URL: http://beta.feedbooks.com

What is Feedbooks.com ?

Feedbooks is a new website made from the ground up with e-ink devices in mind. The goal of this website is to provide a whole new experience, delivering books in the public domain, user submitted content and news. It is divided in 3 main sections:
- Discover: download books from the public domain and submit additional books
- Share: using a simple dynamic (Ajax) interface, any member can create a book easily. This way you can upload and tag your works, making them available for everyone
- News: generate customized newspapers using RSS feed or create your own newspaper with friends using a simple Ajax interface
Any content on the website is stored in a database, from which we generate PDF for books and newspapers. All of our books have table of contents and can be completely customized.

What's the difference between the beta and the final release ?

Because we generate books instead of storing them, we need to test a lot more how we could handle thousands of requests at the same time. The beta is a nice way for us to tweak everything.
The news section is not available yet for the beta, but the first members of the website will get a special beta status, giving them access to the beta for the news too.
The beta will also be a nice way for us to get a lot of feedback from everyone. We'd like for example to poll the users in order to tweak our PDF templates for the Sony Reader and the iLiad iRex, giving them the best font and font size.

Any screencast presentation of the website ?

Yes, we did 2 screencasts, showcasing book creation and the beta release.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=remG1b-QHnE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o-66_ZxTR4

How can I add a book ?

There's 2 different cases:
- adding a book from the public domain: http://beta.feedbooks.com/book/choose_author
- adding your own creation: http://beta.feedbooks.com/userbook/add_book
To add a book from the public domain, you need to select an author, edit the book properties and the book contents. If the author you're looking for is not in the list, then you can add him/her. We check each and every book submitted from the public domain before publishing them.

If it's your own book, you just have to be logged in. You can edit the book as long as you want, and once it's ready, just hit the publish button and the book will be available for everyone (check the first screencast for an example). Make sure that you tag your book the right way, that's the easiest way for other members to find your book, and this way, we can show similar books too.

Why PDF ?

In order to create good looking books with an auto table of contents, we use LaTeX. There's really powerfull tools available to generate PDF files with LaTeX, and using PDF + LaTeX, we can include characters in any language, add support for math formulas, show footnotes etc...
Since books are not stored as files, it doesn't mean that we won't support some other formats in the future, we're just making sure that every content that could be available on the website (a russian math book for example ?), would work on this format.

Which templates are available for direct download ?

A4: 210x297 mm, font is Times in 12px, margins of 25mm except for the bottom which is 30mm, headings are turned on
Sony Reader: 90x120 mm, font is Times in 12px, margins of 1mm, no headings
iRex iLiad: 122x150 mm, font is Times in 12px, margins of 2mm, no headings
For all of these 3 templates we generate files only once, to put them in cache. You won't have to wait a single second once they've been generated once.
We'll poll the users during the beta to make sure that these templates are the best suited for both readers.

What can I customize on the PDF ?

All of the above settings:
- PDF Size
- Font
- Font Size
- Linespacing
- Margins
It'll take just a few seconds when you generate your own customized PDF. You won't have to deal with the settings for each and every download, as long as you're logged in, we'll store these settings.

The files sure are purdy!

Are you restricting yourself to books? It may be worthwhile making scientific papers from public repositories like arxiv.org available as well. The papers are mostly uploaded in LaTeX format, so it should be easy to generate PDFs.

Are you restricting yourself to books? It may be worthwhile making scientific papers from public repositories like arxiv.org available as well. The papers are mostly uploaded in LaTeX format, so it should be easy to generate PDFs.

No we're not. Scientific papers can be added to the second part of the website easily and that's one of the reasons we're using LaTeX. We just need to add the right packages to make the website support math formulas and other things needed for scientific papers. We're just supporting the LaTeX command for footnotes right now but we'll keep on adding more.

Do you mean you will not support direct generation of PDF from LaTeX sources already available for instance in arxiv.org? IOW, a user will have to manually submit a paper to get the PDF version for his reader?

Do you mean you will not support direct generation of PDF from LaTeX sources already available for instance in arxiv.org? IOW, a user will have to manually submit a paper to get the PDF version for his reader?

Sending LaTeX sources would be like manually adding a paper but with just a single text in it: the LaTeX source.
We just have to make sure that we have the right packages on our side, and also that all the functions used in the source are allowed on the server (I don't know any security flaws using LaTeX, but we need to make sure it wouldn't be possible).

There's also a formatting problem here: if you send an already formatted LaTeX file, we'll have to change the document class, font size etc...

While there's real advantages here, there's also a few drawbacks, so we'll have to study the whole problem to make it the more automatic possible, but in order to provide papers formatted for every mobile reader supporting PDF, I'm sure we'll still need some form of manual input somewhere.

My first comment is that although you are creating TOC links in the file, the Table of Contents page is *not* hyperlinked. What are you using to create the hyperlinks? I've been using the "hyperref" package (included with tetex) and it generates the same links you generate as well as making the entries on the the Table of Contents *page* live.

I've also had better luck with Helvetica than any of the serif fonts on the Sony Reader. I see that you are using Bookman -- once I copy that over to my Reader I'll see how that looks. I'd *like* to use a serif font, but the Sony does such a poor job with TR in PDF files that I haven't been able to. Maybe Bookman is the answer.

My first comment is that although you are creating TOC links in the file, the Table of Contents page is *not* hyperlinked. What are you using to create the hyperlinks? I've been using the "hyperref" package (included with tetex) and it generates the same links you generate as well as making the entries on the the Table of Contents *page* live.

I've also had better luck with Helvetica than any of the serif fonts on the Sony Reader. I see that you are using Bookman -- once I copy that over to my Reader I'll see how that looks. I'd *like* to use a serif font, but the Sony does such a poor job with TR in PDF files that I haven't been able to. Maybe Bookman is the answer.

I've tried the books on the Sony Reader and they are hyperlinked. I've got the links in the reader menu and I can select the links with the joystick in the TOC.

Hadrien,

You don't generate a new PDF every single time a download request is made, do you?

Is there some sort of caching mechanism?

The reason I ask is that your webserver seems pretty slow, although it might just be the connection :shy:

Sam Krupa

I've tried the books on the Sony Reader and they are hyperlinked. I've got the links in the reader menu and I can select the links with the joystick in the TOC.

OK, you're right. The links on the TOC page don't show up in Acrobat, but they do show up when transferred to the Reader.

Bookman's not doing it for me. It's as bad as Times Roman on the Reader. Spindly and sort of faded. Helvetica works a lot better.

Hadrien,

You don't generate a new PDF every single time a download request is made, do you?

Is there some sort of caching mechanism?

The reason I ask is that your webserver seems pretty slow, although it might just be the connection :shy:

Sam Krupa

We cash all the templates (A4, Sony Reader and iRex iLiad) but we can't cache the custom PDF (pretty obvious why). Since we've just released the beta and that we're deleting the cache quite often now, while we're still making changes as soon as we find a bug, you're highly likely to be the first one to download a book, which can take a dozen of seconds if the books pretty big. This won't happen much when we'll have more users on the server: most of the content for the templates will be in cache, it'll take a few secondes only if you generate custom PDFs.

OK, you're right. The links on the TOC page don't show up in Acrobat, but they do show up when transferred to the Reader.

Bookman's not doing it for me. It's as bad as Times Roman on the Reader. Spindly and sort of faded. Helvetica works a lot better.

They're also in Acrobat Reader for me (got the new one). As for the font, I've just found a bug for the Sony/iRex version. It's not the right font for the title and toc, making it looks faint on the reader but the text itself is much better.
I took bookman for the moment because I know that a few members who use LaTeX are using this one, but we'll make a poll to decide the right one for the template. Then there's always the custom PDF options too. You just have to set the right settings once, then it'll be saved and you just have to click on Custom PDF.

They're also in Acrobat Reader for me (got the new one). As for the font, I've just found a bug for the Sony/iRex version. It's not the right font for the title and toc, making it looks faint on the reader but the text itself is much better.
I took bookman for the moment because I know that a few members who use LaTeX are using this one, but we'll make a poll to decide the right one for the template. Then there's always the custom PDF options too. You just have to set the right settings once, then it'll be saved and you just have to click on Custom PDF.

I've got 7.0.8, which is the most current one available for Linux.

I'll have to look at the fonts again to see if Bookman is better than TR in the main body text, but my superficial impression was that it was still a bit uneven. The Helvetica seems more evenly weighted.

On the other hand, I'm jealous of your chapter heads -- they're gorgeous.

You are right that its is a difficult problem converting an arbitrary LaTeX file into a PDF of a given size with the correct fonts. I've had some success with just inserting a \geometry command and changing font sizes in the preamble, which should be easy to script...though I suspect this approach wont scale well to all papers, especially older ones that dont use best practices.

You are right that its is a difficult problem converting an arbitrary LaTeX file into a PDF of a given size with the correct fonts. I've had some success with just inserting a \geometry command and changing font sizes in the preamble, which should be easy to script...though I suspect this approach wont scale well to all papers, especially older ones that dont use best practices.

