matthew's dashboard

matthew replied on April 14, 2009 13:18 to the idea "Filter Notes on Book Page" in Readernaut:

It does! Do you think you could also add them to the notes panels on the user page (http://readernaut.com/nathan/) and the user's copy (http://readernaut.com/nathan/books/09...)?

Incidentally, is there a reason why the page for a user's copy of the book shows everybody's notes? I would expect this to be where I would find just his/her thoughts on it (which there doesn't seem to be a page for).

matthew reported a problem in Readernaut on April 14, 2009 01:58:

Book Links

No matter how many times I navigate the site, the book links always seem weird to me. Links that I would expect to go to the book's profile (for example, the book title and cover on my copy's page) instead link to my copy's page. The result is that the book's page seems hidden away.

The sidebar also seems counterintuitive for two reasons:

1. The book link text ("Profile") is strange. It seems to me that if you want to link to the book's page, the title would be more descriptive. From a user's standpoint, "the book" and its profile should be synonymous. (Consider somebody wanting to "look at Grapes of Wrath on Readernaut.")


2. The "profile" link is buried in the list, despite the fact that the subject of that entire sidebar is the book. The clearest thing (in addition to linking the cover to the book's page as I said above), would be either to link the heading ("Book") to the book's page, or to remove the link from the list entirely (since linking the cover would make the link redundant anyway).

Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that anything that isn't implicitly (or explicitly) about a specific user's copy of the book (progress, notes, etc.) should be linked to the book's profile instead.

Thanks!

matthew shared an idea in Readernaut on April 14, 2009 01:24:

Filter Notes on Book Page

It would be great if we had the ability to filter notes on a book's page. For example, I've added a lot of notes to Flannery, but all but one are quotes. I imagine that, for somebody looking for opinions on the book, it would be very frustrating to have to search through pages and pages of quotes.

matthew started following the question "Is anyone else having trouble updating reading progress?" in Readernaut.

A comment on the idea "Use a different URL for Photos" in Brightkite:

Cool. BTW, bonus points if the url is different enough to be obvious to humans. – matthew, on April 13, 2009 22:10

matthew shared an idea in Readernaut on April 11, 2009 04:12:

More RSS!

I know Readernaut has a few RSS feeds, but it seems like the only page that's got a link is the activity page. It would be nice to have similar links on the other pages with feeds (books, lists).

In addition to having them more readily accessible, I'd also love for there to be more feeds! Specifically, I'm thinking of a book-specific feed. I would love to add some of my favorite books to my RSS reader and see when fellow readernauts comment on them.

matthew reported a problem in Readernaut on April 11, 2009 03:47:

No indication that progress has updated

I like the new progress bar/field, but when you click the update button, there's no indication that the request was successful. Maybe if the button turned into a spinner or something?

matthew shared an idea in Brightkite on April 10, 2009 14:31:

Use a different URL for Photos

Because you allow us to customize how our photos are posted to twitter, there's no way to programmatically identify whether something's a note or a photo. If you used a different url for photos, 3rd party twitter clients would be able to indicate that links were photos (like with twitpic). For example, http://p.bkite.com/06kS6 for photos and http://bkite.com/06kS6 for notes.

matthew marked one of Lesley's replies in Brightkite as useful. Lesley replied to the problem "iPhone version of site doesn't come up in embedded browsers".

A comment on the problem "iPhone version of site doesn't come up in embedded browsers" in Brightkite:

I noticed! Thanks! – matthew, on April 04, 2009 00:35

matthew reported a problem in Brightkite on March 28, 2009 16:47:

iPhone version of site doesn't come up in embedded browsers

When you follow a link to Brightkite in a browser that's embedded in an application (for example, an RSS reader) you get the generic mobile site instead of the iPhone version.

A comment on the problem "Paginate Search Results" in Readernaut:

Ah I see. Not a priority. Out of curiosity, are you using an open source api wrapper like pyecs? – matthew, on March 18, 2009 21:51

matthew shared an idea in Readernaut on March 18, 2009 21:05:

Borrowed Books

I don't own all of the books I read. It would be nice to be able to mark books as borrowed.

Additional borrowing-related functionality would be nice (the ability to specify when they were borrowed and from whom, and maybe even use the site to borrow them as suggested by Jason LeMoine) but the important thing IMO is the ability to indicate that you don't actually own a book on your shelf.

matthew replied on March 18, 2009 20:59 to the idea "Add a date for finished books" in Readernaut:

On the same line as this, please don't make us be too specific! Sometimes I only remember the month I read the book... or even just the year!

matthew reported a problem in Readernaut on March 18, 2009 20:54:

Paginate Search Results

When performing a search (for example this one for "something") the results are not always paginated. From tinkering around, it looks like the pagination is ditched once a certain number of results is exceeded, but I'm not totally sure... and since the interface doesn't seem to indicate the total number of results, it's kind of impossible to know how long it goes.

A comment on the idea "Un-rate Books" in Readernaut:

Perfect. Thanks! – matthew, on March 18, 2009 13:05

matthew shared an idea in Readernaut on March 17, 2009 14:30:

Un-rate Books

I think there should be a way to un-rate books. I was exploring the site and rated a book (gave it a couple of stars) but I couldn't figure out how to undo my rating. When elements of the UI aren't undoable, they discourage experimentation.

matthew reported a problem in Readernaut on March 16, 2009 21:58:

Amazon Missing Books

I'm thinking of switching from @anobii, but what do I do if I can't find a book? This one even has an ISBN: http://bit.ly/VyBLc

matthew replied on March 03, 2009 00:44 to the question "Modifying existing posts" in Brightkite:

That's cool. Can you say whether it's "on the list" or in active development?

matthew replied on March 01, 2009 22:07 to the question "Modifying existing posts" in Brightkite:

Any status updates on this? Posts from nine months ago say that it's coming "very soon".