BookMooch Blog

My thanks to those of you who typed books into http://BookMooch.com and told me about bugs and ways to improve it.

I think BookMooch is getting close to useable by the general population, probably in another week. The translation probably broke some things, so email me if anything looks odd.

By all means, if you have friends who you think could use BookMooch, tell them about it.

Here are the bigger things since the initial announcement:
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- translated into 5 languages : the BookMooch web site is now completely available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese. Most of the translations are not-so-good, as they’re created automatically by Google. But, you can correct the translation yourself by clicking on the [correct the translation] link that is on the bottom of every page. Your corrections take effect immediately, so if you can speak a non-English language I support, it’d be a help if you could fix things as you see mistakes.

- what friends say about you is now displayed on your friends page, and the friends page is prettier. Also, you can now add someone as a friend from their inventory page and a few other places.

- postal cost assistance is now available when sending from the USA, the UK and from France (when sending out of France), via a link in your pending list and in your email notice. If you know of web sites for other countries (or France domestic) that help calculate postage, let me know.

- there’s an interview of me now in the /about/ section covering the basics of why I created BookMooch, as well as a legal terms & conditions in /about/

And some smaller changes:
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- name & email lookups: where ever you’re asked to enter a member name (ie, to email them, to add them as a friend, or to view their inventory) you can now enter their display name, their user name, or their email address. In cases where there are several matches (i.e., more than one “John Smith”) you’re asked to choose the one you mean.

- remind the receiver: many people weren’t aware that you need to acknowledge receiving a book so the system can mark it as no longer pending. That’s clearer now, but there’s also a “remind” button on the sender’s pending page. Also, after two weeks, if the receiver still hasn’t confirmed receipt after sending a reminder, the sender can force acknowledgment of the receipt and get their points for sending the book.

- recommendations: you can now recommend a topic and a specific member’s inventory to someone, via the “recommend” buttons

- audio books can be part of BookMooch now, as long as they’re listed in Amazon

- once you log in, you stay logged in, even if you go back to the home page and the non-member section

- books for a topic, and search results now include a two-line book description, and a full description is shown if you hover your mouse over it

- A book’s “editor” is grabbed from amazon when there is no author (ie, for a collection of short stories)

- and lots more nit-picky improvements and bug fixes I won’t mention.

Thanks to Cesar Luongo, Paul Beier, Stephane Barbery and Gisela Strauss for their help in the translations.

-john