iPhone App

Will we see an iPhone app for LibraryThing?

I would definitely like to see an iPhone app for this amazing tool!

iPhone and LT in the same sentence? Just the mention of it makes me drool.

It's been discussed, but with all the other actual site enhancements, I don't know where they are with it or if it's still being actively worked on.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/52201

It's something that we definitely want to do. Right now we're pretty busy with getting all of the new main site features out the door and into your hands. After that we plan on doing some things like an iPhone version. We probably won't do a real iPhone app. We'll probably do an iPhone optimized version of the web site. But we'll see.

We do have AN iPhone app ready to go (or nearly ready). But it's not an app for dealing with your catalog entries. oooo...mysteries!

We do have AN iPhone app ready to go (or nearly ready). But it's not an app for dealing with your catalog entries. oooo...mysteries!

Dammit. You could have left that out, and I would have considered my curiosity satisfied, but, no, you have to throw in that last bit and leave me guessing still.

>6

There's a reason he's called TormentDawg . . .

I figured that somebody would bring that up.

How about something like this so we could scan books without the cuecat.
http://www.redlaser.com/
Would be nice in a bookstore to be able to scan the barcode and see if I have the book or not.

We've looked into this a bit.
I've tried the various barcode scanning apps on my iphone. I rate every one of them FAIL. Sure, they get it right some of the time, but most of the time they just can't make out the information well enough to produce a good result.

The problem isn't the applications, but Apple's completely inadequate selection of hardware when it comes to the camera. iPhone cameras can't focus on close objects (macro/micro) so that makes them pretty useless for barcode scanning.

When the 3rd gen iphones come out I suspect that they will have a much better camera so we could possibly do something along these lines.

10>

http://www.geeksugar.com/2554675

That helps out the camera immensely.

The thingy in 11 is Griffin's Clarifi case.
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/clarifi

I've just bought the Collectorz.com iPhone app that will let me show the core of my library on my iTouch - no need for an iPhone, or an internet connection.

I have an iPod Touch, and would like to have my collection downloaded to an application so I can access it when there is no internet connection.

I'm also a novice iPhone programmer, and have been messing around with the SDK and the JSON API that LibraryThing provides. I've gotten my application to parse and display book information.

Now the real work begins. Here are some features I'm planning:
1. Cached catalogs - access your books offline
2. Sort catalog and display by Author, Title
3. "Do I have this" feature - type in ISBN, Author, Title will display likely matches already in your library
4. Search LibraryThing for Author, Title, ISBN
5. Add books from application

Questions for Library Thing admins:
1. Are you ok with this usage of the JSON API? I will be pulling down entire libraries through the API when the user requests a sync. Also, this isn't exactly a browser, so some of your licensing becomes interesting.
2. Can we add some way to get the JSON number through a submit of the username and password? Otherwise, people will have to input their JSON into the application instead - not as user friendly.

Questions for the rest of you:
1. Feature requests - please be specific
2. Pricing info - how much would you be willing to pay for the application? I'm all for free software, but I'd like my effort to at least pay for the Apple developer license so I can distribute it ($100 a year even if you're releasing only free applications).

I'm specifically looking for such an application? Will it provide coverflow? I want something on my Touch where I can access my Library Thing covers offline.

After the iPhone app...

Could you throw a bone to us poor T-Mobile G1 users, please? ;)

Talk to all the hardware developers and get a common development platform.
Sadly, I have a real job as well as my iPhone hobby and only have time to learn to program the device I have.

Once I get the code together, I'd be happy to throw it to developers for porting to other platforms, but I fear that it would be easier to design and build this application from scratch for the G1.

Yeah. Cover images with the cached catalog is one thing I'd really like mattfreier. Though I don't have an iPhone (just a touch) I could see being able to photograph a barcode when then searches my library would be useful to folks.

As for price, I'd pay $10 I think. the Collectorz book app for iPhone is that much.

I have an ipod touch (1g) and export my library into Excel and read it with the 'files' app or as an attachment to my email - ie I email the excel file to myself, then while connected via wifi also download the attachment then it's on the ipod for when I'm offline - I just keep it to title and author so it's easy to see when I'm in a bookshop, and keeps the file size small too.

Can you see your library thing pages at all when browsing the web from an iphone? Can you check while shopping to see if you have such and such already in your library? Or would you do something like think ou don't have the book, and unable to check LT, purchase it...

