So, shiny new site. And a shiny new domain at dafydjon.es – see what I did there? (dafyd.me.uk/dafydjones.co.uk will continue to work, of course – I just have some ideas for the different domains that may come to something eventually.)

I’m quite a fan of my Snapshots pages, which presents all of my photos from Flickr in a new light. Sort of. (Geeky aside: there’s some heavy-duty PHP fu happening with the Flickr API pulling those photos in here – if you’re interested, I’d be happy to explain what’s happening.)

The Footprints page tracks what I’m doing elsewhere on the web, just in case you were bothered.

There will, inevitably, be broken links and files that no longer exist. If you’re looking for something in particular, give me a shout and I’ll hunt it out for you. Oh, comments on blog entries now work properly. Yay.

There are various things that I want to add, features that were on the old site that I’ll be bringing across as well as some super-duper new stuff.

For those who care, this is version 5 of my site. Version 4 was (more or less) alive for just over four years. Definitely time for an update.

So, more blogging to come shortly. Much has happened over the past few months, some of which I will be sharing.

YouTube never ceases to amaze. As does Facebook, where I recently discovered (/was discovered by) some friends from primary school who I haven’t seen for nigh on fifteen years.

Digg, on the other hand, seems to be going to hell in a handbag handbasket. All this fuss over a few numbers. What does it matter what it means?

I love reading. I read, easily, a book a week. Often more. I tend to have more than one book on the go at once. I wish there was an easy way for me to keep track of what I read, when. I wish there was a way for me to find other people who read what I do. And I wish there was a way to find other authors and titles to enjoy.

But there isn’t. There is – as far as I can tell – no “social reading” site out there. In this whole Web 2.0 thingy, books seem to have got left behind.

Sure, there are sites (and software, for Macs, at least) that let you put your library online. That let you swap books with other users. That let you “release books into the wild“. That recommend new books to you.

But nothing that truly acts as a Last.fm for books. LibraryThing is the closest, but it’s nothing like as easy to use as it should be. I have to dig around before I can enter when I start and finish reading, enter a review or tags, rate the book… Shelfari is also promising (and has lots of money from Amazon, so could get better), but still not what I want.

Has anyone else come across a better “social reading” service? Or am I going to have to get my hands dirty and code something for myself?

I’m going to keep a track of what I’m reading on LibraryThing for the time being, but from the playing about with it I’ve done so far, I can tell I’m going to get fed up with it quite quickly…

Photo by me, at Flickr

Tasty.

Oh, and “hello!” to those Edinburgh people who have stopped by here recently!

So, for example, “hello” to the 300-odd people who have arrived here via Durham’s proxy servers, Pepys, Hamster and Squirrel (someone must have had fun naming those). And “hello” to the single person from Collingwood who managed to get here without using those proxies (presumably more by accident than design).

Or I could tell you that someone has just arrived at my site by searching Google for “how far is row z at edinburgh playhouse from the stage?” (woo, 7th result!). I don’t honestly know, but I’d guess (and it is only a guess) that it’s 25 rows back.

And for the 179 people who have downloaded my English translation of Bahnwärter Thiel… good luck!

For the last five years, Waterstones.com was operated by Amazon, with Waterstone’s contributing a certain amount of editorial content each month and getting a pitiful amount of commision for each sale. Bizarrely, this is exactly the same arrangement that Borders / Books etc still uses – which means that the three biggest players in the UK book market (excluding WH Smiths, who don’t count, and the supermarkets, who do, I suppose) were sharing a e-commerce platform. A ridiculous business position, frankly. The fact the prices and availability on the old site were Amazon’s, as opposed to Waterstone’s, caused huge amounts of confusion in stores.

This new site was being developed when I was still working there at Christmas, so it’s taken them a while to launch… but it’s certainly been worth the wait. From the looks of things, it has been developed from the old Ottakars site (one of the only British “real” booksellers that even tried to challenge Amazon) and HMV‘s e-commerce engine. The content is pretty impressive – not just fairly detailed editorial reviews, but general industry news (Yossarian’s column has been kept from Ottakars.co.uk) and even individual pages for each store (here’s mine). Golly, Waterstone’s has even got itself a blog. Whatever next?

One of the more exciting things – in my view, anyway – is that you can now order online and have your books delivered to your nearest store for free (like Amazon does with certain partners in the US). I’ve been saying for years that Waterstone’s should have been doing something like that – converting online customers into “real” customers, with all the benefits of physical sales.

Another interesting bit is the “Ask a Bookseller” section, which allows you to email a bookseller for recommendations or advice on what to read next. Waterstone’s staff has always been its strong point (he says, modestly), especially now it can’t hope to compete price-wise with Amazon or the supermarkets, so it makes perfect sense to retain this presence online. I only hope that the help does come from real, front-line booksellers, not Brentford head office chappies – I’m rather tempted to send in a request for recommendations, just to see how well it works.

So – when I’m back in the UK, I’ll be trying out the service from the new website… for pick up in store, obviously!

For those of you who don’t know, it works as a plugin to iTunes or Windows Media Player or whatever, and keeps a record of the tracks you play. It then generates a profile for you with details of your favourite artists, albums, tracks, and so on.

But even better, it offers a “Personal Radio” feature, which takes tracks from your profile and creates a stream of your favourites and other recommended choons. Which is rather cool.

But I’m intrigued by something I’ve just spotted: have a look at the details of my top tracks listened to last week. Generally, it looks about right. But then looking down the list, there are some tracks that not only do I not own, I’ve never even heard. Jessica Simpson? I think not. Three Dog Night? Well, actually, I’ve just downloaded them… but I’d never (consciously) heard any of their music until today. The Spice Girls? Give me some credit.

So where are these phantom tracks coming from? Bit of a mystery, that.

Ready for the Durham University’s Michaelmas term, I’m proud to present the new website for Castle Theatre Company.

There are lots of funky little bits going on with it, and oodles of cardinal.

But I could do with other people having a quick look through and proofing it. Most of the writing is not mine, and I could do with someone else glancing an eye over it… Any volunteers? No pressure, but if you do spot something… email me!