We do both in the preamble too but anyone could change the fontsize using the fontsize command for example.
Still, I do believe that it'll be much easier to convert a file for the reader using our interface than trying to change everything on your own, we just need a whole lot of thinking on what will be needer for scientific papers and the best way to get them on the website.
I might be working on this matter with people from INRIA, they seemed interested in using the reader instead of killing trees everyday for their daily reading sessions.

Just updated the FAQ (first post).
Added:
- Templates description
- Customized PDF
- Adding a book

This afternoon I have spent a long time uploading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

When I had finished I clicked preview and downloaded a PDF file of the book. I spot-checked this and went back to make a couple of corrections and then clicked "publish" but then the site sent me to an "error" page.

I re-logged in but now the book is in "edit" mode and the only option I can find is to delete it.

This afternoon I have spent a long time uploading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

When I had finished I clicked preview and downloaded a PDF file of the book. I spot-checked this and went back to make a couple of corrections and then clicked "publish" but then the site sent me to an "error" page.

I re-logged in but now the book is in "edit" mode and the only option I can find is to delete it.

Yes, that's why we're beta testing the whole thing... Right now I've identified that most people don't really see the difference between sending a book that's in the public domain, and sending their own book. I'll change the UI to make it much easier to understand...
As for Alexandre Dumas and the Count of Monte Cristo... I can see that you added the author, but I don't see the book. Is the book in Public Domain Books, and edit mode when you click on "My books" ? If it's the case, clicking on the book name and then publish should do the trick. I'll also take a look to see why the Publish button could have a few problems...

Edit: Found the bug for the publish button with users and not admins... I'm changing the source code right now and I'll update everything.

I can see and open the complete book in edit mode.

But three times I clicked on "Publish" and each time I received the following error:

"Application error (Rails)"

I can see and open the complete book in edit mode.

But three times I clicked on "Publish" and each time I received the following error:

"Application error (Rails)"

Yes and I think I've found why, working right now on correcting the bug and making the "My books" page a bit better...

Updated the website, did a few test and everything looks ok now.
I can see your book Moonraker, but I'll format it another way to make it looks better, so it should be up on the website tonight.
I'm going to do 2 more screencasts on this matter, this way it'll show the best way to add a book.

Edit: the book's online. Didn't took me quite long to reformat it the best possible way. Thank you for both the bug report and uploading such a classic ! The ability for anyone to upload their own works or public domain books is part of what makes the whole feedbooks experience.
http://beta.feedbooks.com/discover/view_book/73

Thank you Hadrien. I have left a comment for you regarding the book.

I anticipate that the FeedBooks.com website is going to be very popular -- particularly for people who don't have time to format their own content.

I sure appreciate your time, effort and expertise.

Kudos on the new site! It looks very promising and from what has already been posted, it seems like is already fulfilling that promise. I can see that I will be a regular visitor once I'm done with the books I already have slated for reading.

It is websites like this that will keep ebook electronics valuable to their owners. Keep up the great work!

This might also be useful for UMPC's (http://www.carrypad.com/products/), where a very popular screen size is 7-inch 800x480. I have tried custom sizes on my Pepper Pad 3 and 78x105 and 150x105 mm PDF's both work well using Adobe's acroread (inside FireFox).

Your web pages are generally designed for larger screens (both the navigation pages and the HTML books). Many sites work better than this with 800 pixels in width.

Most UMPC's run some variant of Windows, but the Pepper Pad is Linux, and in general spaces in filenames are a pain in Linux when using the command line. I suggest filenames like Author-TitleWithNoSpaces.pdf. The shorter filenames are probably helpful even under Windows. An alternative is to replace spaces with "_".

Finally, how about a bold font option?

This might also be useful for UMPC's (http://www.carrypad.com/products/), where a very popular screen size is 7-inch 800x480. I have tried custom sizes on my Pepper Pad 3 and 78x105 and 150x105 mm PDF's both work well using Adobe's acroread (inside FireFox).

Your web pages are generally designed for larger screens (both the navigation pages and the HTML books). Many sites work better than this with 800 pixels in width.

Most UMPC's run some variant of Windows, but the Pepper Pad is Linux, and in general spaces in filenames are a pain in Linux when using the command line. I suggest filenames like Author-TitleWithNoSpaces.pdf. The shorter filenames are probably helpful even under Windows. An alternative is to replace spaces with "_".

Finally, how about a bold font option?

I'll change the way the file are named, it'll be much easier for Linux and BSD I agree.

As for a bold font option, it'll come in 2 flavors:
- the ability to have the whole book in bold when you generate a custom PDF
- the ability to make a specific word or sentence bold when you edit a book

It's true that our pages are not designed for a mobile device, if we don't find a better way to do this, we might create a mobile version of the website too, once we enter the final stage and not the beta anymore.

Excellent resource, is there any plan to offer up CreativeCommons licenced books along with books under Public Domain?

Small bug when browsing the site:

If you select browsing with a filter (any one) when you go to the second page it loses your filter and you end up browsing by Book A-Z

Small bug when browsing the site:

If you select browsing with a filter (any one) when you go to the second page it loses your filter and you end up browsing by Book A-Z

Ok, thank you for spotting this one ! We'll correct it...
As for Creative Common, anyone can send their own work on the second part of the website (Share), so you can release it under a CC licence and publish it on Feedbooks.

Edit: No more bug with the filters + pages

So, we're still working on the newspaper part of the website, and the support for russian, japanese and chinese is almost ready... (support for math formulas, footnotes, verbatim for those of you writing or reading tech books is on the way too)

But I'd like to have some feedback about how the books look for those using the Sony Reader and iRex iLiad, in order to improve the templates for these devices. Do you like the font, the font size ? Would it be better to have the text in bold for the whole book ? Is the margin size right for you ?
We'll try to adapt these templates as soon as we have enough feedback on the matter.

Edit: Added 2 PDFs files for the Sony Reader. I'd like to change the default font size to 14. Take a look at the new one and the old one to see the difference.

Wow, this site is great. I finished adding my first book, very easy. My only suggestion would be to allow for adding things further up the list. For example, if you forget a chapter, you have to remove all of the chapters you added after that one to fix it. Some way to choose where to place a chapter/part/etc would be helpful.

I also had a problem adding text.For example, I had finished a chapter, clicked ok, it was saving. I moved on after it was taking a while and when I checked a few chapters later, it was still 'saving'. I had that happen once. I don't think I did anything different then I did before or after that. It may have just been a net error of some sort, but I thought I'd mention it regardless.

I love the site and plan to help build it up as much as I can. Thank you so much for this service. :)

Locke

If there can be only one choice for the Sony -- all bold or select words bold -- I favor select words bold. Pump up the font size if needed; but, retain the ability to make some words bold and other not. All bold is hard for me to read for more than a page or two. (It is a lot like all caps or shouting, fine for a moment but not a whole book.)

If there can be only one choice for the Sony -- all bold or select words bold -- I favor select words bold. Pump up the font size if needed; but, retain the ability to make some words bold and other not. All bold is hard for me to read for more than a page or two. (It is a lot like all caps or shouting, fine for a moment but not a whole book.)

Currently we use something similar to BBCode in our database for bold ([ b ] and [/ b ]). We'll never do something such as full bold books for the templates that are available and cached but we might add it as an option for custom PDF files.

Wow, this site is great. I finished adding my first book, very easy. My only suggestion would be to allow for adding things further up the list. For example, if you forget a chapter, you have to remove all of the chapters you added after that one to fix it. Some way to choose where to place a chapter/part/etc would be helpful.

I also had a problem adding text.For example, I had finished a chapter, clicked ok, it was saving. I moved on after it was taking a while and when I checked a few chapters later, it was still 'saving'. I had that happen once. I don't think I did anything different then I did before or after that. It may have just been a net error of some sort, but I thought I'd mention it regardless.

I love the site and plan to help build it up as much as I can. Thank you so much for this service.

Locke

You did a great job with these 3 books, I just previewed them and now they're available to everyone.
I'm not satisfied too by the interface for the editing, although all this Ajax/Prototype makes it more intuitive than most websites filled with forms, I believe that we can really improve the whole thing, make it better looking and a bit more user friendly.
As for the order of those elements, a bit of drag & drop may do the trick...
We're trying not to add too many clickable elements on this page and rely instead on BBcode like features for more advances usage (I'll post a full list of these later...).
Well, I'm glad you loved the website overall, we'll be adding more and more features in the coming weeks/months.

Oh, another suggestion, being able to find authors with partial matches or different order matches.

For example, if I search for Frank Baum, Baum Frank, Lyman Frank Baum, or even Baum Lyman Frank, I get a negative match. If it doesn't match exactly, including punctuation, (in this case Baum, Lyman Frank) it claims the author isn't yet in your library. It'd be helpful to search Baum and get a selection page with all people with Baum somewhere in their name.

Oh, another suggestion, being able to find authors with partial matches or different order matches.