Yeah, you can see any web page on an iPhone, so you can check your catalogue etc. I'm on my iPhone right now actually.

librarything.com/m

m for mobile :)

you can also browse your regular catalog without the m interface, but there's no way to sign in.

Edit: Apparently you can sign into the website itself now.

So, there's some back story here.

According to Amazon, iPhone applications that use Amazon data are forbidden by their terms of service. They have told us we can't develop one. Meanwhile, a number of other companies have developed them, and... Amazon has done nothing about it.

You can imagine how I feel about all this, particularly as Amazon is, through Abebooks, a minority investor of LibraryThing. It's no fun to have your minority owner directly competing with you, through Shelfari, and stopping you from doing what even even companies they don't own are doing. I hope they either enforce their rules and cut off the iPhone apps., or allow us to build one.

We will be debuting an Amazon app soon, but it will not be a cataloging app. For that, we need to develop an iPhone-optimized web version

>22 With an iPhone, you can indeed sign in to the regular site, and see every page. It looks exactly the same as from a computer.

23-Tim, does you minority investor, or even someone from Abebooks interface with you about these things? Is an LT iPhone app going to be something that would cut them out of the cheese, or would it be something that could get them more cheese. I bet, at the end of the day, an LT app would drive more sales one way or another to them.

And the way you point out that others are doing it even in violation of some of their fine print. Probably makes one want to tear their hair out. It would seem to me that the iPhone platform is one that ever more apps are wanted for. Certainly Apple rather having you develope for them then an Android phone...

>25

It's not rational. I think it's bureaucratic, although the LT/Amazon relationship is fraught generally--they didn't actually buy their share, they just got it, and they run a competitor and our many ties to other booksellers can't be a selling point for us internally.

I also think the decision is poorly though-out, and will get reversed. When Amazon cracks down on this and many other uses of its data it says it will, it's going to be a huge story and, I suspect, Amazon will retreat. Amazon has always built its developer community on favorable data terms. Now, when other options are suddenly available, Amazon is moving to restrict the whole thing. It's a dumb move, and when they hit the brick wall of tech opinion, they'll retreat. Meanwhile, they'll have stunted the growth of something that benefits their bottom line, and helped its competitors.

26: Any chance you could use this as a way to get Barnes and Noble data? "Amazon won't let me do this. Do you want to have a widget instead?"

LibraryThing has a contractual right to pursue relations with any data provider or bookseller. BN, however, does not own their own data. If we give up Amazon data—a possibility—we'd probably approach Bowker, our other minority investor, or Ingram.

The Amazon link is something I do use, as their ease of being a customer is the best I have found. They have my wish lists, they ship with two day delivery for my once a year fee...

So the LT/Amazon connection works well for me. I see something I like on LT, I read a little here, I press the Amazon link and I add it to my wish list for later there.

Love it...

We wouldn't take away the Amazon link, if we took away Amazon data.

I think there are so so many people who use Amazon data only, that there would have to be a search interface to data from another major US bookseller instead.

It would have to be replaced, definitely.

Soooo....Should I put my development on hold? I'm not affiliated with LT, but obviously I'd be using your (and Amazon's) data. Since I've gotten most of the data access and display structure in place I may complete the application just for my own use, but it would be nice to allow it to see the light of day as well.

I don't know. What are you working on? Message me?

34: Tim, see msg 14.

Not having an iPhone yet, how often are you not online? Even in an iPod Touch. If you are online, you have the benefit of using LT, so what percentage would Matt's app be needed because you couldn't surf to the LT site?

36: An app built for the iphone could display data better than the website itself, as that would involve a lot less zooming. Plus he mentioned cached catalogs as a potential feature, so that it could be used offline.

36: It is especially helpful due to the size of data we are talking about here. It would take several seconds to pull up each book over the iPhone cellular network. Even on WiFi, it takes about 5 seconds in my tests to get a 20 book catalog.

Most of this is cover data - a text only application would not necessarily need to cache data, but it would be a very slow application if you want covers to be displayed.

>38.

It sounds like once they release a Lynx browser app for the iThings (a term I coined while working for Apple), LT mobile's loading time problems will be a thing of the past.

Now all we need is less reliance on JavaScript. ;)

Well, they actually went ahead with killing off mobile use:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/amazon-killing-mobile-apps-that-use-its-dat...

