I entered the contest and won (according to Tim, the founder of LibraryThing, who managed to e-mail me once). You can see details of my entry at:http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/12/uclassify-library-mashup-with-prize.php

Basically, I created a multi-class classifier using uClassify. I did it by creating single classifier with multiple classes (as opposed to multiple boolean classifiers). I chose that way because it was easy for the user to see the results ranked. There are some machine learning reasons why this is not necessarily the best way, but hey it was just an idea for a small contest.

Unfortunately, the odd folks at LibraryThing decided to get all silent on me and I have not heard a peep from anyone since. In the meantime, they have found plenty of time to blog about other things. I spent 4-6 hours of my weekend time (which I could have spent with family) participating in the contest, assuming they were decent Internet citizens. And I won (as I mentioned, Tim e-mailed me so) — but then they never got back to me, not after repeated pings, and as a result, I was never awarded the prize they promised. Not even that, I don’t even get a sentence of follow-up (let alone an apology) from them. It’s now 21 days after the contest ended and I assume I’ll never hear anything. I’m very disappointed.

I encourage you and your readers to be very wary of LibraryThing. From where I sit, they don’t seem to be decent Internet citizens. And I definitely suggest you do not participate in anything they host; you’ll most likely get the silent treatment if they decide to abandon what they start.

On the other hand, I applaud the uClassify service and wish you luck as you continue to grow it (suggest that you avoid further integration with LibraryThing). It was fun integrating and leveraging the APIs you have, I just wish it would have happened under better circumstances.

– kv (kvista7@gmail.com)