New Features on Inkmesh: Result Filtering by Device & More Subjects

[anurag]

Hey all,

We've just added a couple of new features to Inkmesh:

1. You can now filter search results by a device using the options on the left nav on result pages. Clicking on a device/platform link will display only results with formats that can be read on that device (or platform) without conversion. Where the filter link is an OS, we build the compatible format list based on free reading software available for that platform. For example, for the Mac, the compatible format list is derived (in part) from the formats that can be read by Calibre.

2. You can now browse through over a thousand subjects using the 'More Subjects' link on the homepage. Try it now

We also worked with Steve this weekend to add his ebooks to our index. You can see them here: http://www.inkmesh.com/search/?qs=st...nE=Find+Ebooks. More sites are on the way of course.

Let us know what you think of these new features - are they useful? Could they have been implemented differently? What can we improve?

Thank you!

[igorsk]

Thumbnails of Steve's books (and some others from BoB) are looking rather poor.
(It seems that you're linking to a small thumbnail but force the size to be bigger.) However, when I go to the actual book's page, I can see a pretty nice and big cover. Is that because of the feed you have to use or maybe cover image discovery can be improved?

[anurag]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Thumbnails of Steve's books (and some others from BoB) are looking rather poor.
(It seems that you're linking to a small thumbnail but force the size to be bigger.) However, when I go to the actual book's page, I can see a pretty nice and big cover. Is that because of the feed you have to use or maybe cover image discovery can be improved?

Igor, that's actually a problem at our end, Steve's feed is fine. This should be fixed by tomorrow.

[Hellmark]

One thing I just noticed, is that you cannot have a list of all books. I was kinda interested in seeing a list of all free books for my Sony, but, couldn't do that.

[khalleron]

Hellmark,

"Find all", even "Find all free", would be too great a load, considering that Google offers over a million free books in ePub, not even considering all the other retailers and free sites out there.

When the availability is that large, "Search" is really the only viable option. Can't believe you'd want to read a list a million items long anyway.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Hellmark,

"Find all", even "Find all free", would be too great a load, considering that Google offers over a million free books in ePub, not even considering all the other retailers and free sites out there.

When the availability is that large, "Search" is really the only viable option. Can't believe you'd want to read a list a million items long anyway.

I often use filters other than a word search. Things like date released, format, price, etc.

[anurag]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

I often use filters other than a word search. Things like date released, format, price, etc.

Hellmark, I think I agree - it can be helpful to pull up books without a search term if you can sort them by fields like price and publication date. For now, subject based exploration is the only browsing mechanism we have that doesn't require search, but we're going to add more, and keep your suggestion in mind. As Kate said, some browsing options can be more computationally expensive than others, so we'll have to spend some time on coming up with the most appropriate solution. Stay tuned.