I feel of two minds about it. I'm relieved to be sure they weren't just going after us. But it's a bad move overall, for Amazon, for LibraryThing and for others. There's nothing special about mobile—nothing that would justify changing their mind on the basic principle that open data helps Amazon's bottom line. So I have question what's really going on? Have they lost faith in that idea, or is this just a weird aberration?

>40.

It's a conspiracy! Amazon wants to prevent you from using their data while you're browsing through Borders!

The long term outcome I see of this is that fewer app developers will use Amazon as a source. That, or more people will be getting Amazon's "express written consent."

Does that mean that librarything.com/m can't even pull data from Amazon, as it's for use on a handheld device? Or any other site that uses the Amazon API that is accessible from a handheld?

Why did Amazon have to turn the Suck up to 11?

41>

Why did Amazon have to turn the Suck up to 11?

You're about ten years late on noticing that, IMO. That ship sailed long ago when they retroactively changed their privacy policy, with no way for users to remove data collected under the previous policy from the new, less restrictive, sharing policies.

Is there a Shelfari widget?

A widget? Yes. But not a Shelfari app.

Crap. I guess that kills off my app.

Unless using your API, which then uses Amazon data would be a legal workaround....

Tim, message me if there's a chance to even get out a text-based application here.

Crap. I guess that kills off my app.

Yeah. It's amusing that we've been discussing something that is pretty big news. If only TechCrunch read LibraryThing message boards...

LT can offer:

1. API to library data
2. Covers

#1 is good and will soon be very very very good. #2 is meh.

The problem is that most LT users will have Amazon books. So they'd need to be converted somehow.

But even if Amazon says no to using their data, which of course might be reversed, you can still view the web (slowly i believe you have said) and see the information that way?

Doesn't Amazon get a great deal of its data from Ingram? If not now, didn't it use to?

If LT has a scanned image in it's library of a cover, rather than an image from Amazon would that substitute for the APP plans? Can an LT App be done with out Amazon info?

If I had my iPhone with me and wanted to access my LT data, I would want to be able to see if I had the book already. If not, check a few things like the LT info page to see what others say about the book, maybe tag it into a collection for 'While window shopping, order later'

What seems dumb about the Amazon decision, is if I was browsing in Borders and felt I could score 30% off by going to Amazon with my two day delivery. A couple clicks on my iPhone, and then the amazon link and I could order it.

Tim Retaliate. Disable that feature on all mobile sign-ins...

Doesn't Amazon get a great deal of its data from Ingram? If not now, didn't it use to?

I'm not sure if it gets any from them now. I know much of it is not, but am not sure if any is.

If LT has a scanned image in it's library of a cover, rather than an image from Amazon would that substitute for the APP plans? Can an LT App be done with out Amazon info?

Yes and no. Members would be annoyed if things didn't match.

If I had my iPhone with me and wanted to access my LT data, I would want to be able to see if I had the book already. If not, check a few things like the LT info page to see what others say about the book, maybe tag it into a collection for 'While window shopping, order later'

Well, you can use the web as much as you like. And we can make a web version that's sized for the screen better.

What seems dumb about the Amazon decision, is if I was browsing in Borders and felt I could score 30% off by going to Amazon with my two day delivery. A couple clicks on my iPhone, and then the amazon link and I could order it.

Exactly. Why do they want to stop this? It makes no sense.

Tim Retaliate. Disable that feature on all mobile sign-ins...

What feature?

The ability to click on the Amazon link... If it is a mobile device, disabling that link would be retaliation, but I was being facetious...

(I may succumb tomorrow and get an iPhone...)

If LT goes Amazon-data free, we could have an absolutely kick-ass iPhone app--and be the only one...

How would that work with people who have books from Amazon in their libraries already? Or the current webpage widgets with covers, particularly those with LTFL?

I know John Buckman with Bookmooch was budgeting some money for a Bookmooch app on iPhone.

Is there a way to tell how many books that are listed in LT are covered by only Amazon material, and how many have reviews, or user supplied descriptions? User supplied covers rather than Amazon supplied covers. What else comes from Amazon?

On the description front, much of Amazon says they get it from somewhere else, like Publishers weekly. I wonder do they pay for that in a license, or is it given away for free by the publisher as part of the publishers marketing. (Without a description are you going to buy a book just based on a title, and a cover that is so small you may not be able to see it clearly?) What content that Amazon gives out is really content that they have created.

