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digital books
Posted by Otis on July 09, 2007
People are often asking me what the future of digital books is. I don't really know, so I usually spout something about Sony's eReader, and how it uses "digital ink" so it doesn't seem like you're reading a computer monitor. The truth is of course that people love their books, and will never let go them. There truly is something about curling up with a good book that is ingrained into each of us, and "a good ereader" will just never take the place of that for most of us.
Personally, I find myself reading digital versions of books that are digestible in chunks: mostly technical manuals, news articles, and such. I think that trend will continue.
But I just read about a cool innovation from Manolis Kelaidis, who recently presented the keynote speech at last months O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference. Manolis has used a conductive ink to print books, and hooked the book up to a computer using bluetooth. This way you can make an interactive experience out of a regular printed book. Its not quite the ebook experience, but its a pretty powerful step in that direction. Its also probably quite expensive, so don't expect to see it in every edition of the next Harry Potter book.
There is a good post about it here.
Posted by Otis on July 09, 2007
People are often asking me what the future of digital books is. I don't really know, so I usually spout something about Sony's eReader, and how it uses "digital ink" so it doesn't seem like you're reading a computer monitor. The truth is of course that people love their books, and will never let go them. There truly is something about curling up with a good book that is ingrained into each of us, and "a good ereader" will just never take the place of that for most of us.
Personally, I find myself reading digital versions of books that are digestible in chunks: mostly technical manuals, news articles, and such. I think that trend will continue.
But I just read about a cool innovation from Manolis Kelaidis, who recently presented the keynote speech at last months O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference. Manolis has used a conductive ink to print books, and hooked the book up to a computer using bluetooth. This way you can make an interactive experience out of a regular printed book. Its not quite the ebook experience, but its a pretty powerful step in that direction. Its also probably quite expensive, so don't expect to see it in every edition of the next Harry Potter book.
There is a good post about it here.
see what your friends are reading (literally)
Posted by Otis on July 06, 2007
Its almost ironic that our tagline is "see what your friends are reading", but so far there has been no central place to go to a list of what all your friends are currently reading. Until now!
Some people in the Feedback Group suggested it, and since on fridays we try to work on fun projects, we were able to build it this morning.
Enjoy!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/friend_reading
Posted by Otis on July 06, 2007
Its almost ironic that our tagline is "see what your friends are reading", but so far there has been no central place to go to a list of what all your friends are currently reading. Until now!
Some people in the Feedback Group suggested it, and since on fridays we try to work on fun projects, we were able to build it this morning.
Enjoy!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/friend_reading
Goodreads on Facebook
Posted by Otis on June 24, 2007
The Goodreads app on Facebook finally launched last week!
The Goodreads app allows you to add your favorite books to your Facebook profile, and easily let your Facebook friends know what you're reading.
Check it out!
Posted by Otis on June 24, 2007
The Goodreads app on Facebook finally launched last week!
The Goodreads app allows you to add your favorite books to your Facebook profile, and easily let your Facebook friends know what you're reading.
Check it out!
what are your favorite authors reading?
Posted by Otis on June 18, 2007
There was a great article in the New York Times recently about what several of the more popular current authors are reading. It's good to see that Dave Eggers is still concerned about Darfur. Stephen King pretty much sold me on wanting to read the book he just read, called Then we came to the end.
Goodreads was built on the belief that its interesting to see what other people are reading. And seeing what your favorite authors are reading is doubly interesting. Our Authors Program is up to 80 authors now, and almost all of them have listed at least a few of their favorite books.
Check it out!
Posted by Otis on June 18, 2007
There was a great article in the New York Times recently about what several of the more popular current authors are reading. It's good to see that Dave Eggers is still concerned about Darfur. Stephen King pretty much sold me on wanting to read the book he just read, called Then we came to the end.
Goodreads was built on the belief that its interesting to see what other people are reading. And seeing what your favorite authors are reading is doubly interesting. Our Authors Program is up to 80 authors now, and almost all of them have listed at least a few of their favorite books.
Check it out!
search your books!
Posted by Otis on June 05, 2007
Several people have been clamoring lately to be able to search within their own bookshelves.
Well we are happy to announce that now you can! And not only can you search your own books, but you can search anybody's books. This makes it really quick to see if a friend has read a certain book.
Posted by Otis on June 05, 2007
Several people have been clamoring lately to be able to search within their own bookshelves.
Well we are happy to announce that now you can! And not only can you search your own books, but you can search anybody's books. This makes it really quick to see if a friend has read a certain book.
new inbox features
Posted by Otis on June 04, 2007
A bunch of new changes to the Goodreads Inbox!
Now you can see your 'sent' and 'trashed' messages, as well as save your messages to the 'saved' folder. Lots of you have been requesting this, so sorry it took so long!
You can also see your message history with a person when replying to them, which makes it much easier to carry on a conversation.
Posted by Otis on June 04, 2007
A bunch of new changes to the Goodreads Inbox!
Now you can see your 'sent' and 'trashed' messages, as well as save your messages to the 'saved' folder. Lots of you have been requesting this, so sorry it took so long!
