A question

Why do comment spammers always use the phrase 'this post is likeable'? What could be more damning-with-faint-praise than that?

Wasting time at work, no. 736 in a continuing series

Goodreads.com is my latest discovery while searching for non-talkboard ways to pass the time at work. (I did try doing lots of work but I slightly terrified my boss, so I've cut back on that a bit.) Goodreads is a way of sharing reviews and letting other people know what you're reading at the moment. It's a bit fiddly to use; it took me some time to work out how to add friends but seems interesting. Like a lot of these things the more people you know on there the better it is.

Killing time at work

It's amazing how many semi-constructive ways there are to kill time on the internet. Between tagging my photos on flickr, Facebook, writing this blog and clicking 'random article' on Wikipedia, I've discovered LibraryThing, which allows you to catalogue your books online. It makes it very easy to catalogue books: you can search for them in different libraries including the Library of Congress, or on the various Amazons (.com, .co.uk, .de, etc); you can even edit your catalogue so it displays the correct covers for your books. It's also got a social aspect - like MySpace for readers - where you can comment on other people's collections, chat, or see whose collections overlap with your own.

I've only catalogued 80-odd books so far - partly by memory at work, partly from taking random books off the shelf today - but oddly, in the list of people who have the same books as me I've spotted two people I think I know. It's a small world...

If you find bookcrossing a bit too random...

... why not try Read it swap it? Register your books, and if you like someone else's, you can offer to swap for one of theirs. You only pay for the postage.

Incidentally, it would definitely be morally wrong to put your own swapping parcels in your employer's post tray. Even if said employer was a library and therefore parcels of books in the post would raise no eyebrows.

Bookcrossing is an infinite, random book exchange -- you register your books then release them into the wild -- leave them on a bench, give them to a charity shop, leave them on a bus -- and eventually the person who finds it should post on the bookcrossing website to tell you where they picked it up.

last.fm

A non-book related post: anyone who hasn't yet discovered www.last.fm really should have a look. It's a site which will make you a personalised radio station based on things you already like and things you listen to on your computer. You have to sign up, download the player and the audioscrobbler, and then start listening. You can either choose a tag radio to listen to - so if you chose easy listening you would get random selections from all the music other users have tagged as easy listening - or you can go to the radio page, enter a list of music you like and it will play you recommendations based on that. Alternatively, the audioscrobbler will tell last.fm all the music you listen to on your computer and it will choose your preferences accordingly. And it's free - although you can subscribe for not much money to get extra features.