July 7th, 2008

Filed under:
Books, Canada, Web 2.0
6 Comments »

Zoomii is Long Overdue

Why did it take us until 2008 for somebody to invent Zoomii (thanks to Waxy for the pointage)?

And the creator is Canadian, as it happens.

It’s a fantastic idea, to apply the navigation model of Google Maps to other virtual representations of atoms and bits. I include ‘bits’ because Zoomii will no doubt extend to MP3 downloads and ebooks, which have no real-world equivalent. I’m slowly reading Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I wonder how he feels about a virtual representation of the space-limited physical world? Besides the obvious retail goods, what else could we Zoomiize? Voting records for Members of Parliament?

As I zipped around the Canadian version of Zoomi, I note that an author named Stephenie Meyer has no less than five books in the top 20 bestsellers on Amazon.ca. Can I get a WTF? They’re apparently vampire love sagas for the young adult crowd. Them kids–no accounting for taste.

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Comments: 6 Responses so far

alexis
July 7th, 2008
1:04 pm

They’re popular with adults too. One of them “The Host” is an adult title.

I love vampire books, and YA, but those books are so poorly written that I can’t even read them.

[Reply]

alexis
July 7th, 2008
1:05 pm

“The Host” is an adult sci-fi title. I can’t type today.

[Reply]

muvar
July 7th, 2008
6:44 pm

Gotta love youtube….can find anything there lol
rgds
muvar

[Reply]

Heron
July 7th, 2008
9:31 pm

I’m guessing you don’t know many people who have teenage daughters, those books are quite the hit among females aged 12-18.

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Richard Akerman
July 8th, 2008
5:30 am

I’ve gone from never having heard about Stephenie Meyer, to overhearing some girls discussing the Twilight series while I was waiting in line for popcorn at the movie theatre, to seeing someone on a Canadian french language TV station answer a viewer question about whether there is a Twilight movie coming (answer apparently: yes). And now here. All since Tuesday. I’m sure there’s a word for the phenomenon of discovering something and then suddenly finding it all around you.

[Reply]

Derek K. Miller
July 9th, 2008
8:15 am

It may be related to the “going to buy a new car” syndrome, where you never notice, say, Kia Sedonas driving around, until you decide you might be in the market for one — and then they seem to be everywhere.

[Reply]

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