Bluefire reader app

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Micah

So, now with Google eBookstore support, with Bluefire Reader you can read books from Google, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Borders, Kobo, Books-A-Million, BooksOnBoard, Diesel, cyberbooks, ebooks.com, all Romance, and many others. And your local public library. Wooot!

The only thing missing is the ability to read from your local Calibre installation's OPDS feed. Boo!

[tomsem]

Micah,

I have some library-related questions and suggestions:

I was going to ask for a 'Return' feature, but I poked around and discovered it is already there! (by the way Overdrive Media Console that just came out seems to lack this feature, which seems Wrong..)

The library portal on overdrive.com now lets you download ebooks to iOS, but Overdrive Media Center gobbles up the ACSM file without letting me choose BF to open it instead. Is there something BF can do about that? I still need OMC for audiobook lending, so uninstalling it is not an option for me.

As it is, I have been downloading the ascm file to my computer and then emailing it to my iPod, where I can choose to have BF open it. But I'd prefer to do it all on my iPod.

It would be nice if BF displayed some information about where the borrowed item originates. OMC does this.

Finally it would be nice if I could add a web link to my library portal on the Get Books page, so that I can use that to go there directly from BF.

Thanks for a great app!

[Micah]

Originally Posted by toddos

The only thing missing is the ability to read from your local Calibre installation's OPDS feed. Boo!

Yea, I hear you. working on that.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Micah,

I have some library-related questions and suggestions:

I was going to ask for a 'Return' feature, but I poked around and discovered it is already there! (by the way Overdrive Media Console that just came out seems to lack this feature, which seems Wrong..)

The library portal on overdrive.com now lets you download ebooks to iOS, but Overdrive Media Center gobbles up the ACSM file without letting me choose BF to open it instead. Is there something BF can do about that? I still need OMC for audiobook lending, so uninstalling it is not an option for me.

As it is, I have been downloading the ascm file to my computer and then emailing it to my iPod, where I can choose to have BF open it. But I'd prefer to do it all on my iPod.

It would be nice if BF displayed some information about where the borrowed item originates. OMC does this.

Finally it would be nice if I could add a web link to my library portal on the Get Books page, so that I can use that to go there directly from BF.

Thanks for a great app!

Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do (in the app) about the way Overdrive is doing their fulfillment links. I've reached out to them to see if there is anything they can/will do to improve that. We'll see. Some folks have done some work in this area that might be worth checking out. Here's a good post on that topic at Liz Castro's blog "Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis" at http://bit.ly/bfJgGG and it talks about Greg William's bookmarklet which he has since updated and the latest version of that is found here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1572127/bfr_bookmarklet_1.4.txt

As to showing where the book originated, that's something I'd like to do both for loans and for purchased items. Looking at the options there for technical approaches to capturing that info. Probably not coming right away, but high on our list.

Web links is an interesting suggestion, I'd not thought of that. We do plan to offer a way to manually "add" OPDS feeds as mentioned, but links are another thing. I'll ponder that.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Micah

...

As to showing where the book originated, that's something I'd like to do both for loans and for purchased items. Looking at the options there for technical approaches to capturing that info. Probably not coming right away, but high on our list.

Web links is an interesting suggestion, I'd not thought of that. We do plan to offer a way to manually "add" OPDS feeds as mentioned, but links are another thing. I'll ponder that.

I don't know how it works under the hood, but OMC's 'Get Books' page has an 'Add a Website' button. Clicking on this launches Safari on an overdrive search page (http://search.overdrive.com/newwebsitefinder?country=US' in my case). But simply navigating to a library portal does not seem to add it to the list (and I wouldn't expect it to). Maybe you have to actually login (in which case how would OMC know?), or more likely it doesn't get added until you actually download an item to OMC. I can't seem to edit or delete the one entry I have there (not that I want to), so the underlying paradigm is not clear.

Anyway, thanks again.

I think I saw something on this thread about an alternate iOS web browser that lets you direct downloads to the app of your choice (including Dropbox etc.) so I'll check that out. Sounds like that would workaround having to use a computer to get library books into BF.