Then I post my reviews, which I actually type first in an engine at Living Social on Facebook (When are we getting that Facebook APP?) then copy it to here, then use the Amazon button to copy and post my review there, and finally, place it into a website I maintain of all my reviews. So who owns those reviews after I have written them (I really do according to the laws of copyright, no matter what Amazon would try to say and how many lawyers they might hide behind.) But the horading of content just strikes me as anti-Jeff Bezos and Amazonian. Much more Microsoftie and early AOLite.

Is there a way to tell how many books that are listed in LT are covered by only Amazon material, and how many have reviews, or user supplied descriptions? User supplied covers rather than Amazon supplied covers. What else comes from Amazon?

You can tell piece by piece if you know where to look, but it's not aggregated for you.

On the description front, much of Amazon says they get it from somewhere else, like Publishers weekly. I wonder do they pay for that in a license, or is it given away for free by the publisher as part of the publishers marketing. (Without a description are you going to buy a book just based on a title, and a cover that is so small you may not be able to see it clearly?) What content that Amazon gives out is really content that they have created.

They get reviews from various places, but the core bibliographic data is coming from publishers, mostly. They get ONIX feeds, mostly.

Then I post my reviews, which I actually type first in an engine at Living Social on Facebook (When are we getting that Facebook APP?) then copy it to here, then use the Amazon button to copy and post my review there, and finally, place it into a website I maintain of all my reviews. So who owns those reviews after I have written them (I really do according to the laws of copyright, no matter what Amazon would try to say and how many lawyers they might hide behind.) But the horading of content just strikes me as anti-Jeff Bezos and Amazonian. Much more Microsoftie and early AOLite.

Some sites claim copyright—Amazon's LibraryThing clone does. I don't know what LS does. But Amazon and LibraryThing only claim licenses to your review. In LT's case, you can define who gets to use it. You're right that, technically, FB may also have a claim, although I don't see them entering the book review licensing business. They'd be eviscerated.

Is there a way to tell how many books that are listed in LT are covered by only Amazon material, and how many have reviews, or user supplied descriptions? User supplied covers rather than Amazon supplied covers. What else comes from Amazon?

You can tell piece by piece if you know where to look, but it's not aggregated for you.

I meant could you Tim and LT Track that like in Zeitgeist and have a way to determine when you are adequately covered with site resources for such information...

With only 300K books reviewed out of of over 4 million titles, I gather we have a long way to go to get as much info as Amazon has.

Tim,

Would Google Gears support also be in violation of this TOS? Gears has a use on non-handheld devices (I used it on my desktop to keep up with my writing until I got plugged back into the 'net), and it can be used on a laptop (like, reading Google Reader on a train on your way to work). Granted, "Gears is available for Windows, Windows Mobile (IE Mobile, Opera Mobile), Mac (Firefox, Safari), Linux and Android." The fact that it's for IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, and Android would probably hurt the team... (and then there's coughGearsMonkeycough)

I suppose the next best thing would be to have the system "know" what was "Amazon Product Advertising Content," and just not do anything that'll use it. But that seems like a bit of overhead just so you don't accidentally send mobile customers to Amazon, or whatever their convoluted reasoning is (keep an eye out for an official Amazon iPhone App!).

If it was between no mobile application or no Amazon images/etc., though, I'd take the latter.

Of course, if I had a handheld LT app, I'd only be using it for CK and catalogue-related edits (if I'm at a remote location while reading a book, and I'd like to add a CK item, this would be IDEAL), and not so much remote adding of books. I do that at the mothership. But, I'm not everybody. Some people might want to catalogue a book while leaving the checkout counter at the store ("No bag, thanks, It'll just add another step to the cataloguing process!")

And just to top off the morning with a stupid question: Did you try to get express prior written approval?

Gears

We've thought about it. There are also some nasty provisions about caching that might come into play, though. Can you run gears on a mobile device?

As far as knowing and not knowing, it could sub in and out content as necessary. Most Amazon content could be subbed. But there would be subtle differences. I think people would be weirded out by it.

Did you try to get express prior written approval?

No explicitly. But they won't grant it.

According to the Gears site, it currently works on IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, and Android.

But personally, I'd love to be able to use LT on my Palm when AFK. I'd definitely tolerate any weird-out factors.

