Introducing Inkmesh - Page 2

BearMountainBooks · 09-24-2009, 12:57 PM

This seems very cool. I'll need to spend more time looking around the tool and features--but what a great start.

Hellmark · 09-24-2009, 01:05 PM

If something does have a rebate, you should note that, incase someone isn't able to get the rebate due to where they live or some other disqualification. Most places I've seen that show a rebate, they'll state the rebated price in a different color, and the normal price in parentheses.

Filtering based on format would be great, and wouldn't be difficult to do since you already have the info.

93terp · 09-24-2009, 01:08 PM

I love it! It's clean and it's very simple to use. Unlike other sites the pages aren't chockerblocked with visual distractions! And search results are returned very quickly.

My only suggestion would be more/better synopses of books, especially the classics. I'm not so much interested in biographical info for the author as I am reading a short summary of the book to see if it's something that interests me enough to read!

ekaser · 09-24-2009, 01:21 PM

A couple of suggestions:

1) Add an input field for submitting a "site recommendation", ie, for telling you about a site that carries e-books that you're not currently including. For example, a search for "Daniel Keys Moran", a well-known SF author from the early 1990s, finds no results, yet all of his works are available for free (legally) from http://immunitysec.com/resources-dkm.shtml. I imagine there are many sites like this for various authors and e-books, and your customers can be an excellent source for finding them. Obviously, you wouldn't want to add any sites without checking them out first (to avoid pirate sites, porn sites, etc, from being added).

2) Figure out some way to filter out books that are included simply because an author gave the book a "cover blurb". For example, search for "Lois McMaster Bujold" and it comes up with 898 entries. Unfortunately, she's not THAT prolific.

MANY of the books listed are by different authors entirely, and I assume they're included because a cover-blurb by Lois was included on the books. Some folks might want to search for those kinds of cover-blurbed books, but most folks won't, I imagine.

3) Include some way to group all 'editions' of the same book together. Again, looking at the Bujold listing as an example, each book is listed MANY times, and I (as a user) would like ONE link for ALL editions of a single book. What seems a little strange with the current display: there are multiple entries listed for "Sharing Knife, Volume Three, The", most of which are in the $17 to $22 range, but one was listed as $9.99 and had 2 sites. So I clicked on that one, and (as expected) the $9.99 site was Amazon, but then the other site was BooksOnBoard for $19.45. Why would BooksOnBoard be grouped with Amazon, at two wildly different prices, while others are grouped in other... er... groups? I think I know: because the 'wording' of the title is different on different sites. Some include the 'series' title only with "Volume 3", while others include the volume title of "Passage", etc. Difficult nut to crack, but hey, that's your job!

But a great start! Many wishes for expanded success!!!

BenG · 09-24-2009, 01:42 PM

Thank you. I've already found a book for my kindle that somehow I overlooked at Amazon yesterday.

Shadowplay · 09-24-2009, 01:48 PM

I love it and particularly the very simple, clean interface. There are some obvious features that should be added, but you are already either working on them or have them posted in this thread.

Keep at it! I will definitely use this from now on. Thank you for all the work put into this!

ahi · 09-24-2009, 01:52 PM

Do you plan to take suggestions for additional eBook repository websites from members?

What about support for different languages?

Lastly, perhaps a rating system for books? That way books that have dozens of additions could (hopefully) have the better quality ones rise to the top of search results through user feedback.

Looks great so far though!

- Ahi

CleverClothe · 09-24-2009, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anurag

Re: Fictionwise - we display the rebate prices for them (which is why the cost is zero) Should we display regular prices instead?

My vote would be to show the price before rebates if you can (or the list price if not), and then have a special note that rebates exist.

I say this because most rebates are store credit of some type, so 100% rebate isn't exactly the same thing as "Free" since you are still committed to spend the money at the store.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhadin

The rebate price is only good if one is a member of Fictionwise. I bought a few books from Fictionwise before becoming a member and I suspect I'm not the only one. In addition, one can buy in a manner that doesn't get one the rebate so the rebate price would be meaningless.