[km45]

I spent some time working through the setup on Liz Castro's blog. Thanks to all that contributed to the process. It does work directly to Bluefire although only one book per session, apparently. I had two books to download but could only access one of them.

I do have to say, however, that the convoluted process of dealing with libraries, along with the extremely slow Overdrive catalog and search process, I fully understand why Amazon and Apple, etc. are making big dollars!

Ken

[3goldens]

Any word on the freeze and hang people are experiencing with ipad/iphone jail broken 4.2?

[steph_g]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I think I saw something on this thread about an alternate iOS web browser that lets you direct downloads to the app of your choice (including Dropbox etc.) so I'll check that out. Sounds like that would workaround having to use a computer to get library books into BF.

Look for my post in this thread about using icab to directly download library books and open in BF Reader. It works great for me on my iPad. YMMV, of course, but I'm thrilled with it!

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by steph_g

Look for my post in this thread about using icab to directly download library books and open in BF Reader. It works great for me on my iPad. YMMV, of course, but I'm thrilled with it!

Yes, but you probably don't have OMC installed (can you confirm this?).

At least with OMC installed, I never get the chance to redirect the download to Dropbox. OMC launches and gobbles it up.

I use OMC to get library audiobooks so I don't want to uninstall it. But I may do that anyway just to confirm my suspicions.

[Mickey330]

Tomsem -

I had OMC installed on my iPad. I have since uninstalled it for the reason you are having problems: It opens up when I go to download the book from the library web site. As it's not that great on the iPad [yet - when compared to BlueFire reader], I deleted it. I'd rather use iCab to get the ascm file to the reader app...

Kind of annoying, to be honest. I can sympathize with your troubles ... and your need to keep it for audio books.

So, you don't need to uninstall it as I can confirm your suspicions. Sorry 'bout that.

[steph_g]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Yes, but you probably don't have OMC installed (can you confirm this?).

At least with OMC installed, I never get the chance to redirect the download to Dropbox. OMC launches and gobbles it up.

I use OMC to get library audiobooks so I don't want to uninstall it. But I may do that anyway just to confirm my suspicions.

You're right - I do not have OMC installed. I'm not a fan of audio books, so it's not an issue for me. I guess for now you'll have to figure out which is more important. Hopefully, that will get fixed soon!

[tomsem]

I finally had a chance to try the 'bookmarklet' workaround suggested by Micah that is documented on Liz Castro's blog Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis. I had to modify the procedure a little to work on my iPod, and it is a little awkward, but it does work.

In particular, the bookmarklet only works with the 'full' Overdrive web site, so I needed to figure out the url to use for my library's 'full' (non mobile) overdrive web site/portal (bookmaking that for future use), so that I could run the bookmarklet in the appropriate context. After doing so, 'Download' executes the new javascript that gives a 'Open in Bluefire' choice.

If I get some time I'll see if the 'bookmarklet' approach can be adopted to work with the mobile Overdrive site, since that is easier to navigate on an iPod/iPhone, and it is the one that the OMC application launches.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by 3goldens

Any word on the freeze and hang people are experiencing with ipad/iphone jail broken 4.2?

We have fixed the occasional freeze when returning to an open book in 4.2 and will be submitting the update in the next few days. In the mean time, you can quit the app and re-launch to solve it.

As to the jailbroken phone issue of freezing on exit, we are still struggling with reproducing it. If anyone on this list has experienced it, can you please post a note here with model, OS, what kit you used for jailbreaking, and any details that might help us reproduce it? Alternatively you can send the details in email to info@bluefire.tv

[sachinwalia]

Any plan for supporting bookmark syncing across multiple iOS devices?

[JTravers]

The bookmarklet works great on the iPad. I had been downloading and opening the acsm via the iCab browser, but the bookmarklet makes the process even simpler. Thanks to Greg Williams for making this so easy!

http://blog.gregoryjwilliams.com/archives/39