inessential by Brent Simmons

isbn.nu feeds, or how to find good prices on books, also: I’m mad as a March TiVo

Glenn Fleishman told me about something clever—at his site isbn.nu, you can get feeds for individual books. The feeds show prices, so you can see how much a book is at Amazon, how much at Powell’s, and so on.

Say you want to buy Tom Negrino’s latest book about managing your personal finances with Quicken. Since you’re smart about money (or at least hope to be), you’re looking for a good deal.

Here’s what you could do:

1. Get the ISBN number of Tom’s book. (You could search for it at isbn.nu, look it up on Amazon, etc.)

2. Add a new feed with a URL that looks like this: http://isbn.nu/0321293657.xml

(The number part is the ISBN, which is different for each book.)

When a price changes, the feed is updated.

In completely other news...

daveXtreme says: “Here’s how I’d describe podcasting: it’s like TiVo for radio.”

See? Can’t get away from TiVo comparisons.

My love is like a red, red TiVo. Shall I compare thee to a TiVo’s day? Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous TiVos, or to take arms against a sea of programming, and by opposing TiVo them?

I got TiVo on a cloudy day—when it’s cold outside, I got the month of TiVo.