For example, if I search for Frank Baum, Baum Frank, Lyman Frank Baum, or even Baum Lyman Frank, I get a negative match. If it doesn't match exactly, including punctuation, (in this case Baum, Lyman Frank) it claims the author isn't yet in your library. It'd be helpful to search Baum and get a selection page with all people with Baum somewhere in their name.

Well the search itself is pretty advance stuff but it needs some tuning (you can already do google-like searches, for example if you want a book in french you can use language:fr, you can use double quotes for exact matches etc...).

I guess you're talking about the process of adding a book right ? In this case it's not a real search, just a LIKE query on the sql, but it's an autocomplete form. You don't need to write everything, just type in Baum or Frank and it'll pop up with a list of names, just click on the right one and it'll be OK. It's the same thing when you edit the book with the "types", an autocomplete form.

Funny, it doesn't do that on my end at all. Perhaps that's because I'm using Opera, I'll try Firefox and IE and get back to you.

Ok, I just noticed, it DOES do it on Opera, but for whatever weird reason the box with the names pops up in the top left corner of the browser. I assume it's Opera's fault more than the coding of the page.

Yeah, it works just fine with Firefox and IE.

Funny, it doesn't do that on my end at all. Perhaps that's because I'm using Opera, I'll try Firefox and IE and get back to you.

Yes, we tested the whole thing mostly with Firefox and IE (had a tough time with IE). I'll add a message and an activity indicator, this way it'll be more obvious that the field is an autocomplete one.

Sorry to bug you again. I hope I don't end up becoming a nag.

I'm trying to add a book that is in parts, Part 1 had chapters 1-7, Part 2 resets the chapters (1-12).

However, when I click chapter under part 2, it starts at Chapter 8.
I've tried leaving the page and coming back(I've found it solves some glitches I ran into before). However, that doesn't help at all, no matter what I try it keeps coming up Chapter 8.

Sorry to bug you again. I hope I don't end up becoming a nag.

I'm trying to add a book that is in parts, Part 1 had chapters 1-7, Part 2 resets the chapters (1-12).

However, when I click chapter under part 2, it starts at Chapter 8.
I've tried leaving the page and coming back(I've found it solves some glitches I ran into before). However, that doesn't help at all, no matter what I try it keeps coming up Chapter 8.

Yeah I know about this one too, got to find a way to correct it. Actually when you'll generate the PDF, it'll be Chapter 1 and not Chapter 8 so it's just a glitch with the display when editing, not with the database or the PDF generated in the end.

Updated a few things:

- Corrected the bug with editing, if you add a chapter to a new part, it'll be "Chapter 1"
- Added a full page with top downloaded books/authors (100 of them). You can use filters to select different languages/periods. Quite usefull for the types too, let's say you're browsing "Science Fiction", well, just click on the "Top Downloads" and you'll get top downloads for science fiction: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/top?type=Science+Fiction&searchby=books
- Same thing for "Recently Added"

I'm still lacking enough feedback on what the font and font size for the Sony & iLiad templates should be. I'll make a new sample for these too, showing bbcodes and foreign languages in it too (russian, japanese and chinese).

I'm still lacking enough feedback on what the font and font size for the Sony & iLiad templates should be. I'll make a new sample for these too, showing bbcodes and foreign languages in it too (russian, japanese and chinese).

IMO, the files for the Sony Reader have the font a bit too big. However, I find the illiad font size to be just right for me, so I don't much mind, I just use those files instead.

IMO, the files for the Sony Reader have the font a bit too big. However, I find the illiad font size to be just right for me, so I don't much mind, I just use those files instead.

Not the best choice. In this case you should edit your Custom PDFs settings. This way it'll be the right size (90x120mm) and you can select another font size.

I downloaded Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the Reader and noticed that the size function on the Reader is disabled. Something about PDF that causes that? It reads OK, but I admit I would have bumped it up a level if I'd been able. Formatting is wonderful, though.

I downloaded Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the Reader and noticed that the size function on the Reader is disabled. Something about PDF that causes that? It reads OK, but I admit I would have bumped it up a level if I'd been able. Formatting is wonderful, though.

PDF is a per-page format, that's why you can't change the size with the button. Since we generate these files on the fly, you can easily use the custom size PDF option and select a larger font or even another one.

Hadrien, excuse my ignorance. I think I changed both the size and font on the download, but I'm not sure. Is there a way of looking at the downloaded PDF file on the desktop and finding out what the font name and size are? Looked under Properties, but it's not there. Am used to dealing with Word, which always displays both prominently.

Hadrien, excuse my ignorance. I think I changed both the size and font on the download, but I'm not sure. Is there a way of looking at the downloaded PDF file on the desktop and finding out what the font name and size are? Looked under Properties, but it's not there. Am used to dealing with Word, which always displays both prominently.

Not really. Once you're logged in on Feedbooks, you'll see a link for Custom PDF in the upper right. Click on this one, then click on Sony in the template section right under "Custom PDF setting". What you're trying to change is the size of the font, so what you need to change is "Fontsize" and "Linespacing" (increasing these values I guess).
You can't do this directly on the reader because this is not how PDF work, but this way you'll get something much more suited for your own taste and once you've found the right settings, you can just click on "Custom PDF" for any book and it'll generate your own customized version.

What is the possibility of getting Sony Librie as an output format?

What is the possibility of getting Sony Librie as an output format?

No support for LaTeX -> LRS/LRF so we won't support it for the moment. We'll expand our support after the beta since we're using a database to make this kind of operation easier, but we'll add support for the formats that LaTeX can generate first.

Edit: Hmm on the librie it's just pure XML right ? Might be possible to do something right after the beta then, XML is really easy to generate !

Updates:

- We've started working on more advanced user features. Added support for Gravatar (one avatar for every website instead of uploading avatar everywhere) and we'll support OpenID later in the beta.
- You can filter the books of an author using different ways now (popularity, type, name, year, language). Much easier to find what you're looking for.
- Still removing bugs from the PDF files generated.
- Full support for tags (looks like bbcode, but we're using our own set of tags). Use [ b ][ /b ] for bolds, [ i ][ /i ] for italics, [ quote ][ /quote ] for quotes etc.. (remove the blank spaces in the tags, I had to had them for the forum)

Soon:

- We'll be opening the News part really soon. A simple RSS -> PDF will be available first with the same options than the book generation (templates for A4, Sony & iLiad but you can customize it too).
- More advanced support for the News section is almost ready: creating a newspaper with multiple feeds for example + sudokus for those of you using an iLiad or who wants to print the PDF. We'll start the beta testing for these features after a few weeks of beta testing for the RSS -> PDF feature.

Edit: Added an example. This is TechCrunch RSS feed generated with the code we have right now.

Howdy Hadrien.

I tried to d/l a couple of originally-project-Gutenberg books from your site and noticed that they'd benefit a lot from postprocessing by e.g., the GutenMark (http://www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/MarkedTexts.html) script -- otherwise, you have things like "Mr." and "Mrs." treated as last words in a sentence, en-dashes where em-dashes should have been, emphasized words via all-capitals, irritating right-double-quotes instead of both left and right ones, etc.

Otherwise, your site is great. I especially like the customization feature, allowing one to select their own typeface/size.

Howdy Hadrien.

I tried to d/l a couple of originally-project-Gutenberg books from your site and noticed that they'd benefit a lot from postprocessing by e.g., the GutenMark (http://www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/MarkedTexts.html) script -- otherwise, you have things like "Mr." and "Mrs." treated as last words in a sentence, en-dashes where em-dashes should have been, emphasized words via all-capitals, irritating right-double-quotes instead of both left and right ones, etc.

Otherwise, your site is great. I especially like the customization feature, allowing one to select their own typeface/size.

Right now, all the text goes through flex before being formatted in PDF using LaTeX. Since all of this post-processing is independent from the text itself, we'll keep on improving this part of the formatting too.

I've been busy improving the support for RSS feeds lately (and also working on a tool that will autosync these feeds/newspapers to your reader), and adding more advanced features on the website itself (we're logging what users download now in order to provide advices, something similar to what Amazon provides). But we're going to work on improving the formatting too in the upcoming weeks. I'll do a new template today for the iLiad users and post it both here and in the official iRex forum, this way, people can vote for the best suited font.

New recommendation system: http://blog.feedbooks.com/articles/2007/04/13/recommendation-system

"With hundreds of books available (and thousands in a few months), we needed some kind of recommendation system. The “Top Books” page may be helpful for those of you looking for the most popular titles, but we really wanted something much more advanced that would guide you in your readings. Our new recommendation system comes in 2 different flavors:"

http://download.feedbooks.com/featured.jpg

"This is a new element that we added on the index of the website. Random books in our “Featured Books” list are displayed here. Pretty basic stuff but we thought that some kind of editorial advice would be cool (for example for fantastic yet not really popular books). "

http://download.feedbooks.com/alsodownloaded.jpg


"On every book’s page, you’ll find this new element on the right of the page. We log what people download during a single session on the website and display in this block the results. This will become more and more accurate as people download additional books."

We've been working on the full newspaper option and some of the items included in it. Sudoku is almost ready, with 5 levels of difficulty and the ability to display the solution. Should be online really soon.

