Aaron Stanton doesn't give up.

Stanton, who launched the CanGoogleHearMe.com Web site to capture the company's attention, pitched his secret idea to Google last year. He has been in discussions with the search company as well as with Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. ever since.

"We are in communication with those companies," Stanton said. "Amazon has been very supportive, and things with them are going back and forth." An Amazon spokeswoman declined comment and a Google representative could not be reached at deadline.

Until this week, no one outside of a few people knew what Stanton's idea was. Stanton let the world in on his secret earlier this week with the launch of the Web site Booklamp.org.

Stanton and his team of developers have set up a book-search program based on writing styles. The software program allows people to search for books in a database through an analysis of the writing style of specific books rather than by reviews written by other users, the 26-year-old project manager said.

For example, you liked Stephen King's novel It and would like a book that was written in a similar style but that's half the length of King's 1,000-page horror story. BookLamp searches a database to find books written in a similar style. The software takes into consideration tense, perspective, action level, as well as description and dialogue levels, Stanton said.

Currently, Stanton's database of books isn't very large. In fact, he said, it only contains about 200 books, mostly science fiction. But for the program to work, he said, he needs a database of about 1 million books, which is why he's been in talks with Google, Amazon and Yahoo. He said he also tried to pitch his idea to Microsoft Corp. but didn't get any response.

Stanton said one of the initial reasons he approached Google was because the company was already in the process of creating a database of books online. Stanton said he still can't talk about his negotiations with Google because he signed a nondisclosure agreement that is still in effect. Stanton said one of the problems Google is facing in creating its book database is resolving the copyright issues involved with book scanning.

But, he said, his program bypasses copyright issues because it doesn't need to scan an entire book. The program scans just enough of the book, maybe every other page, so it can analyze the writing style and then serve up a snippet of the book to the user.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.

Whitepapers

• The Trend from UNIX to Linux in SAP(r) Data Centers
• Secure Wireless Printing Options
• Improve Virtual Storage TCO by Comparing Vendors
• Making IT Invisible
• Best Practices for VMware ESX Server
• Virtualizing Storage for VMware Success

View more DATA CENTER whitepapers

Webcasts

• Branch Office Trends and Best Practices
• Data Protection and Application Availability for Your VMware Environment with Veritas NetBackup and Cluster Server for VMware ESX
• Making NetBackup Highly Available with Storage Foundation HA
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape

View more DATA CENTER webcasts

Special Reports

• Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up
• Symantec State of the Data Center Report
• Data Centers: At the center of the action
• Executive Guide: Virtualization Reality Check
• Executive Guide: Data Center Decisions
• Get More From Your WAN

View more DATA CENTER special reports