We just got some great news: FindingDulcinea, Librarian of the Internet, is featuring BookGlutton today on their homepage as part of their daily “Site Spotlight” feature, where they recommend one interesting, new or useful Web site that they love every weekday. Read the “Site Spotlight” here: BookGlutton on FindingDulcinea.com
Cool. And for all you literary folks out here, Dulcinea was Don Quixote’s paramour, and the force behind the search that gave his life meaning.
Recent Shouts, our new homepage section, helps you hook up with other Gluttons, PDQ. You can shout a request for people to join your group, shout out a recommendation for a book from the catalog, or just shout out something wise and beneficial to your fellow readers.
It’s super easy. After logging in just click the “Add a Shout” link just above the Featured Shouts. Then type. Kinda simple, eh? Shout away, we’re listening!
Our category, Website Community, may seem a little unusual for a book site, but we’ve built BookGlutton around discussions as much as the stories themselves. We’re up against some pretty big fish – some of the other competitors have years of experience, previous nominations, and millions of members under their collective belts. We don’t have millions of dollars or users, but what we have counts. Thanks for supporting the site.
There are two elements to the Webby Awards: one decision is made by the requisite judges. The other is the Voice of the People. Stand up and be counted! Vote here.
BookGlutton Nominated for a Webby!
We’re excited to say that BookGlutton is a finalist for a Webby Award in the Community Category! There are a lot of smart, driven people who also applied (apparently 10,000 of them), so we’re honored to be considered. Here’s the community category listing.
Here are a few lines from the Webby Awards Site:
Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile Websites. The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-person judging academy whose members include Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, R/GA’s Chief Bob Greenberg, “Simpson’s” creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington, and Harvey Weinstein.
Safari Support
BookGlutton is now supporting Safari and looks excellent! Safari is available for both Macintosh OS X and Windows and outperforms both IE7 and Firefox. And it makes pages look great. The Safari rendering engine, WebKit, just got an A+ rating on the Acid3 test, something no other browser has done yet. What does that mean, to a non-techie? …That Safari is the most standards-compliant browser out there, and we officially recommend it for reading in BookGlutton.
BookGlutton.com has taken the leap into officially supporting IE7 today. We have no idea what kind of miseries this is getting us into — no, just kidding, actually we understand the ramifications of developing for the world’s most used and most abused browser. We’ve been doing it all along. Today we can officially say that it has passed our tests sufficiently for public use. There are still some minor IE-specific glitches, but all the books in the catalog are now accessible, the chat is functional, the annotations work. Most of all, the pages look good in IE – except for one clearType related bug, we’re pleased with the typography here.
Along with this comes another important update to the site. We’ve removed the control which previously prevented unsupported browsers from accessing the Unbound Reader. This means any browser, on any device, can now access it–only we can’t guarantee that everything will work. We think this is a better way to do things, and we’ve improved the site messaging to give users ample warning if their browsers aren’t up to snuff. We’ll continue to roll out official support for other browsers as time permits.
It’s always exciting to hear what people think about BookGlutton, so imagine how completely stoked we were to see the video from BookGlutton User Barb Forsberg. She put this presentation on BookGlutton together for a group of teachers and was kind enough to send us a copy to post on the blog.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvGyhDpzYUA%5DBarb gives a good overview of the site and the Reader, talks about how to address any “book glutton” cravings, and talks about how its 2.0 community features can engage reluctant readers. It’s also funny. What a great way to start out the year.
We invited our first beta testers in this week. Celebrate!
Of course, we couldn’t do this until we finished the patent work, engineered some marketing pieces, and got our email newsletter service together. Now, time to kick back and read. Right?
The BG team has been working through a number of bugs on the upload tool. Conversion from anything –> epub is a struggle, but we’ve got a pretty good product so far. It’s basically just working out all the kinks that takes some time. I’m sure the private beta folks will uncover more inconsistencies…but we’re pretty close! Now, back to ironing out the last flaws in our shared annotations. Private Beta Launch is imminent!
Where’s BG been? We haven’t posted since our Beta Launch Party…so what’s the deal? I know, I know. We’re supposed to be pushing the Private Beta live any moment. And that’s true – we’re very, very close. August brought us a few surprises, though (and what would a launch schedule be without surprises?).
Mid-August we moved to a new location. This is probably good, since I was waking up thinking about bug resolution, with the to-do list fully formed in my head before my butt hit the seat. But moving = chaos, and it’s been reflected in the schedule. There’s the planning, packing, unpacking, and, of course, setting up our bookshelves (a full, indulgent afternoon, you know). Anyway, we’re back at our desks now. Those of you eagerly awaiting your beta testing access should get it within the first two weeks of September. Now…back to work.
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