For the newspaper, we'll provide an easy way for everyone to create an application that is able to download those newspapers, and sync them with a device, or anything of that sort. We're also working on such an application for the Sony PRS-500 right now and we'd like to do the same sort of thing for the iLiad, but directly on the iLiad itself. This way you could get your newspaper/rss/sudoku directly using the wifi connection of the iLiad. In the meantime I've been using kovidgoyal's libprs500 and wget to create the same thing. Here's my .bat file:

wget -O Techcrunch.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/news/rss2pdf/3?format=sony
wget -O Slashdot.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/news/rss2pdf/5?format=sony
prs500 rm /Data/media/books/Techcrunch.pdf
prs500 rm /Data/media/books/Slashdot.pdf
prs500 cp Techcrunch.pdf prs500:/Data/media/books
prs500 cp Slashdot.pdf prs500:/Data/media/books


Our "news stand" feature will work in a simple way. A GET or POST method on a given URL, with the right login and the MD5 hash of the password. If the login/pass is OK, you get a single XML file, with the name and URL for each of your subscriptions. "Subscriptions" will be on the website itself, with the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds, your own newspapers made out of various items, and sudokus.
It'll be really easy for anyone to port or create an app for different devices and OS this way.

Sudoku works great on our development website. Here's a sample for you in this post for the iLiad, with 25 sudokus in it, 5 for each level of difficuly. It took less than 2s to generate this on the server, so speed shouldn't be much of an issue.

We have two separate ways to generate these: a sudoku page that'll generate sudokus only, or you can use the sudoku widgets when you create a newspapers. This example is a newspaper with 5 sudokus widgets in it, one for each and every level of difficulty.

It'll be nice to get directly those sudokus on the iLiad, once the "news stand" feature is ready.

First version of our sync program should be out pretty soon now. It'll work in a really simple way: login/password, select your device and everything else is done directly on the website with the subscribe feature...

We've enabled the possibility for members to create their own newspapers now: http://www.feedbooks.com/news/create

You can add multiple rss or sudoku items in your newspaper, this way you don't have to keep multiple files.

You can add multiple rss or sudoku items in your newspaper, this way you don't have to keep multiple files.

Very nice, Hadrien! And I like the ajaxy feel of Feedbooks. :2thumbsup

Very nice, Hadrien! And I like the ajaxy feel of Feedbooks. :2thumbsup

Yeah we're using prototype for this, it's included in Ruby on Rails. This way we can add/remove elements from the page, do drag & drop for the order of the elements in your newspaper etc... Much more simple for the user than plain HTML elements.

We're doing some extra work on the UI right now: we've just added tabs, and we're working on new pages, a better search feature and a real user control panel.

http://blog.feedbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/tabs.png

New Screencast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQYo4yQ_QA
Blog entry: http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=13

It's about using a blog + Feedbooks to publish your own work.

If you’d like to publish a book this way:

1. Create a generic blog (using Blogger)
2. Publish the chapters on the blog
3. Copy the URI of the RSS Feed and paste it on the News Section of Feedbooks
4. Add a link to your file on the blog
5. (Optional) If you want to have the book both in reverse and correct order, you can use Yahoo Pipes. Create a new pipe with your RSS feed in the “Fetch Feed” element, connect it to a “Sort” element (it’s in Operators) and sort your feed by item.pubdate. Once it’s connected to the output, you can use the RSS output for this pipe on Feedbooks and add another link on your blog.

This is a pretty basic way to generate files for your own book. We’re already working on more advanced formatting and features, using our own XML format. We’ll create a custom version of a popular blog (Wordpress or Dotclear I guess) for this and open our API too. If you’re already publishing your own book using your blog or your website, and would like to beta-test this feature, send me an email at hadrien.gardeur [at] feedbooks.com .

PS: Pour une version française de la vidéo c’est ici: http://www.dailymotion.com/Feedbooks_Hadrien/video/3755944

New Feature: Dedication

Very simple feature but quite fun: you can now add a dedication to one of our e-books and send it to a friend. Just finished a novel that you loved ? Send a dedicated version to a friend this way ;-)

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but how do I add line breaks at the end of a sentence or paragraph? I have tried a few things but nothing seems to work. The formatting is correct when I enter it into the text box, but the PDF that is generated has all the lines mushed together.

EDIT: I finally figured it out. The code is "[ br ]". With the text I was testing on I needed 2 before anything showed up so it initially threw me for a loop.

Back to work.... :)

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but how do I add line breaks at the end of a sentence or paragraph? I have tried a few things but nothing seems to work. The formatting is correct when I enter it into the text box, but the PDF that is generated has all the lines mushed together.

EDIT: I finally figured it out. The code is "[ br ]". With the text I was testing on I needed 2 before anything showed up so it initially threw me for a loop.

Back to work.... :)

Yeah that's the right tag. We do indenting instead of line breaks for public domain books, and most text are full of line breaks so we remove them.

We need to change this on the second part of the website...

Actually, we're working on something new for the formatting and I think that in the future, the input will be some kind of extended XHTML (we need a few additional tags compared to XHTML).

New Search Feature (http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=21)

http://blog.feedbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/search.jpg


A new search feature is now online with major improvements:
Results are in a single list now with the most relevant one first. This way if you’re looking for an author for example, you get the author first, not some of his books.
You can filter the results based on the nature of the results (books/authors) or switch between the most relevant results and the most downloaded results.You’ll notice that there’s 2 links for searching our website with Google, they act in a very different way compared to our search feature:
“http://www.feedbooks.com/images/bookmarklet_icons/google.png Results on Google”: The basic Google search is useful if you’re looking for something in one of the page of our website, not strictly a book or an author. It could be a comment, the description of a book etc…
“http://www.feedbooks.com/images/bookmarklet_icons/google.png Results on Google (PDF)”: The Google (PDF) link is useful for full text search. It’ll list only A4 PDFs as a result, but it can search inside those PDF files. If you’re looking for a quote for example, that’s the best way to search through our texts.The only real problem with these links to Google is the fact that you have to wait for a few days before the content is listed, unlike our own search system.
With all these improvements, our search feature should be a lot easier and useful. You can also use this feature within your own browser with our search extensions (http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=8). There’s a lot of advanced features with the search system, I’ll do a full post about the possibilities behind it later on the blog.

(En)List Now ! (http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=22)

http://blog.feedbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/view_list.jpg

Another new feature for both the Discover (http://www.feedbooks.com/discover) & Share (http://www.feedbooks.com/share) sections of the website. List is a really simple feature: any registered member can create a list with multiple books (and a nice name/description). Those lists will then appear on the page of each book/author listed, and a few random lists too on the index for the Discover section (http://www.feedbooks.com/discover).


http://blog.feedbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/list_in_book.jpg

How can those lists be useful ? Well first of all, for series, that’s a great way to list the whole thing.
For example:
The Oz Books (http://www.feedbooks.com/list/view/4)
Barsoom (http://www.feedbooks.com/list/view/1)
Les Rougon-Macquart (http://www.feedbooks.com/list/view/5)A list can only be based on a common subject. There’s already a list for books based on utopia/dystopia (http://www.feedbooks.com/list/view/3) available.
Those lists could be a lot more personal: we could imagine lists based on what someone felt while reading, books from your childhood etc…


How can I create a list ?


Creating a list is fairly easy too. Just open the page of the book that you need to add and press “http://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/list.png Add to a list”.
If this is your first list, you’ll be redirected to the “Create a list” page. Just enter the name and description of your list and once you’re ready, the list will be created with your first item in the list.
If you’ve already created at least one list, you’ll get straight to a page where you can select an old list or create a new one.
Once you’ve added the book to your list, a simple click on description will allow you to change it. You can also reorder the items in your list using drag&drop or remove any element in the list.
You’ll see your list on the page of the book/author as soon as there’s 2+ elements in your list.
If you need to edit your list, just open the page for the list and click on “http://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/wrench.png Edit this list”.

Hi Hadrien

Amazing site.

I've been having a problem though. I downloaded Pride and Prejudice, but it won't let me download anything else. Is there a daily limit or something?

Merci

Hi Hadrien

Amazing site.

I've been having a problem though. I downloaded Pride and Prejudice, but it won't let me download anything else. Is there a daily limit or something?

Merci

No daily limit at all. Did you had any error while trying to download something else ?

Hi Hadrien

No error message. To tell you exactly what happened: I successfully downloaded the pdf with custom settings. I went back to try to adjust the settings but when I pressed download I was redirected to the home page. I've tried to or three other books, in both Safari and Camino, but the same thing happens each time.

Hi Hadrien

No error message. To tell you exactly what happened: I successfully downloaded the pdf with custom settings. I went back to try to adjust the settings but when I pressed download I was redirected to the home page. I've tried to or three other books, in both Safari and Camino, but the same thing happens each time.

Ok, may be a bug with the custom PDF link then (try the other options, it should work). What's your nickname on Feedbooks ?

