Feedbooks Kindle Download Guide

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by sfernald

I tried it and I like it! I was able to immediately find a book I wanted on your list and the download went great.

If you make future updates to the "guide" it would be cool if we could register with our kindle email and then the newly updated guide gets sent out once a month or however often you update it. I like that idea better than even having the books emailed to me as it will save a bit of money, yet the convenience is the same.

I wonder if you download the same book twice, will it erase the old one with the new version ?

In this case, I could add an "update" link in the guide itself, this way people could easily update the guide whenever they want. We would generate a new guide every day in this case.

[Hadrien]

Updated the guide and the first message in this thread:
- The guide is now updated on Feedbooks. Not generated live, but frequently, should be easy to keep it updated.
- There's a link to update the guide at the beginning of the guide.
- Added lists in the guide.

Anyone could try the update link ? See if it destroy the older version on the Kindle, or if you end up with 2 files ?
If anyone could do a few photos of the guide on their Kindle it would be fantastic:
1) Selecting the guide on the Kindle
2) Searching for a book
3) Downloading the book
4) Opening the newly downloaded book

This way I could post a nice little tutorial on our blog, and even try some mainstream websites. Places like Lifehacker for example might be interested in this kind of trick.

[zartemis]

Alas, the update link doesn't work. It attempts to download it and gets the error "Basic Web was unable to save this file because a file with the same name already exists on your Kindle. Please use the Content manager to remove the existing file and try again".

Perhaps you could add a version number to the guide name/title and have each one have a link to the next expected version? Or just a link to a landing page where the most recent guide will be listed (they would still need to be unique, but then the person checking for an update could just skip to whatever the recent one was, without having to upgrade version by version).

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by zartemis

Alas, the update link doesn't work. It attempts to download it and gets the error "Basic Web was unable to save this file because a file with the same name already exists on your Kindle. Please use the Content manager to remove the existing file and try again".

Perhaps you could add a version number to the guide name/title and have each one have a link to the next expected version? Or just a link to a landing page where the most recent guide will be listed (they would still need to be unique, but then the person checking for an update could just skip to whatever the recent one was, without having to upgrade version by version).

I'll add the date of the last update in the name. Should be enough. Too bad that the browser doesn't give the choice between replacing the old file, or keeping it.

[zartemis]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

If anyone could do a few photos of the guide on their Kindle it would be fantastic:

Not photos, but I took some screenshots using the shortcut Alt-shift-G that Igor found. They don't fully show what you need to select with the scrollbar, but should give an idea of what it looks like. Screen shots are of:

1. Home page with Kindle Download Guide listed. Note that there are two versions on the device. The new one named "Kindle Download Guide" and first one you did named "Download Guide".
2. First page of content of the Guide.
3. After selecting the line with a title of a book, it pops up a window with actions to take
4. After selecting the action corresponding to the book title, it pops up a window asking you to confirm download. The background is whatever you were looking at last using Basic Web. In my case I previously demoed a wikipedia lookup of "brain" for someone.
5. What the home screen looks like after the book is downloaded.
6. Selecting the new book opens the first page of the book
7. The error you get if you try to download a file with the same name as one on the device already

[zartemis]

Here's some of what happens when you search.

1. Pressing the search key on any screen opens the search bar.
2. The results page after a search -- it searches all books on the Kindle, looks for a dictionary entry and provides links to websearch and wikipedia searches. This page takes awhile to load if you lots of books on the device. You can shortcut to web or wiki search, but not to dictionary or a specific book. It shows there are 3 matches to 'candide' within the Kindle Download Guide
3. After selecting the Kindle Download Guide link it lists a snippet around each search hit.
4. After selecting the first search hit, you are taken to the part of the Guide that has the link to Candide.

[Hadrien]

Fantastic zartemis, that's even better than screenshots actually !
I'll do a real tutorial thanks to your help.

I'll fix the download problem tonight: I'll add the date to the name of the file, this way, it should download the new guide, although you'll have to erase the older guide.

[Hadrien]

Ok. Took care of the update problem.
As long as you don't download the guide twice in the same day it'll be fine.

The URL of the guide changed: http://www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide

Next step: Using those screenshots to add a tutorial on Feedbooks

[tsgreer]

Ok, I have to say that I wasn't a big visitor to your feedbooks page, but after trying this on my Kindle, I have to say you rock. So I will: You rock!

This worked perfect with my Kindle, and the mobi versions that I downloaded worked and looked great. Thank you.

[tsgreer]

May I ask how many books we have access too with this method? I want to start bragging and sharing the info with my friends.

This pretty much will keep me from ever having to visit Project Gutenberg again!

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by tsgreer

May I ask how many books we have access too with this method? I want to start bragging and sharing the info with my friends.

This pretty much will keep me from ever having to visit Project Gutenberg again!

About 2.000 books I believe. Feedbooks keep on growing and growing, but we don't simply mass convert books (wouldn't look any good, all of our books have a TOC and chapter headers/page breaks for example), so the growth pace also depends from our users.

[elmoglick]

Love the book listing file, and have downloaded a few books, however I need to report a couple weirdnessess.

1) Using the file dated 12/21/07, I downloaded an update from the embedded link. It successfully downloaded and created an entry in the Kindle home page with the identical title/date as the original. The only difference is the new one does not have Feedbooks.com in the Author field (it is blank).

2) Wuthering Heights does not download. It keeps claiming I already have the file on my Kindle (which I don't). Not sure to how to determine exactly what filename it's trying to use.

Thanks for any help/fixes you can provide.
Earl

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by elmoglick

Love the book listing file, and have downloaded a few books, however I need to report a couple weirdnessess.

1) Using the file dated 12/21/07, I downloaded an update from the embedded link. It successfully downloaded and created an entry in the Kindle home page with the identical title/date as the original. The only difference is the new one does not have Feedbooks.com in the Author field (it is blank).

2) Wuthering Heights does not download. It keeps claiming I already have the file on my Kindle (which I don't). Not sure to how to determine exactly what filename it's trying to use.

Thanks for any help/fixes you can provide.
Earl

1) Is normal behavior if we didn't updated the file since your last update.

2) Is obviously a bug on the Kindle side. Usually the file name is "Author - Title.mobi". Anyone had this bug too ?

Edit: Admins/Moderators, don't you think that this thread should be a sticky ?

[runciter]

Wow! This is awesome! I love it!! Great job BTW since you're making tutorials, there is a possible scenario where someone would download your guide/book list, then try to do a search, but the Kindle hasn't indexed the book yet so the search results wouldn't show up in the list (but it would identify the item(s) that weren't indexed yet). I only mentioned it cause it happened to me

[elmoglick]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

1) Is normal behavior if we didn't updated the file since your last update.

2) Is obviously a bug on the Kindle side. Usually the file name is "Author - Title.mobi". Anyone had this bug too ?

I could be wrong, but I believe the Wuthering Heights entry is attempting to give the file a null name, which results in the error. Could you take a look at the Download Guide and see if it's missing the filename?

Thanks.