You can also see your message history with a person when replying to them, which makes it much easier to carry on a conversation.
discussion digests for groups and book discussions
Posted by Otis on May 17, 2007
We just launched a daily digest email to make it easier to keep track of the conversation in the book discussion boards and the group discussion boards.
The daily digest is a batched email that comes once a day and gives you a summary of new posts in that group or discussion topic. To subscribe, go to the page for the particular group or topic and click on the 'subscribe to daily digest' link on the right side of the page.
Groups are relatively new feature, but we already have some good ones. The Hipinion crowd has formed a book club, and of course who can argue against World Peace? Don't forget to join the Goodreads Feedback group if you interested in helping make Goodreads better!
Posted by Otis on May 17, 2007
We just launched a daily digest email to make it easier to keep track of the conversation in the book discussion boards and the group discussion boards.
The daily digest is a batched email that comes once a day and gives you a summary of new posts in that group or discussion topic. To subscribe, go to the page for the particular group or topic and click on the 'subscribe to daily digest' link on the right side of the page.
Groups are relatively new feature, but we already have some good ones. The Hipinion crowd has formed a book club, and of course who can argue against World Peace? Don't forget to join the Goodreads Feedback group if you interested in helping make Goodreads better!
What books do we have in common?
Posted by Otis on May 15, 2007
We've noticed that one common question people have when checking out somebody else's bookshelves is "what books do we have in common?" And even more interesting than that - how did they rate them?
Well now we've made a super-easy way to see at a glance which books you have in common with any other person on Goodreads. Just click the 'compare books' link on their profile page.
To compare books with me, click here.
Here is example of how my friend Jacques and I compared:
Posted by Otis on May 15, 2007
We've noticed that one common question people have when checking out somebody else's bookshelves is "what books do we have in common?" And even more interesting than that - how did they rate them?
Well now we've made a super-easy way to see at a glance which books you have in common with any other person on Goodreads. Just click the 'compare books' link on their profile page.
To compare books with me, click here.
Here is example of how my friend Jacques and I compared:
How many books really deserve 5 stars?
Posted by Otis on May 11, 2007
Do you ever notice some people seem to give every book 5 stars? Or that you yourself give lots of 3's but very few 2's? Well now you can see exactly how your ratings break down!
Here is what we feel the stars mean:
5 stars: "it was amazing"
4 stars: "loved it"
3 stars: "liked it"
2 stars: "it was ok"
1 star: "didn't like it"
Here is an example of my breakdown. As you can see, I tend to favor '4'. This is because I like to withhold '5' for books that blew me away.
Posted by Otis on May 11, 2007
Do you ever notice some people seem to give every book 5 stars? Or that you yourself give lots of 3's but very few 2's? Well now you can see exactly how your ratings break down!
Here is what we feel the stars mean:
5 stars: "it was amazing"
4 stars: "loved it"
3 stars: "liked it"
2 stars: "it was ok"
1 star: "didn't like it"
Here is an example of my breakdown. As you can see, I tend to favor '4'. This is because I like to withhold '5' for books that blew me away.
Goodreads is inspiring people to read more!
Posted by Otis on May 11, 2007
I found a blog post about Goodreads today that inspired me to blog (slightly ironic, I know).
On the blog, Chris Makarsky writes:
"I don’t read anymore. I feel I should change this.
'Anymore' isn’t meant to imply that I was ever a reading machine — it’s not as if I used to plow through novel after novel. But at least I used to read occasionally; now I can’t remember the last time I sat down and read something with a front
cover, a back cover, perhaps a cover jacket, and pages of text within."
I used to feel like that! For a few years after college the only books I read were technical, and I had no time to read any real literature. This is one of many reasons I decided to build Goodreads - because I thought it would help me get back to reading. And do you know what? It's working! I still program until late at night (its 12:22am and I'm still going), but I also find time to read.
I read in a survey yesterday that Americans spend an average of 3 hours a day watching TV. This is amazing to me. I like my share of TV too, but after a while your brain just starts to feel numb. Hmmm... I think I have an idea where people can get the time to read more!
Posted by Otis on May 11, 2007
I found a blog post about Goodreads today that inspired me to blog (slightly ironic, I know).
On the blog, Chris Makarsky writes:
"I don’t read anymore. I feel I should change this.
'Anymore' isn’t meant to imply that I was ever a reading machine — it’s not as if I used to plow through novel after novel. But at least I used to read occasionally; now I can’t remember the last time I sat down and read something with a front
cover, a back cover, perhaps a cover jacket, and pages of text within."
I used to feel like that! For a few years after college the only books I read were technical, and I had no time to read any real literature. This is one of many reasons I decided to build Goodreads - because I thought it would help me get back to reading. And do you know what? It's working! I still program until late at night (its 12:22am and I'm still going), but I also find time to read.
I read in a survey yesterday that Americans spend an average of 3 hours a day watching TV. This is amazing to me. I like my share of TV too, but after a while your brain just starts to feel numb. Hmmm... I think I have an idea where people can get the time to read more!