Ok, may be a bug with the custom PDF link then (try the other options, it should work). What's your nickname on Feedbooks ?


Hadrien

I'm sorry I was going into Custom settings and pressing OK each time when (I now realise) all I needed to do was click on Custom pdf. :oops2: :smack:

A couple of suggestions:

- it might make make sense to put a smaller version of the download graphic beside each of the download links;

- amending the custom settings should send you back to the previous page.

But apart from that it's brilliant. Merci beaucoup. I will have to learn about LaTex so I can upload as well as download.

Hadrien

I'm sorry I was going into Custom settings and pressing OK each time when (I now realise) all I needed to do was click on Custom pdf. :oops2: :smack:

A couple of suggestions:

- it might make make sense to put a smaller version of the download graphic beside each of the download links;

- amending the custom settings should send you back to the previous page.

But apart from that it's brilliant. Merci beaucoup. I will have to learn about LaTex so I can upload as well as download.

OK.

I'll add a full help guide on the website soon.
You don't need to know LaTeX to upload books on Feedbooks. To add parts/chapters/sections you just need to click on a few buttons and the markup in the text will soon be XHTML (for basic formatting like bold, italics etc...) and a few extra tags (<footnote>, <quote>, <verse>...).

I'll create a full guide explaining how to upload books too.
There's a few reasons why uploading on Feedbooks can be even more helpful than uploading a handmade version:
anyone can customize the PDF output for their own taste
we'll be adding support for more formats (expect Epub support pretty soon), which means that you won't have to edit/publish a book again when a new format is needed
metadata: we use metadatas the best that we can. It's easy to search for a book, browse through the books of an author using filters (most downloaded, year, type of book), create lists (http://www.feedbooks.com/list/view/6) etc...
recommendation system: we try to identify similar books through download patterns. Suggestions are added on the page of a book, but also at the end of the e-book file. Personal recommendations is on the way: just add a few favorites, download some e-books and we'll create a recommendation list.

Feedbooks is a revolutionary website!

When will this wonderful "sync program" be ready to use, I CAN'T WAIT !!

Thanks,
Fabian.

Yeah we're using prototype for this, it's included in Ruby on Rails. This way we can add/remove elements from the page, do drag & drop for the order of the elements in your newspaper etc... Much more simple for the user than plain HTML elements.

When using the drag & drop for the order of the elements in a newspaper, can you guys add the option of sorting alphabetically? I have like 50 RSS feeds in my newspaper and they are a pain to search and manage when not in alphabetical order.

Thanks,
F.

Lovin' the feedbooks site!

Some feedbooks interface comments:

Sometimes when I select the "Sony Reader" type of PDF download, my browser will launch Acrobat instead of asking me where to store the PDF file. This happens about once every 15 downloads.

After I login, is there a way to select that I have a Sony Reader as my default device, so I don't have to select the PDF type when subscribing to an RSS feed?

After I add an RSS feed to my main newspaper page [not my newspaper], the interface doesn't seem to easily allow me to unsubscribe to a particular RSS feed unless I can get to it again from the top-10, and then select unsubscribe.

I think it would be helpful to allow the doanloding of an entire newspaper as individual RSS feed PDFs. It seem like your server is being heavily taxed when asking for an entire newspaper, the request fails most of the time, when the newspaper is big.



Thanks,
F.

Hadrien where are you located? which copyright law do you follow?

This is brilliant!

Lovin' the feedbooks site!

Some feedbooks interface comments:

Sometimes when I select the "Sony Reader" type of PDF download, my browser will launch Acrobat instead of asking me where to store the PDF file. This happens about once every 15 downloads.

After I login, is there a way to select that I have a Sony Reader as my default device, so I don't have to select the PDF type when subscribing to an RSS feed?

After I add an RSS feed to my main newspaper page [not my newspaper], the interface doesn't seem to easily allow me to unsubscribe to a particular RSS feed unless I can get to it again from the top-10, and then select unsubscribe.

I think it would be helpful to allow the doanloding of an entire newspaper as individual RSS feed PDFs. It seem like your server is being heavily taxed when asking for an entire newspaper, the request fails most of the time, when the newspaper is big.



Thanks,
F.

Most of the newspaper part of the website could really be considered in an alpha state. We're rewriting currently the way RSS are generated and most of the work on the UI is not done yet. We'll update the website this week with some new features for the public domain part of the website, and then we'll shift our focus on something else: the UI for uploading/editing books and the newspaper part of the website.

Problem with a big newspaper is that we have to download the feeds and images from many different sources. If these sources are too slow, you'll get a timeout indeed. We might change the way we generate those PDFs: instead of doing this live, we'll generate them something like once every hour. This way it'll be an instant download for the user, but the information won't be as fresh.


Hadrien where are you located? which copyright law do you follow?


We follow the Life+50 law. And this is not necessarily linked to where you're located. On the page of every book and inside the e-book themselves we have a message about the copyright status of the book.

we'll generate them something like once every hour. This way it'll be an instant download for the user, but the information won't be as fresh.


Yes, this a great idea!

Maybe we can squeak in the ability to re-order newspaper rss feeds in alphabetical order.. :)

Fabian.

Yes, this a great idea!

Maybe we can squeak in the ability to re-order newspaper rss feeds in alphabetical order.. :)

Fabian.

That's an easy one. You'll notice that for public domain books, most of the time you can re-order using alphabetical order, downloads, year etc...

Try sorting these books for example: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_author/21

Here's 3 screenshots of our app for the iLiad.

You'll be able to directly download books/newspapers/rss/sudokus on your iLiad using this app. The new recommendation system that we'll release pretty soon is also available on it (download books, add some to your favorites and an algorithm will recommend new books).

This is Awsome..

Will the "feeds" listing come pull from the feedbooks.com page? how is the "Slashdot, techcrunch...." RSS feeds list created..?

When can I use this wonderful app and can I use it, even partially, for my Sony reader?

Thanks,
F.

Here's 3 screenshots of our app for the iLiad.

You'll be able to directly download books/newspapers/rss/sudokus on your iLiad using this app. The new recommendation system that we'll release pretty soon is also available on it (download books, add some to your favorites and an algorithm will recommend new books).

In the feeds screen shot, will you inlcude a "select all" button to sync all my feeds at once..?

I have 50 feeds, that's alot of clicking.. :)

F.

That's an easy one. You'll notice that for public domain books, most of the time you can re-order using alphabetical order, downloads, year etc...

Try sorting these books for example: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_author/21

yes, and I would love to be able to do this for my newapaper in the "edit Newspaper" page..

F.

This is Awsome..

Will the "feeds" listing come pull from the feedbooks.com page? how is the "Slashdot, techcrunch...." RSS feeds list created..?

When can I use this wonderful app and can I use it, even partially, for my Sony reader?

Thanks,
F.

This app is for the iLiad and will run directly on the iLiad itself. Just walk in a cafe, connect your iLiad to a free WiFi access and voila, you can download any books from Feedbooks.

In the Feeds tabs, you'll see your subscriptions that you selected directly on the website. This way you can also read your favorite RSS feeds without connecting your iLiad to a PC.

We're working on a different app for windows that should work with all UMS device (iLiad/Cybook) and that might use libprs500 for the Sony Reader. It'll run in your taskbar and automatically download your subscriptions. You'll just have to press "sync" once your reader is connected to transfer these downloads.

It's quite a lot of work for us, but our API is open: any developper can create an application based on Feedbooks and those two that we're working on will be open-source if anyone wished to modify them. Take a look at our blog for a few details on how you can extract the subscriptions using XML, we'll do an extensive descriptions on how everything work as soon as the iLiad app is ready.

Great info, I can't wait!!!

F.

Very nice feature. Great work.

Any chance of adding in settings for the Boston Globe?

Any chance of adding in settings for the Boston Globe?

Settings for the Boston Globe ? We're not doing the extracting content part of the job with Feedbooks. Give Dapper a try, I'm sure you could get the full content of the Boston Globe with it.

Or even better: send an e-mail to the Boston Globe, explaining why RSS feeds with full articles are needed. If they worry about ads, well they can include the ads in the RSS feeds too !

First version of our sync program should be out pretty soon now. It'll work in a really simple way: login/password, select your device and everything else is done directly on the website with the subscribe feature...

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3589&d=1179697383



I am loving feedbooks.com, its a great Idea and I want to use it everyday!

If we read the dozens of comments around the net about these E-Ink devices, there is one particular thread that MANY people would start using these devices if they could dock their readers and DL all their newspapers in the morning.. [Of course, the Sony Connect software falls short here]

My question is, what's the estimated time line for getting this sync tool out [or having the "large" newspaper caching feature ready]?

This would really be a major time-saver.. right now I have to click through 50 RSS feedbooks.com download links to get my RSS updates to my reader [because very large "newspapers" are failing to DL due to size].. yeah, I love my RSS...

PS: Has feedbooks.com considered adding "RasterFarian" type features into your website. Kind of like OCR websites, where I can upload my personal PDFs and have them spit back out ready-formatted for my Sony Reader?

Thanks,
F.