ALL customers can get rebates at Fictionwise. Most rebates are not restricted in any way. Some are limited to CC or Paypal purchaces. And a very few sales are for club members only.

Club membership really only gets you the 15% off, large transaction rebates and free book coupons.

Seventh Son · 09-24-2009, 02:04 PM

Can you post a complete list of sites it searches?

anurag · 09-24-2009, 02:15 PM

mtravellerh: We already include FeedBooks public domain in our results, if that's what you meant. We will be adding user books from FeedBooks shortly. Hadrien was quite helpful when we checked with him for their data.

rhadin and HellMark: Yes - format filtering is needed. Ditto for price based sorting. We're considering all the ways to add that, including a fancy price slider. Re: FictionWise, we will start displaying at least the regular price, and figure out the best way to display the club price also. Re: B&N, we just started getting their feed yesterday, but it doesn't distinguish ebooks from physical books

We'll figure that one out soon. Thank you both!

BearMountainBooks: Thanks - please do let us know what you think when you are able to spend more time on the site.

93terp - yes, from the start we wanted our UI to be simple - we're tired of dysfunctional, heavy UIs ourselves. Thank you for your kind words, we will figure out how to make book summaries more accurate.

ekaser - the input field would be helpful, though we are hoping people will email us new sites till we add it. We also have a list of over a hundred sites that we want to add

We are also thinking through ways to discover sites like Moran's automatically through focused web crawling. Re(2) - bmd and I debated this a month ago (and he won). Including cover blurbs in search results does show books that might not be exactly what users are looking for, but it often helps people who don't know the exact title and/or author. For example, the query for CNN returns books for both the TV network as well as books on Cellular Neural Networks, only because we include the blurb in our index. But we always give the blurb less importance in our results so results with terms in just the blurb always show up lower in the rankings. Re(3) - yes, that's something we want to improve. It is non-trivial, but we'll figure it out :-) Thank you!

BenG - glad to help!

Shadowplay - we appreciate your kind words. We're going to keep working hard to improve Inkmesh every day.

ahi - yes, we *want* suggestions for new ebook sources! Language support would be useful too - we'll look into it. As for ratings on the site itself - that's a good idea - we will add that in when we add user registration, because ebook ratings are one of the best indicators for us to return better results. Thank you!

CleverClothe: thanks for the feedback, we agree - we will start displaying the regular price right away, and figure out a good way to display the rebate price along with it.

Seventh Son: the complete list of the sites we search is posted here: http://inkmesh.com/about. It is updated automatically whenever we add a new site.

Hellmark · 09-24-2009, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anurag

rhadin and HellMark: Yes - format filtering is needed. Ditto for price based sorting. We're considering all the ways to add that, including a fancy price slider. Re: FictionWise, we will start displaying at least the regular price, and figure out the best way to display the club price also. Re: B&N, we just started getting their feed yesterday, but it doesn't distinguish ebooks from physical books

We'll figure that one out soon. Thank you both!

Lowercase "m" in my name, please.

At least you have the ability now to look at the basic price ranges, which is good. Like for me, $5 is about the most I'll pay, so I just look at the Below $5 link. Better than nothing

ahi · 09-24-2009, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anurag

ahi - yes, we *want* suggestions for new ebook sources! Language support would be useful too - we'll look into it. As for ratings on the site itself - that's a good idea - we will add that in when we add user registration, because ebook ratings are one of the best indicators for us to return better results. Thank you!

Sounds good. ;-)

If you are prepared to add not just English books, the Hungarian Electronic Library has over 7000 books in multiple formats... including nearly 500 English ones, nearly 50 French ones, over 200 German ones, over 20 Italian ones, dozens of (possibly as many as a 100) Latin ones, and a smattering of other language ones as well.

- Ahi

Timoleon · 09-24-2009, 02:32 PM

I found myself under "House of The Dead." I'm famous!!

Great resource...

Seventh Son · 09-24-2009, 02:41 PM

Adding some basic commands (like filetype:lrf) in some distant future would be nice.
But all in all it looks very promising so far. Keep up the good work.