Is it a Palm PRE?

I'm actually in doubt about whether we can make a PRE application. The rule Amazon communicated to me—still not "out there" on TechCrunch and etc.—was that it can't be a compiled mobile application. But I gather PRE applications are HTML and JS underneath, so maybe that's okay?

Did they mean that you couldn't compile in Amazon's data? I can understand them not wanting their data actually compiled into an application.

However, querying their data using code that is compiled into an application is different maybe?

>58.

HP iPAC with CE. Probably shouldn't have called it a "Palm." Sorry, I slipped into making it a generic term for "palmtop computer."

I think I've figured it out—see my Tweet: http://twitter.com/librarythingtim/status/2541547281

What's so dispiriting here is that Amazon grew with the grain of the internet—making their data free so that others would create value for them. They drew on the power of the crowd to create things they never could have done themselves. Now someone short-sighted must be looking at the situation and saying "Hey, we could get that value and don't need the middlemen!" This makes short-term sense, but it ignores how Amazon grew, and the power of these dynamics in other hands. The web is stronger than proprietary software or proprietary data.

Anyway, what I really fear is that, if Amazon is willing to favor Snaptell over all other mobile developers, including LibraryThing, what's the say they won't favor Shelfari over LibraryThing in the same way?

Hey Tim...Pre owner here who would love to see an LT app or at least a more comprehensive mobile page. I can access the full web page with no problem, but have to do a lot of pinching and zooming.

How does Snaptell make money? If you take a picture of a thing, and send it to Snaptell and they tell you all about it, they have expenses. They only make a buck I would think if you go that last little bit and purchase.

So how is that different then LT who is adding way more useful content about books then Snaptell will be able to. Maybe it is about talking to the right guy at Amazon and getting noticed... Amazon is a big place. Any ideas how many LTers actually work there?

Delicious Library just got slammed by Amazon for their iPhone application (article link).

"Amazon gave D-M an ultimatum: pull the iPhone app, or lose the API access for the desktop version of Library. Despite Shipley's requests for a mobile device exception, the big A did not relent."

Yeah, see message 40 too.

Just downloaded the Redlaser app for iPhone, which is currently #2 in the US app store.

Seems like building librarything integration wouldn't be too difficult, since they offer a super-easy do-it-yourself link-builder to use their interface to search other sites:

http://occipital.com/blog/2009/10/01/create-redlaser-custom-app-in-60-seconds/

and also cos they have an SDK with tools to build custom apps with their technology....

http://www.redlaser.com/SDK.aspx

Sounds like more fun than my cuecat. Any chance that someone at Librarything would take redlaser integration on as a project?

M

I'll never rule it out but we're not developing a standalone cataloging iPhone app right now. Mostly due to restrictions regarding Amazon data.

That could all change tomorrow though. Or the next day. Or the next.....

Or in "two weeks"?

heh ...

 

My big desideratum is the description stuff about stores. Can we just dump some text above the image? (The image should be a little less gigantic, but whatever.) I think the info is useful.

What would an iPhone or Android app do? Anyone else want to help work on it?

We don't have any problem working on an app. We'd love to. In fact we have a LibraryThing Local iPhone app ready to go and we are ready to work on one for cataloging.

The problem lies in the fact that any app that uses LT data is also using Amazon data and Amazon will kill the app, with prejudice.

So until we can free our data (we're working on it) any mobile apps will have to wait. Unless you like lawyers, in which case you may proceed. :)

I can see how a barcode scanner on my Android phone would make cataloguing easy. In the book store, the bar code would trigger reviews of the book that's scanned. Because gps tells my Android in which book store I am, it can produce pricing and other store specific data. Or it can take me to an Amazon page where I can order the book with one click. Amazon could make me a special offer, depending on the store I'm in. LT would notify me that two other LT members are currently in the store.

...and that one of the two was young, of your preferred sexual preference and with an agreeabole BMI.

>73.

There's an app for that?

Actually, I'm surprised that no dating sites have done that yet. "Get our iPhone/Android/Blackberry app, and get notified of matches within a specified distance of your current location!"

Time to visit the USPTO...

In the book store, the bar code would trigger reviews of the book that's scanned. Because gps tells my Android in which book store I am, it can produce pricing and other store specific data. Or it can take me to an Amazon page where I can order the book with one click. Amazon could make me a special offer, depending on the store I'm in.

