YASIV Visual Recommendation Search

Brother and Sister Visual Poem by Terri Windling

I couldn't think of a way to make the title of the post interesting but I think a lot of you may enjoy this great new, free service called YASIV. It's essentially a search engine connected to amazon.com which suggest books "like" a title you search for and books others bought after they purchased the book you're interested in. It also gives you a handy list on the left when it's done making it's connections (which you can watch it do) and, when it's settled you can move the page around as if it were a giant (clickable) piece of paper.

Galley Cat has mentioned the service more than once the past week and I have to admit it is a lot of fun to use.

Just one set of "branches" the YASIC engine found for Grimm's Household Tales. The actual "page" (clickable & movable) is MUCH larger.

 About Yasiv 

Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon's catalog. Being it a book, a perfume or a video game - Yasiv finds anything what is sold on Amazon.com. 

Let's face it: We often decide what to buy based on what others are buying. And it's not a bad thing after all. If something is bought by many of our friends there has to be a reason for that. Maybe it's good and worth its money? This is where Yasiv steps in: it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less. 

The site is really in it's early stages and there are many things that we want to fix. But to know what's important and what's not we need your help. Please tell us what do you like and what you don't? We would really love to hear from you. 

Yasiv is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com with no additional cost to customers. 

Andrei Kashcha 

I put in Grimm's Household Tales as an example for you but it works with any title available (or visible) through amazon.

When you click on any cover the information will come up summarized (and, again, clickable) at the right. You will also see the network connections to the book highlighted by the lines and arrows turning yellow.

It even has a product link paste function so you can literally search visually - and not just for books! Check the demo video below showing what happens:

Very fun and useful in quite a number of ways if you like to have your information presented visually! I only wish you could have the option of showing related items (eg gifts) as well as books altogether (like a product version of a visual collage on a topic or story, such as the lovely Brother and Sister visual poem of Terri Widling's at the head of the post, which shows text, images and found items) or choose to search books separately.

You can start your own searches HERE.

Speaking of interconnectedness, there's one more thing you may be interested in: I did a google image search for "connected fairy tales" and among a lot of random things there were a few that made sense: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente, Into the Woods musical, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue, ABC's Once Upon A Time, NBC's Grimm, A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, Bill Willingham's Fables and the Brother and Sister visual poem by Terri Windling (though how it found the latter I have no idea). Various books by A.S. Byatt appeared as well.

Note: In case you're wondering: I have no affiliation with amazon. I'm just posting about the service because I think it's a great research/hunting tool for visual people, which many fairy tale lovers are. :)