A just-for-fun exercise, comparing Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever - 1963 vs 1991 editions (with revisions). The 1963 edition is my own, bought for me in the late 60's when I was a toddler, and read to tatters. The 1991 edition belongs to my kids today. I was so familar with the older one that I immediately started noticing a few differences, and so have catalogued 10 of the more interesting differences here in this photoset.

Scarry made some revisions somewhere between 1963 and 1991 - adding a female presence in some places, and a male presence in others, toning down some politically incorrect imagery, and upping the multiculturalism a bit. It was fun to spot the changes.
 

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It's that time of year again, Universal Studios has a blockbuster movie to promote, and a slew of tie-ins, promotional parters and marketing efforts is set up to launch an 800-ton gorilla: Peter jackson's King Kong. So, as I've done a few times before (1,2,3) when movie promotions start to take a massive turn, I started collecting links, mostly so I can see everything in one place, and get a sense of the scale.

The 160+ links I have to date for King Kong are here: King Kong, Business Monkey. The premiere is about a month away, so expect a crescendo of Kong soo - a gigantic... Well, you get the point. It's already big, and will soon get bigger.
 

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According to this post on Amazon.com's forums, Amazon not only has a "Tags Team", but they have started a 50-50 trial with tagging items (Books and Electronics at least for now?) - so you may or may not see them, sorry.

Try this book (scroll about halfway down). You might see this:

"Customers tagged this item with
 First tag: deep water blue (Mark Twain fff "florin" on Nov 11, 2005)
 Last tag: Good Book

 good gift (1),great gift (1),Good Book (1),df (1),asd (1),little pieces (1),interesting (1),perfectlysaiddotcom (1),must have (1),gift (1),deep water blue (1)"

Clicking on any of those tags would take you to a page like this: http://amazon.com/gp/tagging/glance/money, where you can see what else is tagged that way. You can also see associated tags, by digging a bit, and clicking a tag to a URL like this: http://amazon.com/gp/tagging/sims/Money. If you're logged in and have tagged items, you apparently get a taglist (like a wishlist?) at this URL: http://amazon.com/gp/tagging/manage-tags, where you can set tags to be public or private.

This all seems very interesting, maybe ripe for some spamming (self-promotion maybe?), but an interesting move anyhow. It'll be even more useful if they allow a bit more outward sharing - like seeing what books your friends have tagged as "good gift" or "do not read ever".

(Edit - looks like you can see friends' tags - you just have to know their tagging ID - like the last 14 characters in this URL: http://amazon.com/gp/tagging/customer-tags/A1P0PDSC5NRIPS)

Update: For those not in the 50% that can see this - I put some screenshots here on Flickr.
 

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