BitLit

File this project under: the engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think about if they should.

Indeed. And Prince Rupert is probably an outlier since it has almost everything going for it in terms of ship-to-shore efficiency. With a population is ~12k, road traffic rounds to zero. This also shows that a large population isn’t required for a large port.

But, more importantly Prince Rupert is well connected to the CN rail network. A rail connection is key for efficient intermodal shipping. And there aren’t many deep water harbours on the west coast with railways. Building rail or road connections to new ports wouldn’t be trivial.

Apropos the importance of building new container shipping ports in places that don’t have land scarcity, traffic, and well organized NIMBYs? Let me introduce you to the port of Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia.

The port of Prince Rupert has 5 (as in “can be counted on one hand”) berths and transfers 1.2M containers per year.

The port of Long Beach has 80 (yes, eight-zero!!!) berths and only transfers 8.1M containers per year.

Long Beach transfers 100k containers per berth per year. Prince Rupert transfers 240k containers per berth per year.

Years ago I was making a pitch to USV... the startup I was pitching was publishing related, and out of the blue one of the partners (Brad) asked me what order I read my Economist in? I paused to think and answered that I read front to back and skipped sections if they didn’t look interesting. Then I asked him what order he read it in. He said back to front. The conversation moved on without the chance for me to ask why. Maybe the reason was writing quality.

Would have been great if the pic was high enough resolution that we could have actually done computer vision on it... Kamil had to be an mTurk for a day and transcribe the book spines by hand.

Cool! That's be a super easy feature for us to add. We're on it.

I'm the app's developer, so I'll chime in here. The deals we have with publishers require that the book can't be returned to a bookstore. Having to write in your book isn't the only option though -- we do allow users to make their books with a bookplate sticker or stamp it with an ex-libris stamp:

http://blog.shelfie.com/2015/01/01/take-shelfie-use-ex-libri...

The slip of paper trick (or acetate sheet) is an option for people who want to try to game the system... but we do have mTurks who check the claims and will block the accounts of repeat offenders. That said, there are easier ways to get free ebooks e.g. thepriatebay.se

Cool, idea... what if we made a reverse lookup, so you could search in the app for the book and we could show you the picture of your shelf with the book highlighted. Thoughts?