12-10-2007, 10:58 AM | #1 |
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Mobipocket/Kindle support on Feedbooks
Mobipocket support is now available as an output for public domain & creative commons books on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover
Here's a few interesting points: - TOC: there's an inline HTML TOC at the end of the book, a link to this TOC at the beginning of the book and it's also included in the guide (it should display the TOC icon on the iLiad for example) - Page break/Chapter: unlike some of the machine generated Mobipocket books that I've seen (Manybooks.net), there's page breaks at the right place, and parts/chapters/sections are displayed in a different way - Direct link to other Mobipocket files: that's actually one of the coolest things. If you're using these Mobipocket files on the Kindle or on a PDA/Smartphone, you'll notice that you can directly download a new book while reading. For example, let's say that you've just finished reading a book. At the end of the book, you'll notice recommendations. Click on one of these books and it'll be downloaded on your device. The more people register and download books on Feedbooks, the better the recommendation system works. In the end, it should provide a seamless experience for the readers: as soon as you've finished reading a book, you can directly download and read something related. What's next: - Covers: we're working on a system that'll generate covers for our Mobipocket books (should look much better on the Cybook) - We'll improve over time the template for these Mobipocket files, feel free to send us any kind of feedback - Mobipocket output will be available for amateur books too. You've just finished writing a short story or a novel ? Publish it on Feedbooks, and it'll be available for your readers in PDF/Mobipocket/epub. - RSS feeds support: we'll generate Mobipocket files with multiple RSS feeds. Should be very attractive for those of you who'd like to read blogs on their Kindle, but believe that the price is way too much for a blog. We can imagine multiple ways to sync the content: through a USB cable with a dedicated software on your desktop computer, through a webpage or a Mobipocket file that links to the RSS feeds you'd like to read, directly on your Kindle through automatic delivery using the e-mail address (0.10$*30 days = 3$ for an unlimited number of blogs). - A mobile version of Feedbooks: should be much easier to download books on your PDA/Smartphone/Kindle through this template dedicated to mobile devices. |
12-10-2007, 11:11 AM | #2 |
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That's amazing!
Exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks Hadrien Is there any way (other than uploads) we can support FeedBooks? |
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12-10-2007, 11:19 AM | #3 |
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@Hadrien: Are you going to support RSS feeds that don't have content embedded in them? That way you can undercut Amazon's newspaper service as well.
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12-10-2007, 11:31 AM | #4 | |
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The only problem that I have with extraction pattern is that they're really geeky, it's hard to make any of this easy to use for a normal user. Some partial feeds are transformed and redistributed as full content feeds by random people on the net (BBC). It's also possible to create your own extraction pattern using tools like Dapper. |
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12-10-2007, 11:36 AM | #5 |
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Yeah but since you have a website, you can always offer a few pre-configured feeds. SO the people using them wont know about all the geekiness powering them :-)
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12-10-2007, 11:45 AM | #6 | |
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The person who republish the BBC feeds as full content feeds just parse them locally, and publish them through Feedburner. With your application Kovid, you already have a way to parse the content. Maybe you could also republish these feeds, and make them available for everyone, through Feedbooks or on their desktop RSS reader. |
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12-10-2007, 12:23 PM | #7 |
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Interesting what is the difficulty with caching? Presumably the algorithm would be something along the lines of user requests feed. Fetch feed.xml, see if copy is older than TTL if not return previously generated ebook, if yes re-generate. You should probably not use wget for fetching, as that must impose a lot of extra process overhead on the server.
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12-10-2007, 12:30 PM | #8 | |
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And you can hardly cache the generated files themselves in this situation: most people create customized newspapers with multiple feeds in them. Once we have the feeds and the images in cache, generating a file out of it is pretty easy and fast (yes, unlike a software, people expect a website to be fast, 10-20s top). |
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12-10-2007, 12:42 PM | #9 |
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Hmm, I see. Custom newspapers are what is causing the difficulty. But continuously updating thousands of feeds (presumably most of them at half hour intervals) is going to mean a lot of bandwidth/cpu time.
Perhaps a better idea is to offer this functionality in an app? |
12-10-2007, 12:50 PM | #10 |
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The bandwidth is not much of a problem. And to create something that'll send you newspapers on the Kindle, or through our dedicated application on the iLiad you need a service, not a software.
Basically we'll keep tweaking the system and add more CPU and it should work. |
12-10-2007, 05:39 PM | #11 |
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Just add "If-Modified-Since" header to the request, and you won't have to redownload the image if it's not changed.
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12-11-2007, 04:46 PM | #12 |
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Sorry to be a bit off topic, but are there plans to add the ability to download all the books under a list?
Sorry if this is not possible/very hard, I have no idea of the work involved but I love the site. |
12-11-2007, 05:06 PM | #13 | ||
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Not sure that this would work as a direct download on a Kindle though. Which list are you trying to download ? Quote:
Uploads are nice since we need to keep on extending our selection and we don't strictly use txt/html files, we have to divide the books in parts/chapters/sections. Simply downloading and redirecting new users to Feedbooks also help. If you're logged in, it helps the recommendation system to get better. Yep, it's not much, but simply signing up and downloading books helps. Making comments on our books, to help future users would help too. And if you find a bug, see something wrong or that could be designed in a different way, feedback can also be very helpful. |
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12-11-2007, 05:45 PM | #14 | |
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Great site, makes the reader a money saving device instantly. |
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12-12-2007, 02:34 AM | #15 |
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Good though "Feedbooks" is, I think you'll find that my hand-formatted "Complete Sherlock Holmes" (available in both Sony and Mobi formats) is nicer. Available from the "Book Uploads" forum here.
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