Using bookmarks for input/feedback

[mcortez]

I've been toying with the idea of using Bookmarks as a way of recording input on the Reader, then using that input to do something meaningful the next time I hook the Reader back up to my computer.

Here's an example scenario, that I've got partially implemented now:
1. Theres a website of short stories that I read from occasionally. Nearly all the writers are amateur writers. There writing skills very widely.

2. I've written a program that goes to the website and pulls one or more random stories, writes them out as HTML. During this process I add a set of extra pages to the end of the book.

* A Ratings ToC/Link page that links to 3 other pages.
* Each of the linked to pages basically contains only a single title, of either "Rating: Good", "Rating: Average", "Rating: Terrible"

3. The program notes on my desktop which stories I've downloaded, as well as who the author was.

4. The program then spawns HTML2LRF converting the book and copying it to the reader.


5. The program opens the media.xml file on the reader, adds a book (xs1:text) entry, and updates a Collection I have on the reader for stories from this site.

6. I use the reader as usual, however whenever I finish reading one of the short stories, I'll be on the "Ratings" link page. I follow the link to the page which represents the rating I want to give the story. I bookmark that page.

7. The next time I sync up my reader, my program reads back in the media.xml file, looks to see if I've bookmarked any of the ratings pages. If I have, it notes the rating. If I've marked a story as terrible, it does not download stories from that author again. If I've marked a story as Good, then it makes a note to download more stories from that author.


This is just one scenario that could make use of additional "bookmark input pages."

Would anyone else be interested in some kind of generic utility that facilitates this type of input on the Reader?

[kovidgoyal]

Interesting idea

[astrodad]

Interesting idea. Seems a little complex though. I think it would be easier just to have some computer-side interface that will let you do the same thing. Is there any real advantage to having the ability do to this on the device?

[mcortez]

Automation. Time.

I want to spend as little time each morning loading new content on to my reader. I want to be able to plug it in, and have new content downloaded for me. Blogs and news websites are easy enough to handle -- I can use RSS feeds. For the short stories I like to read, many are brought down either from archives of one sort or another (usually either NNTP/news archives or collections web sites.) By being able to rate the stories on my reader, my sync software can make descisions for me without having to prompt me on my computer -- which means I can "plug it in, and go about getting ready for work" and not have to sit there answering questions.

This kind of automation could also be used for things other simply "rating a book" -- it could be used for automating research. For example, you could examine book marked pages, drop all "common usage" words, and isolate words to automatically go out and retrieve wikipedia articles for. It could be used to mark that your "done reading" a book, so that it can automatically be removed and replaced with the next book in a series. Or if your presented with a product catalog, where there is one product per page, you could use this to autmatically place orders for products (based on which ones you book marked) -- or at least, all book marked items could automatically be placed in a shopping cart that you review.


In the product catalog scenario, you could even have an automated program that scans your reader's book, determines the authors of books, finds other books by the same author, appends extra pages to the end of your books with little one page overviews of the authors other works. Then if you book mark those books, your sync software will know to retireve/purchase those and download them.

It's all about being able to do quick input, into the reader, when/where you happen to be thinking about something that needs to be noted. Then having another piece of automated software take that input and do something with it.

I don't know about you, but there are so many things that go on in my average day, that I almost always forget about little things here and there. That's the whole reason why the reader gives you the ability to bookmark in the first place. If we could always remember the details (what page we saw things) then we wouldn't need that feature. I just want to take it a step farther, and use that bookmark feature to note other things for me that I may either forget about later, or for which I have time to deal with *now* and I happen to conveniantly have my reader with me.

Bah... that got much longer then I intended...

[Mike's Place]

Well, I think its terribly clever. Very creative.

On that theme, I have to read tons of research papers in the area of physiology. Once I've read them I need to mark them if they are applicable to one of several open projects we are developing.

Would you be willing to share your program with me? I've been a programmer so I can cludge through most scripts and languages.

Mike

[Darqref]

One Problem with dropping an author because of a story I didn't like - I think I'd want some gradation. One comment I see fairly often on another blog is (paraphrased) "If an author is good enough they should be able to write a character I don't like". The fact that one story is un-liked isn't sure evidence that all the others will also not be to my taste. Guess I'd need a couple of bad ones before I completely gave up on an author (assuming that something about that author's stories motivated me to try them in the first place!)