I am loving feedbooks.com, its a great Idea and I want to use it everyday!

If we read the dozens of comments around the net about these E-Ink devices, there is one particular thread that MANY people would start using these devices if they could dock their readers and DL all their newspapers in the morning.. [Of course, the Sony Connect software falls short here]

My question is, what's the estimated time line for getting this sync tool out [or having the "large" newspaper caching feature ready]?

This would really be a major time-saver.. right now I have to click through 50 RSS feedbooks.com download links to get my RSS updates to my reader [because very large "newspapers" are failing to DL due to size].. yeah, I love my RSS...


Thanks,
F.

I love my RSS too... Well for an app... I already have a simple app that download RSS feeds everyday, although it doesn't sync yet to the PRS-500. We've had quite a few troubles reverse engineering the USB protocol to make this work (and it doesn't, it works with small file but not with large ones). Eventhough it's not finished (well it is for UMS device), this could be already easier for you: you won't have to click on a single link this way. I'll post this on this topic as soon as an installer for it is ready.

That's sounds really great!!

Even if I can't get the files directly into my Sony reader "yet", I know many people would still be super happy with what you are proposing.. :)

Thanks Hadrien!

Fabian.

That's sounds really great!!

Even if I can't get the files directly into my Sony reader "yet", I know many people would still be super happy with what you are proposing.. :)

Thanks Hadrien!

Fabian.

Well in the meantime you can use libprs500 to put them directly on the reader. There's an auto sync feature on our app that download all of your files everyday, just create a .bat file that send all of these files to your reader using libprs500 and you're set (could be easier I know...)

I seem to be having trouble with the COPY cmd through libprs500.. can you help me..?

HELP with my CP command..?

Is this OK??

prs500 cp -f Z:\temp6\RSS\*.* "a:/Sony Reader/database/RSS-News/"

What's your batch file look like..?

Thanks,
F.

Here's the installer (had to zip the whole thing, you can't upload .msi on the forum).

As for libprs500: not sure that this path is correct.

Great, I will try this when I get home from work..

about libprs500 command line.. can you share what your batc file looks like. The help flags in prs500 are a bit limited and I can't seem to get it right..

Thanks!
F.

Great, I will try this when I get home from work..

about libprs500 command line.. can you share what your batc file looks like. The help flags in prs500 are a bit limited and I can't seem to get it right..

Thanks!
F.

Let's try something better: using libprs500 to autosync these files on the reader using our app.

ohh.. that's great..

guess I didn't realize your app could interface with libprs500..

Thanks,
F.

ohh.. that's great..

guess I didn't realize your app could interface with libprs500..

Thanks,
F.

Well that's how the app was created: we have various sync/output modules that can be modified. Once we have a first final version, the app will be open-source too.
Feedbooks API is open to any developper, and these apps will be open too. This way any developper can modify them, or study them to create their own app using the Feedbooks API.

Let's try something better: using libprs500 to autosync these files on the reader using our app.

I installed the MSI and got the FB icon and loaded my FB settings....

I was able to configure a target directory and started downloading my RSS feeds from FB.

I can't seem to select the PRS-500 as a device in the FB sync-tool.. is there a drop-down menu I should be setting up? So I can't seem to get the sync tool to copy the RSS feeds directly to my reader..

I'm almost there, i know it.. :)

a little help..? :)

very exciting!
Fabian.

By the way, I know you probubly have thousands of things to do.. but I can never seem to add this RSS feed to my newspaper.. werid:

http://digg.com/rss/index.xml

Thanks,
F.

I installed the MSI and got the FB icon and loaded my FB settings....

I was able to configure a target directory and started downloading my RSS feeds from FB.

I can't seem to select the PRS-500 as a device in the FB sync-tool.. is there a drop-down menu I should be setting up? So I can't seem to get the sync tool to copy the RSS feeds directly to my reader..

I'm almost there, i know it.. :)

a little help..? :)

very exciting!
Fabian.

Yes, it's because we haven't finished the output for the Sony Reader. With the installer that I posted, it'll download these files to a folder. This mean that it'll work for UMS devices already (the iLiad for example). I'll post another version with libprs500 support this week. In the meantime you can use this one already: you won't have to click on any link from now to get these files on your computer.

Hey, I found the way to unsubscribe your own feeds which are not present in the Feedbooks list.

It's very simple.
Go to the News page.
Paste the same feed address into the "Turn RSS Feeds into PDF files:"
Then on the next page, you will see:
Subscribe to this Feed:Spinner
You already subscribded to this RSS. Click here to unsubscribe.
Click "unsubscribe" and that's it!

You can repeat unsubscribing the wanted feeds by pasting the subscribed feed links under "Generate another RSS feed:"

Hope that helps. :)

Hey, I found the way to unsubscribe your own feeds which are not present in the Feedbooks list.

It's very simple.
Go to the News page.
Paste the same feed address into the "Turn RSS Feeds into PDF files:"
Then on the next page, you will see:

Click "unsubscribe" and that's it!

You can repeat unsubscribing the wanted feeds by pasting the subscribed feed links under "Generate another RSS feed:"

Hope that helps. :)

It'll be a lot more simple in the future though, I'll add a full page for managing all these subscriptions.
I'm finishing most of the work left on the public domain book section, then I'll switch focus to the rest of the website (I'm working on a way to browse public domain books using covers).
We're adding a lot of help pages right now:

http://www.feedbooks.com/help/custom_pdf
http://www.feedbooks.com/help/advanced_browsing
http://www.feedbooks.com/help/discovering_books
http://www.feedbooks.com/help/user_interface_elements
http://www.feedbooks.com/help/searchThere's a lot of cool features and advanced stuff that you can do with Feedbooks, these should help.

Edit: I can add a quick http://www.feedbooks.com/images/site/trash.png next to the subscription on the index too, could be a nice way to remove those for the moment.

Edit: I can add a quick X to the subscription on the index too, could be a nice way to remove those for the moment.


Yes, if you could, that would be great!!

Thanks,
F.

I'll post another version with libprs500 support this week.

That's excellent, I know many folks would love to see this all working!!

You guys are incredible at Feedbooks, so many tools and programming knowledge!

F.

Yes, if you could, that would be great!!

Thanks,
F.

Done.
There's also a few redesign elements for the second part of the website.
And the most important: the "recommended" feature is now fully part of the section for public domain books.

Log in, download a few books, add some to your favorites and say hurray: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/recommended

Cool! Thanks for adding the delete button in the News page.
I wonder if a simple search engine can be added for News, just like that for books.
Keep up the good work!

Cool! Thanks for adding the delete button in the News page.
I wonder if a simple search engine can be added for News, just like that for books.
Keep up the good work!

It'll be added in the future, and a browse feature.

Main problem with the news, is to know what exactly is relevant when you do such a search ? I guess that the title of the newspaper and the tag are the most relevant informations.

We'll also add a way to create a new newspaper based on an existing one. This way if you've found something relevant for you, but you'd like to add/remove something, it'll be quite easy.

It'll be added in the future, and a browse feature.

Main problem with the news, is to know what exactly is relevant when you do such a search ? I guess that the title of the newspaper and the tag are the most relevant informations.

We'll also add a way to create a new newspaper based on an existing one. This way if you've found something relevant for you, but you'd like to add/remove something, it'll be quite easy.

I hope I am not asking too much here. :p Perhaps a simple search function for the existing newspapers/news feeds available in Feedbooks would be very sweet, at least I can check to see if Feedbooks have the feeds I want before creating duplicates myself.

at least I can check to see if Feedbooks have the feeds I want before creating duplicates myself.

exactly..

F.

I seem to be having trouble with the COPY cmd through libprs500.. can you help me..?

HELP with my CP command..?

Is this OK??

prs500 cp -f Z:\temp6\RSS\*.* "a:/Sony Reader/database/RSS-News/"

What's your batch file look like..?

Thanks,
F.
I don't know the correct command. All I know is that the output path is incorrect.

I hope I am not asking too much here. :p Perhaps a simple search function for the existing newspapers/news feeds available in Feedbooks would be very sweet, at least I can check to see if Feedbooks have the feeds I want before creating duplicates myself.

Well, if you enter the same URL it won't create a duplicate. Problem is most big websites have a few URLs for the same RSS feed. But don't worry, a search feature will be added this month with a bunch of other features for the news section.

This is surely a welcome feature. Really looking forward to that!
Thanks for the hard work! :2thumbsup

As the number of my RSS feeds keep growing in Feedbooks, I just wonder if it is possible to add one more feature enhancement: download all the news with just a one-click action, instead of manually clicking each subscribed feed. Thanks in advance! :)

As the number of my RSS feeds keep growing in Feedbooks, I just wonder if it is possible to add one more feature enhancement: download all the news with just a one-click action, instead of manually clicking each subscribed feed. Thanks in advance! :)

Is the Hanlin V3 a UMS device ? If it's UMS and you're running Windows, you can use the tool that I uploaded on the topic a few messages ago to automatically sync all of your subscriptions to your device. That's what I'm using for my Sony Reader.