Honestly, I find this so offensive. Being in a store doesn't require you to buy from it, but there's some minimal level of decorum, and some promise of fair play, like not using someone's expensive physical store as a browsing place for online purchases! You might as well browse Match.com during a date.

>75.

To add insult to injury: using the store's free wi-fi to do it.

That's like checking Match.com at your date's HOUSE, after being invited in for coffee.

About the only mutual benefit I could see is by using some price comparison engine to find the lowest book price in a store near you, and then convincing the bookseller that you'll get all your books there if they promise to match local prices. But then, you'd have to convince the bookseller that you were not just some crazy nut waving an iPhone at them.

It's like browsing Match.com during sex!!!

Okay, it's not that bad. :)

The best way to convince a bookseller of your sincerity is to be a regular customer.

I would love an app that scans barcodes to access book reviews and tags on LT. I am going to buy books while in a bookstore, I just need to pick which ones! I already use my iphone to do this (just accessing the normal site), but a faster way would be lovely.

77. Haven't you ever done that?

Robert

"Honestly, I find this so offensive."

There's an option in your phone to turn gps off. Also, most apps have an option to disable gps in that particular app, exactly for the reasons you mention.

72 - 77 > And then the local bookstore's AI could interface and there could be a virtual bidding war.

And, whenever the bookstore loses they charge for wireless.

And air.

They would charge for wireless unless you scan enough books and occasionally buy one at their store. They charge double soon as you press the "Buy now at Amazon" button. So in the end, there's a business model for everyone.

Seriously, Tim, you should talk to Amazon about an Android app and an iPhone app.

There's no question Amazon is not going to let us build it. We're going to have to use another data source if we want to do it.

hm..

As it's been a year, has anything changed regarding making an iPhone app?

Thanks.

Nothing's changed with Amazon's terms that I know of... Otherwise, Tim would be bouncing off the wall with a "LT has an iPhone app!".

I believe there's been some discussion about changing the mobile interface or providing an alternate mobile interface.

Have you seen the existing page? http://www.librarything.com/m/

I'm late to this discussion ( came here by googling librarything app) - I checked out the mobile site - pretty bare but if I could download a text list of my catalog, that would be enough. I Homeschool seven children who love to read and thought I'd try cuecat before investing in a few thousand RFID tags :). This year I bought double of many books on my list and mostly I'd like an easy way to have an updated list on me (in time for Homeschool convention in April!)... Any chance of that? I'm really enjoying the site :)

Yes, you can export your catalog in comma-separated or tab-delimited versions (the TD has a lot more info), then manipulate it however you like in Excel (or Calc, or other spreadsheet program). It's under the More tab, then Import/Export.

I'm not sure if this would work or not. But in Ontario amazon's main competition is indigo/chapters the main difference is that indigo has actual stores as well as an online store. So they might be more open to an app you could use in store. I'm not sure where they get their data from, since they compete with amazon I would hope they have their own source.
Typically they have the same titles as amazon every once and a while they miss one but it is typically obscure.

It'd be nice to get this sorted out, I find standing in store and trying to go through the current website extremely time consuming.

Just got an iPhone so I read this discussion with great interest, since it's not easy to use the site itself on the phone. The mobile app is a great help though, since it will make it less likely that I'll buy a book I already own. But, oh, how I hope the Amazon problem will get worked out . . .

Is there any way to distinguish between data that has come from Amazon and thus can't be shown in a mobile app, and other data?

That is, would it be possible to create a (simple) catalogue app that simply doesn't display Amazon-provenant data?

Is it, for example, the case that even if Amazon's cover images were to be excluded, and the "add book" feature on the mobile were not to use Amazon as a source, that the simple fact that a book entry of mine may have the title or subtitle originate from Amazon (based on my original ISBN query) would come under Amazon's TOS?

I believe it's the Amazon cover images (avoidable by leaving off cover images) + having Amazon as a data source on the website. So if Tim turned off Amazon as a source on Add Books, he could distribute an iPhone app.

Which was one of the aims of creating the Overcat source. It's very handy, and much better data, usually, than Amazon - but it does fail on new and not-yet-released books ('fail' meaning you can't find the book there but you can on Amazon). If Overcat could be expanded to include LT manual entries as a source, only the first person would have to enter a new book...that would solve most of the problems. And I doubt the hinky data would be much of a problem in manual entries. But for now, Amazon is still firmly entrenched.