BearMountainBooks · 09-24-2009, 02:45 PM

Personally, I loved it. Please let us know when you're ready for more people to talk about it--I blog quite a bit and this is the sort of thing I put in blog posts so when you're in Beta (assuming Alpha now) or are ready for more eyeballs/exposure let us know. (Yes, I was going to madly post about it, but figured that it might be more polite to ask first.)

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09-24-2009, 12:57 PM	#16
BearMountainBooks Maria Schneider Posts: 3,746 Karma: 26439330 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Near Austin, Texas Device: 3g Kindle Keyboard	This seems very cool. I'll need to spend more time looking around the tool and features--but what a great start.

09-24-2009, 01:05 PM	#17
Hellmark Wizard Posts: 2,549 Karma: 3799999 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: O'Fallon, Missouri, USA Device: Nokia N800, PRS-505, Nook STR Glowlight, Kindle 3	If something does have a rebate, you should note that, incase someone isn't able to get the rebate due to where they live or some other disqualification. Most places I've seen that show a rebate, they'll state the rebated price in a different color, and the normal price in parentheses. Filtering based on format would be great, and wouldn't be difficult to do since you already have the info.

09-24-2009, 01:08 PM	#18
93terp Fear The Turtle! Posts: 866 Karma: 4035032 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Margaritaville Device: KV, Kobo Forma, Kobo A1LE, KO3, K3	I love it! It's clean and it's very simple to use. Unlike other sites the pages aren't chockerblocked with visual distractions! And search results are returned very quickly. My only suggestion would be more/better synopses of books, especially the classics. I'm not so much interested in biographical info for the author as I am reading a short summary of the book to see if it's something that interests me enough to read!

09-24-2009, 01:21 PM	#19
ekaser Opinion Artiste Posts: 301 Karma: 61464 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Albany, OR Device: Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire	A couple of suggestions: 1) Add an input field for submitting a "site recommendation", ie, for telling you about a site that carries e-books that you're not currently including. For example, a search for "Daniel Keys Moran", a well-known SF author from the early 1990s, finds no results, yet all of his works are available for free (legally) from http://immunitysec.com/resources-dkm.shtml. I imagine there are many sites like this for various authors and e-books, and your customers can be an excellent source for finding them. Obviously, you wouldn't want to add any sites without checking them out first (to avoid pirate sites, porn sites, etc, from being added). 2) Figure out some way to filter out books that are included simply because an author gave the book a "cover blurb". For example, search for "Lois McMaster Bujold" and it comes up with 898 entries. Unfortunately, she's not THAT prolific. MANY of the books listed are by different authors entirely, and I assume they're included because a cover-blurb by Lois was included on the books. Some folks might want to search for those kinds of cover-blurbed books, but most folks won't, I imagine. 3) Include some way to group all 'editions' of the same book together. Again, looking at the Bujold listing as an example, each book is listed MANY times, and I (as a user) would like ONE link for ALL editions of a single book. What seems a little strange with the current display: there are multiple entries listed for "Sharing Knife, Volume Three, The", most of which are in the $17 to $22 range, but one was listed as $9.99 and had 2 sites. So I clicked on that one, and (as expected) the $9.99 site was Amazon, but then the other site was BooksOnBoard for $19.45. Why would BooksOnBoard be grouped with Amazon, at two wildly different prices, while others are grouped in other... er... groups? I think I know: because the 'wording' of the title is different on different sites. Some include the 'series' title only with "Volume 3", while others include the volume title of "Passage", etc. Difficult nut to crack, but hey, that's your job! But a great start! Many wishes for expanded success!!!

09-24-2009, 01:42 PM	#20
BenG Home Guard Posts: 4,729 Karma: 86721650 Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Alpha Ralpha Boulevard Device: Kindle Oasis 3G, iPhone 6	Thank you. I've already found a book for my kindle that somehow I overlooked at Amazon yesterday.

09-24-2009, 01:48 PM	#21
Shadowplay Groupie Posts: 185 Karma: 1096228 Join Date: May 2008 Location: Colorado Device: Kindle Oasis	I love it and particularly the very simple, clean interface. There are some obvious features that should be added, but you are already either working on them or have them posted in this thread. Keep at it! I will definitely use this from now on. Thank you for all the work put into this!