Hi Hadrien,

I registered at feedbooks and received the confirmation email. However, the email is empty. I tried with 3 different emails, and got same results. I also used the "Lost your username/password ?" feature, and got an empty email as well.

Please help. TIA.

Hi Hadrien,

I registered at feedbooks and received the confirmation email. However, the email is empty. I tried with 3 different emails, and got same results. I also used the "Lost your username/password ?" feature, and got an empty email as well.

Please help. TIA.

Ok, just manually confirmed your account myself (avh4).
Strange though, I just tried creating an e-mail and it worked fine. What is your e-mail client exactly ? Does it support multipart e-mail (HTML+Txt email) ?

Ok, just manually confirmed your account myself (avh4).
Strange though, I just tried creating an e-mail and it worked fine. What is your e-mail client exactly ? Does it support multipart e-mail (HTML+Txt email) ?

Woohoo !!!! I logged in successfully. Thanks very much Hadrien :)

I use Internet Explorer 7 to view my Yahoo mail account. I think it does support multipart e-mail.

Now I am off to explore FeedBooks. Thanks again :)

As the number of my RSS feeds keep growing in Feedbooks, I just wonder if it is possible to add one more feature enhancement: download all the news with just a one-click action, instead of manually clicking each subscribed feed. Thanks in advance! :)

I think you can download the sync tool from this thread to DL all your feeds with one click.

F.

I think you can download the sync tool from this thread to DL all your feeds with one click.

F.

Thanks, Hadrien and flamaest. However I am using Mac & Linux. So would it be possible to make a *nix version of the tool with the source code? A simple command line version will suffice.

And yes, V3 is a run-of-the-mill USB Mass Storage device. The internal 512MB memory and a 4GB SD card make it a giant USB stick... :D

Hi again,
I am trying a solution to the "one-click" question. In the meantime I combine several feeds into a newspaper. However, there is problem downloading them, either it's a "504 Gateway Time-out" error, or a 4kb unreadable PDF named by the newspaper number. Any idea? Thanks again.

Hi again,
I am trying a solution to the "one-click" question. In the meantime I combine several feeds into a newspaper. However, there is problem downloading them, either it's a "504 Gateway Time-out" error, or a 4kb unreadable PDF named by the newspaper number. Any idea? Thanks again.

Interesting, I wonder how feedbooks deals with a single RSS which fails within a newspaper, does the whole newspaper timeout?

I sometimes receive a feedbook error on large newspapers, so I have overcome this by keeping my RSS feeds separated and using the sync tool to get my RSS feeds as separate PDFs. [until the caching feature appears on feedbooks]

Hadrian, did you mention that the libprs500 version of the sync tool was available? If so, my next purchase will be the Sony Reader Cradle.

Anybody know where this Sony cradle can be bought for cheap or is anyone selling there's?

2 cents,
F.

Hmm... I seem to be able to identify the source of the 504 Gateway Timeout problem.
I've just tested each single feed in my newspapers and found some which failed to download. After removing those failing feeds the newspapers were downloaded successfully.
So this suggests that a newspaper will fail to download unless ALL the feeds in the newspaper are unproblematic.

Hmm... I seem to be able to identify the source of the 504 Gateway Timeout problem.
I've just tested each single feed in my newspapers and found some which failed to download. After removing those failing feeds the newspapers were downloaded successfully.
So this suggests that a newspaper will fail to download unless ALL the feeds in the newspaper are unproblematic.

Yes, unfortunately there's still some work to do on this point. We've successfully increased the % of supported feeds but we always find new feeds that are not standard or a few bugs on our side. That's why it's a beta ^_^ I expect Epub to be easier to generate for RSS...

As for a *nix tool, we developed one for the iLiad, guess we could make a few changes and transform this into a desktop application for Linux and Mac OS X ?

For a simple download, a shell script should work too, you can easily parse and download using wget this way.
The URL for the XML file is: http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription
if you're already logged in on the website
or else: http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=Username&password=MD5HashOfYourPassword

To calculate the MD5 Hash: http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5/

Thanks!
Just tried your solution.
I was using
wget http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=zdevil&password=MYMD5HASHblahblahblah
Then I got this: (actual username and password hidden of course)
[1] 4838
MacBook:~/Desktop/RSS USERNAME$ --23:14:56-- http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=USERNAME
=> `subscription?user=USERNAME'
Resolving www.feedbooks.com... 91.121.16.74
Connecting to www.feedbooks.com|91.121.16.74|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/xml]

[ <=> ] 95 --.--K/s

23:14:56 (5.66 MB/s) - `subscription?user=USERNAME' saved [95]
Then the terminal stops here without downloading anything or returning to prompt.

Then I found a small file called subscription?user=USERNAME and saw this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<newsstand>
<status>Login Error</status>
</newsstand>
What to do?

Thanks!
Just tried your solution.
I was using
wget http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=zdevil&password=MYMD5HASHblahblahblah
Then I got this: (actual username and password hidden of course)
[1] 4838
MacBook:~/Desktop/RSS USERNAME$ --23:14:56-- http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=USERNAME
=> `subscription?user=USERNAME'
Resolving www.feedbooks.com... 91.121.16.74
Connecting to www.feedbooks.com|91.121.16.74|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/xml]

[ <=> ] 95 --.--K/s

23:14:56 (5.66 MB/s) - `subscription?user=USERNAME' saved [95]
Then the terminal stops here without downloading anything or returning to prompt.

Then I found a small file called subscription?user=USERNAME and saw this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<newsstand>
<status>Login Error</status>
</newsstand>
What to do?

Just tried with your login/pass... I got a login error too using wget URL, but then I tried wget "URL" and it worked just right. You can also specify an output file in your wget command line.

Great. Now I wget my own XML file. So how should I get the converted PDF feeds out of it? Thanks again.

OMG,

I found this list of feeds, some are even full feeds, to add to my feedbooks newspapers.. yippe!

http://radio.xmlstoragesystem.com/rcsPublic/rssHotlist

Thanks,
F.

Hadrien,

Can you help me make an RSS feed for this website?

http://www.keelynet.com/

I tried making an RSS feed from feedwhip and the output looks perfect, but feedbooks.com cannot understand this RSS feed for some reason.

Maybe you have an RSS for www.keelynet.com already on your list of RSS feeds..?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

Hadrien,

Can you help me make an RSS feed for this website?

http://www.keelynet.com/

I tried making an RSS feed from feedwhip and the output looks perfect, but feedbooks.com cannot understand this RSS feed for some reason.

Maybe you have an RSS for www.keelynet.com already on your list of RSS feeds..?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

PM me the feed that you created, I'll take at look at it.

Great. Now I wget my own XML file. So how should I get the converted PDF feeds out of it? Thanks again.

Hmmm you need to use some shell scripting with both grep and sed for this. I'll see if I can do this script myself and post it back here.

Edit: Here's the .sh file (always included a zip file with the .sh). It should work for all UMS devices (iLiad, Cybook, Hanlin etc..) and could be easily edited to support the Sony PRS-500 with libprs500.
#!/bin/sh
wget "http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/subscription?user=username&password=MD5" -O subscription.xml
declare -a names
i=0
for n in `grep -E "<title>.*</title>" < subscription.xml | sed -e 's/<\/*title>//g' | sed 's/^[ ]*//g' | sed -e 's/[^a-z]/_/ig'`
do

names[$i]=$n
let "i=$i+1"

done
i=0
for url in `grep -E "<url>.*</url>" < subscription.xml | sed -e 's/<\/*url>//g'`
do
wget $url -O "${names[$i]}.pdf"
let "i=$i+1"
done

ok, I PM'ed you the feed..

I can add the feed to feedbooks, but no PDF content is ever generated..

Thanks,
F.

Thanks, Hadrien. Tried your script. Wget can download the pdfs, but they are not saved anywhere. Any hint?

Thanks, Hadrien. Tried your script. Wget can download the pdfs, but they are not saved anywhere. Any hint?

Well I tried it and it saved all of the feeds. If you see wget downloading the feeds than they must be saved somewhere...

Hadrien, your site it very cool.

I do have one problem and two questions - I was experimenting with creating my own private "newspaper", and I can see how to change the contents, but there seems to be no way to delete the whole newspaper. Is this a missing feature or am I missing something obvious?

The 2nd question relates to the iLiad - is your syncing app part of the code is it is something that has to be installed additionally?

Thanks in advance,
T.

Hadrien, your site it very cool.

I do have one problem and two questions - I was experimenting with creating my own private "newspaper", and I can see how to change the contents, but there seems to be no way to delete the whole newspaper. Is this a missing feature or am I missing something obvious?

The 2nd question relates to the iLiad - is your syncing app part of the code is it is something that has to be installed additionally?

Thanks in advance,
T.

Haven't made a delete newspaper action yet, mostly because I'm not sure how such an action should behave. For private newspapers, it's simple: deleting the newspaper. But for public newspapers it's a lot more complicated. Let's say that 20 members also subscribe to your newspaper. Should we also delete the newspaper and therefore those 20 members wouldn't be able to use it anymore ? I need some extra thinking on all this...