If Overcat could be expanded to include LT manual entries as a source, only the first person would have to enter a new book...that would solve most of the problems.

And any books that use Amazon as a source right now, would need to be switched to use Overcat or something else, or they wouldn't appear in the app, right?

Eh. Amazon covers, yes, but I for one have a lot of books that say Amazon as source but I've changed just about every bit of data from them. That's part of what makes it complicated. As of right now, there's no way to change what's listed as the source for a book - except to delete and re-enter it, and that's not gonna happen. Tim has suggested that it will be editable/alterable at some point, though.

#98, I also have a lot of heavily edited Amazon entries, partly because Amazon was the only source for some new books (see #96) and partly because I didn't know any better when I first joined LT. But I am reluctant to delete and reenter them because seeing when I entered a book is meaningful for me and I don't want to change the entry date. If there could be some way of changing the source without changing the entry date or my edited data, I would definitely go back through my collection (slowly!) and change all the Amazon-sourced books.

Could you make a server-side script to walk through all "amazon" entries and compare whether some other source would offer compatible data? Then switch from amazon to this other would not be visible to users?

Of course this would not work with all entries, but at least it would be a step to "right" direction...

Sounds like I can stop waiting for the "real" LibraryThing iPhone application. Shame on Amazon, but guess there's nothing to do about that...

Question: what if someone would export their data from LibraryThing as a file, sync via iTunes to iPhone and load with some custom application designed to display such an export... Would Amazon still come hunt down that application? No idea what's inside such an export, got to check.

Basically I just want an easy access to list of MY books. Don't really care about cover images, reviews, author links, ISBN and all that other mysterious data I can see on website. Author, title and tags might be just enough. Or at least a good start.

101: I think some type of export would work, as long as the viewer app wasn't created by LibraryThing.

101> That's what I do - export in TD, clean up and convert to CSV in Excel or Calc (depending on which computer I'm using), then display it on my Android phone (and before that on my Palm PDA) in HanDBase. Wonderful database app - if you ever want to have or make databases of - stuff, just about anything you can think of, HDB does it. And yes, they have an iPhone version; and all their versions sync to a desktop app as well.

102> Checked my own export, CSV file 270kb and XLS file 569kb. Didn't look differencies, but seems like even CSV would contain way more than enough details to make a simple list application with search feature.

103> Good idea, but would really prefer a custom app. Too lazy to do data conversion :)

Anybody know, whether LT has web services API to export data? Something with JSON... Or would Amazon object to that? 3rd party mobile app having any connection to any part of LT data? Difficult...

Anybody know anything about import e.g. if someone would modify old exported data with e.g. change tags or reviews, do modifications on real website and THEN try to import that modified old export what would happen (was that confusing enough :))

Just thinking...

104> LT has various APIs:

http://www.librarything.com/services/

But honestly, they don't get a lot of love. Any feature that's been added since they were created (and that's been a while) is generally left out in the cold. And there's bugs that have been around forever that probably won't ever get fixed. It's just not something that's a priority for their limited resources (understandably).

I believe there's a merge option on input that's supposed to incorporate changes you've made to the data, but I have no idea if it works.

105> Thanx, didn't know about those! Got to check properly some day, but first comments...

Main problems are max 1000 calls a day per developer key and max 1 call a second. This kills every plan to use APIs in mobile client - used even by a single person, not to mention what would happen if it was released publicly. Key would be blocked immediately and client would stop working. Developer key owner would be banned for life from LT, if (s)he was lucky.

Let's say I have 100 books, so with those APIs it would take minimum 100 seconds to fetch a list of all my books. 1 minute 40 seconds is pretty bad user experience, as a best case :) And if I would happen to have more than 1000 books in my list, I would need to wait until next day to complete the full list...

Another problem is that license allows using APIs only via JavaScript in web browser - and no own local cache. This would mean embedding web browser and ALWAYS calling server (max 1000/day max once a second). Can't help wondering why bother making APIs at all... Sorry, something got into my eye (sniff)

One more possibility might be using directly GET http://www.librarything.com/export-csv, but the cookies are such a mess, it would take long time to figure out what they mean and what is really needed.

Doesn't look good at all, I'm afraid :(

106> Ok, first version could be read-only.

