While reading blogs this afternoon, I found out about Guy Kawasaki's new book The Art of the Start. So I went to Amazon.com to order it and, lo and behold, Amazon was already recommending it to me on the home page as a new release I might like.
I confess to being somewhat of an Amazon recommendation addict. I'm highly motivated to inform Amazon of all my book purchases (the 30% I don't buy from Amazon but instead buy from the Dymocks at the mall near my house in Perth, the Barnes and Noble near the office in Boston or at various airport bookstores I hang out at frequently).
But as you know, I'm also interested in hosting my own data (see aggregation versus hosting). I'm always on the lookout for ways I can take back my data, host it on jtauber.com and provide it to aggregators rather than have to host it with them.
So that's got me wondering about the books-I-own being stored at Amazon. It's somewhat of a duplication, because I have a barcode scanner and maintain my own book catalog (with data, incidently, retrieved from Amazon web services). I've not checked yet, but I wonder if Amazon will let me import the books I own so I can maintain the authoritative list and, in the words of datalibre, "Write Once, Read Everywhere."
Of course, that then leads me to Amazon wishlists. Could I self-host my wishlist without losing the huge value-add of Amazon keeping the wishlist updated based on what others have ordered for me?