The sync app need to be installed additionally, it's not something that's already on the iLiad itself. We'll try to keep this as simple as we can and we'll make a full guide on how you can install and use this app.

[QUOTE=Hadrien;102884]Haven't made a delete newspaper action yet, mostly because I'm not sure how such an action should behave. For private newspapers, it's simple: deleting the newspaper. But for public newspapers it's a lot more complicated. Let's say that 20 members also subscribe to your newspaper. Should we also delete the newspaper and therefore those 20 members wouldn't be able to use it anymore ? I need some extra thinking on all this...
QUOTE]

Hadrien,

I agree there needs to be a separate case for public and private newspapers, when the number of subscriptions > 0. I was only experimenting with a private newspaper. But wouldn't the following logic cover both private and public cases?

If the "current viewer" = "newspaper creator" AND # subscriptions = 0 then allow delete.

That should work unless you count the creator of the newspaper as always having subscribed, in which case the #subscriptions could be checked against 1 instead of 0.

Cheers,
T.

I love the feedbooks site BTW!

About the public vs private feed issue:

When a user adds an RSS feed to their account, feedbooks should catalog that feed and update it's own public repository of all feeds added by all users, so the site is not connected to any single user's list of private feeds.


About dealing with Newspapers and RSS feeds:

I would suggest making user newspapers simple aggregations of RSS feeds, but keep the actual RSS feeds as a separate source list for the user to manage.

So the user would have an RSS feed list and a newspaper list.

When you create a newspaper, the RSS feed list should show up and individual RSS feeds would be selectable with a checkbox indicating which RSS feeds belong in that newspaper.

When you delete the newspaper, the RSS feed list remains for addition into a new newspaper.

When a user deletes an RSS feed by itself, the feed should be removed from any of the user's newspaper/s which has this RSS feed listed.

About the caching feature:

I would also recommend seeing about implementing the caching feature mentioned before in the thread. I have noticed at certain times of the day, most of the downloaded PDF feeds are empty, but later in the day they will contain data.

Sort of like something is timing out and just feeding a PDF with no content.

I mostly don't care if the feed is a few hours old. At most I will pull daily so if I miss an article or two it won't matter much.



PS: I am buying the Sony cradle and was wondering if the FB-sync tool was working with libprs500 yet?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

Hello everyone,

Sorry for this late answer to all of your questions, but we've been quite busy with the epub output and the API. Now that our API is open to anyone, it should be very easy for anyone with decent programming skill to create software using Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand_api

About the news section: we need to support cache on the RSS feeds in order to output epub files. This means that for the upcoming weeks, we'll focus on both cache and epub for the RSS/newspapers.

Flamaest: You've got some pretty good ideas here. Displaying the list of RSS feeds in the newspaper edit screen for example.
I'd like to create some sort of "fork" system too. If you discover a newspaper that you really like but that need some extra editing to suit your taste, you could basically create a newspaper using this one as a template. Much easier than having to add manually all the RSS feeds.

For the libprs500 output on our sync tool: we can make this work, but auto-sync won't work. This mean that instead of simply plugging your Sony PRS-500, you'll also need to press sync on the tool.

Is anyone using our sync tool with the PRS-505 ? I know that the 505 can automatically sync with a local folder. Should be very easy to sync and read multiple RSS feeds with the 505 everyday.

Yes, manually pressing "sync" on the feedbooks-sync-tool would be OK.

I noticed this sync tool can't remember it's settings when restarted, is that a feature?

The 505 sounds great, but I just got my 500 and can't see moving to a 505 anytime soon. I hope Sony adds some of the 505 functionality to the 500, like the folder sync feature. I wonder if this is hardware based, if so, maybe these features won't make it to the 500.

Thanks Hadrien!
Fabian.

hadrien the 505's sync feature only works if sony's software is running, which makes it pretty pointless. If you want that feature it should be pretty easy to script on top of libprs500 using the windows scheduling services.

Yes, manually pressing "sync" on the feedbooks-sync-tool would be OK.

I noticed this sync tool can't remember it's settings when restarted, is that a feature?

The 505 sounds great, but I just got my 500 and can't see moving to a 505 anytime soon. I hope Sony adds some of the 505 functionality to the 500, like the folder sync feature. I wonder if this is hardware based, if so, maybe these features won't make it to the 500.

Thanks Hadrien!
Fabian.

Honestly, the auto-sync feature for the 505 is hardly hardware-based: you need to launch the new eBook Library to sync the files. They could easily add support for the 500 on this feature.

The sync tool should remember it's settings when restarted though, at least, it remembers mine. We really need to push things forward in the upcoming weeks on both caching and this tool. But now that the API is open, basically anyone could create such a tool too, in a different way, or for different OS/devices.

hadrien the 505's sync feature only works if sony's software is running, which makes it pretty pointless. If you want that feature it should be pretty easy to script on top of libprs500 using the windows scheduling services.

I agree that it's hardly a real auto-sync feature. By the way kovidgoyal, have you checked Feedbooks API ?

I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

For Feedbooks you won't have to do much work on the files with both PDF and epub support for the 500/505. Although some PRS-500 users might be interested in an epub to LRF conversion if Adobe DE is not available on the PRS-500.

epub to LRF should be trivial. LRF to epub will be a bit more of a trick though all the infrastructure is already in place in libprs500, it just needs the loose ends tied up.

epub to LRF should be trivial. LRF to epub will be a bit more of a trick though all the infrastructure is already in place in libprs500, it just needs the loose ends tied up.

TOC support might be a bit different compared to what you already have for HTML -> LRF in your Epub -> LRF tool. Although the .ncx file should be pretty easy to parse too.

Isn't ncx based on opf? I already parse OPF files in html2lrf

Isn't ncx based on opf? I already parse OPF files in html2lrf

In the OPF file, you list all your .xml files while in the .ncx file you create a real TOC.

Unzip one of our files and you'll see the difference.

Or here:
OPF: http://www.hxa7241.org/articles/content/epub-guide_hxa7241_2007.html#contentopf
NCX: http://www.hxa7241.org/articles/content/epub-guide_hxa7241_2007.html#tocncx

Ah ok I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I'm writing the converters. thanks :-)

Ah ok I'll bookmark this and come back to it when I'm writing the converters. thanks :-)

OK. Hope our experience with .epub will be helpful too if you have any question :-)

Search feature updated both on the site and for the API. Advanced query should now be supported: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/search#advanced_query

I haven't looked at the API yet, too much of a backlog of tasks for libprs500, but I do plan to eventually add download support for both feedbooks and gutenberg to libprs500. That will have to wait for Qt 4.4 with Webkit support though, which should be released sometime early next year.

Did you have any luck adding Hadrian's Feedbooks download plugin to your LIBPRS500 GUI?

Thanks,
Fabian.

Hadrian, have you made any updates to the Feedbooks Newsstand application, looks like I am running 1.0.0.0 still.

Thanks,
Fabian.

A few yes, like the ability to add the date to the file, in order to archive instead of overwriting.
+ a few bug fixes

Been busy with many different features (Mobipocket, download guide for the Kindle etc...) lately.

How would I get this updated version [so I don't have to bug you every time :) ]?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

How would I get this updated version [so I don't have to bug you every time :) ]?

Thanks again,
Fabian.

Well officially, I haven't released this app yet. I'll add a few presets for the devices, and upload a new test version here.

Once it's officially launched (it'll depend on the improvements made to the RSS generation system), I'll create a full page dedicated to this software, along with a trac and a repository to distribute the sources. This way, any developer can play with the sources, and change/improve the software.

Here's an updated version of the app.
We fixed bugs, added an option to append the date to your file, and there's a few presets available depending on your device. I love the auto-sync, I simply plug in my device every morning and it syncs the content for me.

Awesome! I will download this now!

F.

Can anyone help me ? I keep getting a status : login error within feedbooks app in Iliad.... I have registred within feedbooks.com and also confirmed my user.

Can this be something regarding wireless connectivity in iliad ? Should I need a script or something ?

Regards,

Kinetic

I'm having trouble with the application. I installed the latest version, entered my device name (Sony PRS-505) and the correct drive letter, my login name and password and pressed sync. It tells me it has done a correct download, but the result is not a pdf-file.

If I open x5nder.pdf, I see regular html-info! See the attachment.

What could be the problem?

In this case, the problem is on our side. Which RSS feed are you trying to generate ?

In this case, the problem is on our side. Which RSS feed are you trying to generate ?

I made a newspaper with the name 'x5nder' and added three feeds to it:

http://www.feedbooks.com/feed/view/?id=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Ftweakers%2 Fnieuws
http://www.feedbooks.com/feed/view/?id=http%3A%2F%2Frss.fok.nl%2Ffeeds%2Fnieuws
http://www.feedbooks.com/feed/view/?id=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Fpcmweb_nie uws

Ok, it's just a speed issue (haven't found any time yet to implement a cache system).
Add the 3 feeds separately to your subscriptions and it'll work fine.