Gifting Kobo eBooks?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

What url shortening service was used? If you mean the youtu.be one, that is not comparable at all...

It's a shortened URL. It counts.

Personally, I don't click shortened URLs. I'd much rather the full Youtube URL or the video embedded.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's a shortened URL. It counts.

Personally, I don't click shortened URLs. I'd much rather the full Youtube URL or the video embedded.

Here is a URL for an Amazon book:
http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-Book-ebook/dp/B00728DYRO/ref=sr_1_2_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419018274&sr=8-2&keywords=harry+potter

Now I just shortened it:
http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-Book-ebook/dp/B00728DYRO/

And some more:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00728DYRO/

And some more:
http://amazon.com/dp/B00728DYRO/

This last one is really short:
http://amzn.com/B00728DYRO


What are the differences between them all? Nothing... They are all Amazon product IDs with more or less cruft bolted on. Every single url points to Amazon's servers, and gets redirected to the exact same page.

YouTube is much the same, except there aren't as many stages of cruft...
http://youtube.com and http://youtu.be are both owned and operated by Gogle. They even explain it in the helpful guide you were already directed to...

Well, we've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for YouTube video links -- and nothing but YouTube links -- so you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video. (Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you're going to see, [...]

To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/" to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you'll see it redirects to that video.

So we go from:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PqJjcDHr81Y

to:

http://youtu.be/PqJjcDHr81Y

The critical aspect of this, as has been explained several times to you already, is that the id of the shortened link equates directly to the otherwise-obscured-in-cruft product ID of the service it is dedicated to, the person clicking on the link knows exactly what they are getting. The traditional problem with URL shorteners is that they could lead anywhere on the damn internet, but this is a dedicated URL shortener.

Dedicated URL shortener != URL shortener

I am one of the odd people who knows about the Amazon equivalent service, and thus find myself cheerfully explaining this to people every time they mistake it for a regular old run-of-the-mill URL shortener, and amusingly enough have had moderators apologize to me several times over the mistake -- so I can assure you, forum policy does not forbid these dedicated shortlinks.

It is thus left to your pedantic misplaced fervor to find issues in things no reasonable person finds issues in, to throw objections when you, you specifically, know full well that there is a difference, insisting that:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are some people (like myself) that will not click on these shortcut links.

When the reality is, you are THE. ONLY. ONE!

[cakeman]

OT rants about shorteners aside, joined the forum as there appeared to be some Official Kobo involvement by a member or three..

In trying to gift an eBook tonite I found several ~2 year old press announcements stating that you can now gift eBooks.. even found a few mentions on Kobos site itself on how easy it is to give an eBook as a gift..

.. only to then get pushed time and time again into the gift card section..

.. then when I tried to email customer service and was forced to call instead, got a lady on the phone who was, to put it mildly, not very useful..

She couldnt even grasp the concept I was describing.. never mind that in relatively recent history the company she works for actually did it..

Nor can I find anywhere on the net that mentions the discontinuance of this feature..

Boooooo Kobo..

This was a good idea.. dont know why you cancelled it.

cakes..

[eschwartz]

Well, Amazon allows you to gift ebooks.

Amazon is often remarked to have better customer service, Kobo wins instead on customizable software.

Amazon is REALLY good at anything that helps you spend more money on their website....



Kobo seems to have a track record of confusing and unintuitive storefront design and inexplicably deprecating useful features.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

This last one is really short:
http://amzn.com/B00728DYRO

And it's not allowed on MR. So there.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And it's not allowed on MR. So there.

You must have missed this part:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I am one of the odd people who knows about the Amazon equivalent service, and thus find myself cheerfully explaining this to people every time they mistake it for a regular old run-of-the-mill URL shortener, and amusingly enough have had moderators apologize to me several times over the mistake -- so I can assure you, forum policy does not forbid these dedicated shortlinks.

Also, you are arguing for the sake of arguing. If my post offends you, report it to the moderators (, and watch them laugh in your face).

This pathetic non-argument is really irritating me, nobody is getting anywhere, and there is little I can do to explain what you willfully ignore... so I will not be responding further. Get your token last word if you please, and henceforth may this thread get back on track, and die on track if that be its fate.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You must have missed this part:



Also, you are arguing for the sake of arguing. If my post offends you, report it to the moderators (, and watch them laugh in your face).

This pathetic non-argument is really irritating me, nobody is getting anywhere, and there is little I can do to explain what you willfully ignore... so I will not be responding further. Get your token last word if you please, and henceforth may this thread get back on track, and die on track if that be its fate.

And I quote...

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

We do have code in place to automatically unshorten the amzn link when clicked upon, which would technically be required to add the tag. It's not optimized yet because it would query Amazon's servers for the full URL every time a user views a post containing such a link. That would slow down user experience, which nobody wants. We might make it work in the future by adding some caching functionality.

So there you go. Don't use shortened Amazon URLs.

