller, President, Asia Pacific/Japan, Lenovo
• Andreas Weigend, Former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com
• Cory Ondrejka, CTO, Linden Labs (Second Life)
• Nathan Torkington, O’Reilly Radar
• Kathy Teo, MD, CNET Networks Asia Pacific
• Jennifer Lewis, Editor, Stomp
• James Seng, Editor, Tomorrow.SG
• Velvet Puffin, co-founder and CEO, R. Chandrasekar

And there are more, please check out the agenda here.

Since Digital Movement belives in ‘fun’, the registration is only $15, inclusive of 2 tea breaks and lunch; coz it won’t be fun anymore if it costs a couple of hundred bucks, right? Well, I heard some rumours that half the seats are already taken up, so if you are going, you probably should register now.

For those who are going, c ya there.

p.s. I’ve warned you that Digital Movement comprises of highly enthusiastic young people, they won’t be satisfied with Nexus alone, there’s a preliminary event on 22nd March, called GeekOut, a platform where technologists can show off their toys. If you knock off from office early that day, you may want to check it out too.

I remembered when I was a little boy, my bro went to Singapore to accompany my mum for an operation. When he was back, he brought along a Nintendo game console, and it was a console that I had never seen before.

I had played Atari a couple of times at a friend’s place, and we were already jumping around shaking the joystick and pressing the red hot button enthusiatically. But Nintendo had a different game controller, instead of Joystick, it has a “plus” button with two red hot buttons. Soon both of us were glued to the TV, playing Mario Bros days and nights, and soon also my friends, my brother’s friends, and our neigbour’s kids stormed our house joining the fun.

After the Nintendo wave, Sega came, Sony introduced Play Station, and Microsoft joined the game-console market with XBox, leaving Nintendo trailing behind Sony and also behind the new kid-in-the-block, Microsoft. But not now, if you are like me, a blog sucker that has been reading blogs all over the places, Nintendo has made a super-hero-style come back, it introduced Wii (pronounced ‘we’), just like the old days, Nintendo is creating a big BUZZ in the game-console market again.

What’s so different about Wii is the game controller. Nintendo has revolutionised the game controller into something that we have never ever thought before, a short and fat wand with a trigger and a tv remote-controller look a like, called Nunchuk Controller. Look can be deceiving, the controller is also packed with laser pointer and motion sensor.

Playing games will never be the same again. Based on the experience of Time magazine reporter, Lev Grossman, if you want to swing a sword, just swing the controller, if you want to fire a gun, just aim the wand and pull the trigger, to play tennis, just swing your wand, as if you are swinging your racket. I think this is FUN!!!

Wii is a revolutionary game console, but what drives Wii is what we all should learn. Microsoft and Sony are racing to produce a better and faster console, better graphics and better online service. But, Nintendo was looking at another problem, how to turn non-gamers into gamers.

There is a large gap of statistics between gamers and non-gamers. Non-gamers mostly find that the current game controllers are too complicated to operate. So Wii is going to change that, with the new revolutionary controller, Nintendo is not only attracting the gamers, but also tapping the unreached, the non-gamers, and their cash registers are expected to be busy ringing again.

Similar with Wii, competition in the web development is not about racing for faster server, better content, better graphics. Simply, it should be about how to improve the user experience. How to make the web simpler, more intuitive, and more fun to use. When your web site/application is able to attract not only the current users, but also the previously unreached users, that is what I think the spirit of Web 2.0.