09-24-2009, 01:52 PM	#22
ahi Wizard Posts: 1,790 Karma: 507333 Join Date: May 2009 Device: none	Do you plan to take suggestions for additional eBook repository websites from members? What about support for different languages? Lastly, perhaps a rating system for books? That way books that have dozens of additions could (hopefully) have the better quality ones rise to the top of search results through user feedback. Looks great so far though! - Ahi

09-24-2009, 02:04 PM	#24
Seventh Son lurker Posts: 123 Karma: 356 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: EU Device: I should probably stop	Can you post a complete list of sites it searches?

09-24-2009, 02:15 PM	#25
anurag Addict Posts: 236 Karma: 4066 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: California Device: Kindle 1 and DX, iPhone	mtravellerh: We already include FeedBooks public domain in our results, if that's what you meant. We will be adding user books from FeedBooks shortly. Hadrien was quite helpful when we checked with him for their data. rhadin and HellMark: Yes - format filtering is needed. Ditto for price based sorting. We're considering all the ways to add that, including a fancy price slider. Re: FictionWise, we will start displaying at least the regular price, and figure out the best way to display the club price also. Re: B&N, we just started getting their feed yesterday, but it doesn't distinguish ebooks from physical books We'll figure that one out soon. Thank you both! BearMountainBooks: Thanks - please do let us know what you think when you are able to spend more time on the site. 93terp - yes, from the start we wanted our UI to be simple - we're tired of dysfunctional, heavy UIs ourselves. Thank you for your kind words, we will figure out how to make book summaries more accurate. ekaser - the input field would be helpful, though we are hoping people will email us new sites till we add it. We also have a list of over a hundred sites that we want to add We are also thinking through ways to discover sites like Moran's automatically through focused web crawling. Re(2) - bmd and I debated this a month ago (and he won). Including cover blurbs in search results does show books that might not be exactly what users are looking for, but it often helps people who don't know the exact title and/or author. For example, the query for CNN returns books for both the TV network as well as books on Cellular Neural Networks, only because we include the blurb in our index. But we always give the blurb less importance in our results so results with terms in just the blurb always show up lower in the rankings. Re(3) - yes, that's something we want to improve. It is non-trivial, but we'll figure it out :-) Thank you! BenG - glad to help! Shadowplay - we appreciate your kind words. We're going to keep working hard to improve Inkmesh every day. ahi - yes, we want suggestions for new ebook sources! Language support would be useful too - we'll look into it. As for ratings on the site itself - that's a good idea - we will add that in when we add user registration, because ebook ratings are one of the best indicators for us to return better results. Thank you! CleverClothe: thanks for the feedback, we agree - we will start displaying the regular price right away, and figure out a good way to display the rebate price along with it. Seventh Son: the complete list of the sites we search is posted here: http://inkmesh.com/about. It is updated automatically whenever we add a new site.

09-24-2009, 02:32 PM	#28
Timoleon Time Enough at Last Posts: 387 Karma: 1151316 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: New England Device: iPad 3, iPhone 5, Kindle 3, Fire, Sony PRS-350	I found myself under "House of The Dead." I'm famous!! Great resource...

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09-24-2009, 02:41 PM	#29
Seventh Son lurker Posts: 123 Karma: 356 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: EU Device: I should probably stop	Adding some basic commands (like filetype:lrf) in some distant future would be nice. But all in all it looks very promising so far. Keep up the good work.

09-24-2009, 02:45 PM	#30
BearMountainBooks Maria Schneider Posts: 3,746 Karma: 26439330 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Near Austin, Texas Device: 3g Kindle Keyboard	Personally, I loved it. Please let us know when you're ready for more people to talk about it--I blog quite a bit and this is the sort of thing I put in blog posts so when you're in Beta (assuming Alpha now) or are ready for more eyeballs/exposure let us know. (Yes, I was going to madly post about it, but figured that it might be more polite to ask first.)