[murg]

Geee...I've never seen a contest between two guys arguing over who's was shorter...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murg

Geee...I've never seen a contest between two guys arguing over who's was shorter...

I'm not arguing about shortening a URL. URLs are not supposed to be shortened or hidden behind a URL translator.

[BrodieKobo]

Originally Posted by cakeman

OT rants about shorteners aside, joined the forum as there appeared to be some Official Kobo involvement by a member or three..

In trying to gift an eBook tonite I found several ~2 year old press announcements stating that you can now gift eBooks.. even found a few mentions on Kobos site itself on how easy it is to give an eBook as a gift..

.. only to then get pushed time and time again into the gift card section..

.. then when I tried to email customer service and was forced to call instead, got a lady on the phone who was, to put it mildly, not very useful..

She couldnt even grasp the concept I was describing.. never mind that in relatively recent history the company she works for actually did it..

Nor can I find anywhere on the net that mentions the discontinuance of this feature..

Boooooo Kobo..

This was a good idea.. dont know why you cancelled it.

cakes..

Hey all,

I'll make this one quick to remove any confusion. This feature was unfortunately dropped when we moved to our new site design early 2014. We're working hard to get it back online, but right not it's not possible to do so, and won't be ready for xmas. The articles referenced are from our old site where it was possible to egift an individual book.

In the meantime you can purchase egift cards (or physical too, i.e. chapters gift cards) which is our best substitute for the time being.

Hope this helps and apologies for the missing feature, but we'll get it back asap.

Happy holidays!

[itisbomb]

Originally Posted by BrodieKobo

In the meantime you can purchase egift cards (or physical too, i.e. chapters gift cards) which is our best substitute for the time being.

@BrodieKobo (or other members)

Are you saying that chapters gift cards (whose unit of value is in Canadain dollar) can be applied to a US account and used to purchase ebooks in US dollar? If so, that might come in handy.

[cakeman]

Brodie, thanks for the information, appreciate it.. Hope to see gifting return soon..

Would be nice if the phone staff could offer this info too..

thanks again,

cakes..

[BrodieKobo]

Originally Posted by itisbomb

@BrodieKobo (or other members)

Are you saying that chapters gift cards (whose unit of value is in Canadain dollar) can be applied to a US account and used to purchase ebooks in US dollar? If so, that might come in handy.

Hi itisbomb,

I want to say yes, but let me confirm for you. My hope is the credit will convert automatically from CAD to USD based on exchange, but I'll get you exact details next week.

@Cakeman - agreed, will let them know, thanks for the feedback!

[pwjone1]

OK, bit of an update on what I ended up doing.

[The URL shortening discussion is interesting, I myself do not like clicking on shortened links, but acknowledge that if you have to type them in manually, or in Twitter or some other length constrained service, that they do have a purpose -- and I see no harm when the shortened link is to a distinct (not redirected) URL, thus whatever the rules of this forum, kind of no harm-no foul on the amazon or youtube shorteners, where you do know where they are going]

Anyway, what I managed to do is buy a Kobo gift card at Fry's Electronics, and I mailed that out to my relative for the Christmas present. It was not what I would have liked to do, which is to give the books directly, and the Kobo web site is pretty confused (at least in the U.S.) as to eGiftcards, but it did get it right:

http://www.kobo.com/giftcards/wheretobuy

Which lists Fry's Electronics as the only US based retailer of Kobo Gift Cards. Fry's made me sign something saying the gift card was not returnable, also not conducive to my confidence that everything would work properly.

I was sorely tempted to give my relative a Amazon Kindle, to replace her Sony eReader, but I figured to stay within the spirit of her original decision. I sure wish Amazon and the ePub folks would bury the hatchet and make their books readable on anyone's eReader, but I doubt very much I will see that any time soon (outside of iPads and Android tablets). I would definitely buy an eReader that supported both. And if I were to buy an eReader today, it would definitely be Amazon's Kindle, there's an ecosystem around it where things "just work".

One last note, to Kobo, in case there's someone lurking from there. I would have bought my relative two $50 gift cards, if I was absolutely sure that the card would work (and that Kobo would be around in a few years, all this confusion on the web-site and lack of eGift or eGiftcard capabilities is not reassuring). But instead I went with one $50 gift card, and shifted the additional spending somewhere else. So the lack of function or capabilities or availability of gift cards is costing you revenue. FUD

[itisbomb]

Originally Posted by itisbomb

@BrodieKobo (or other members)

Are you saying that chapters gift cards (whose unit of value is in Canadain dollar) can be applied to a US account and used to purchase ebooks in US dollar? If so, that might come in handy.

Originally Posted by BrodieKobo

Hi itisbomb,

I want to say yes, but let me confirm for you. My hope is the credit will convert automatically from CAD to USD based on exchange, but I'll get you exact details next week.

@BrodieKobo

Is there any news? Thanks in advance for and looking forward to your input.