architecture / design

[hilary jordan]

hi, i think this is a great idea, i stumbled across it simply by googling "pandora for books" so I guess there is at least one person looking for this sort of thing.

my suggestion would be to really crack down on site architecture and design...i found it really very confusing to get around. also, i was unclear on whether or not you were going to continue to use forums as a major feature on the site...i find them a little messy.

pandora original actually does a great job of making it idiot-proof, and just because readers want your service doesn't mean they won't stumble figuring out how to use it.

i think it is an awesome idea! hope to see you continue with it. also, would be curious to learn how pandora got it's databasing done, as they seem to have even the most obscure bands...it would be awesome to see similar breadth here.

thanks!

[Daniel Bowen]

Hilary,

   It's great to hear from you, and I am glad that there is at least one person looking for BookLamp.  The site will see some reconstruction once we receive some substantial funding.  For now, there are a number of other things that take up the staff's time.  With funding the staff can expand, allowing for more consideration to things like site architecture, etc.

The forums suffer a bit for the same reasons; I check the forums as often as I can, and reply to new posts if I can.

The final product will, of course, be as intuitive as possible.  As far as I can see, there are too many uses for this technology than I can list - it's a matter of time.

-Dan

[Blair Porterfield]

I agree with everything Hilary said, and I also found this site the same way.

[Daniel Bowen]

Hi Blair.  This thread is pretty out of date by now, so I'll update it some.  Our corpus of books has grown quite a bit and we are reworking our Reader's Project (Booklamp.org).  Our focus on the Reader's side is to incorporate as much objectivity as we can.  Social engines such as LibraryThing and Shelfari and GoodReads break down in any attempt to recommend books that are not popular.  We are all to aware of the fact that there are authors out there that write like your favorites, but are simply unknown (or even unpublished!)... you will not find these gems with any engine available to the reading public at the moment.  We intend to change that.

Keep in touch,
Dan