Was thinking whether iPhone camera could be used to scan new book barcodes and submit to my collection... or whether I could scan barcode, get book entry from my library, update it and submit the update back to LT.

Using year numbers as tags to check whether I've read a book earlier and mark when I read it again. I have kids, so I keep reading same book :)

Unfortunately, the CSV export has several bugs and many fields left out. You're probably 108> best off using the tab delimited version, which has bugs and shortcomings but less of both.

Barcode is something that's been talked about in other threads, so you might want to try searching. Not sure where it wound up.

Wasn't there a way to tweet a message, possibly an ISBN from a scan, to add a book to your library? Or is that something else that stopped working.

Was thinking about something simple, like Tab1 alphabetical list of all authors, where author would contain list of all related books. Tab2 alphabetical list of all books, which no/few details about the book. Tab3 global search for all known keywords (tags).

Tabs 1 and 2 would do search as filtering down the related lists. Tab3 is more difficult, how to display search results. Too many options.

Not a mobile LT client, but a kind of emergency field list of my books, to be used as reminder in book stores and libraries. Covers would be nice, I'm better remembering visual things, but text list would be a good start.

Still thinking...

>111,

If you didn't mind doing the updates on an as-needed basis, one option would be to create a server-side program (e.g. PHP/MySQL) that could take in the tab-delimited export file from LT. Then build code to display it as you like.

For my needs though, I'd prefer a truly local catalog which can be browsed without need to access the Internet. I am experimenting with an iPhone app called "My Library" to see if it can handle 7,100+ from my collections. One issue is that the fields don't correspond well between the LT export and the ML import. Another is the situation of cover images. I'd like my cover images to be shown and I have a lot of non-ISBN books. It is possible that such limitations can be overcome. This option will still require some occasional manual updates by taking the LT export and importing to ML. The latter program can do "adds" to its database instead of wiping everything out. However, the LT export is an all-or-nothing proposition so I'd have to delete books entered since the last update from the Excel view of the LT export file.

James Keeline

110> Stopped working. Something Twitter did - follower limits, or something?

113> Oh, that's too bad! Planning to do Twitter integration into a bigger iPhone app and trying it first with LT would have been a nice warm up exercise :(

108> Found ZBar iPhone SDK, which should be ok for creating a book barcode scanner. Custom app could connect "directly" to LT APIs, if suitable one were found. Not too big work effort estimation for first version, but a real app would require lots of time and iterations for UI design, layouts and navigation. Sigh, another one on todo list...

http://zbar.sourceforge.net/iphone/index.html

112> 7100 cover images equals hundreds of MB data, offline is a must! Guessing exported LT data is about 6MB, but it has to be parsed and stored separately == another 10MB+ needed. Maybe total 400MB for whole setup.

Thanx for "My Library" tip, I'll check what it looks like :)

As discussed before, one iPhone barcode solution is the Red Laser app which is $2 or less. I have used it many times to take a stack of similar subject books with ISBN-13 barcodes, scan them, email the list to myself, open the attached text file, and upload to the LT import page. On that latter page you can select the data sources and set the subject and tags to be applied to all of the entries. This is the reason for scanning similar books in a batch.

I have read that Red Laser also allows you to take some other action for a scan and I think people have experimented with using it to add individual books to LT. However, I think the process would be slow and potentially buggy. The batch upload does work and may be more useful.

If you are cataloging at home, there's always the option of a modified USB CueCat barcode scanner.
_____

The thumbnail images presented on the LT site are pretty small compared with the originals I upload which are 500k-2M. However, I recognize that if you have a lot of them it will add up.

James

So, Amazon has recently relented. After allowing everyone else--all our competitors--to put their data on mobile sites, and NOT us, they finally decided to let us do it too. They were, I think, tired of my angry emails.

So we've got to make a mobile site. We'd like use the LibraryAnywhere infrastructure, but we aren't sure if we can bolt a scanner onto that or not.

116>

Hooray!

116> Excellent news! Just to check, does this mean you'll dig out your iPhone app from around 2009 and release any day now?

Btw interesting comment about angry emails... you recon it might help to get LT APIs updated, too? ;)

>118

The API is in a similar situation. It's not clear whether it's allowed by Amazon's terms which, of course, we're very careful with, but our competitors aren't.

All I can say is, I'm sorry we don't have better ones. The flip side is that LT will almost certainly never have its API access revolked, so users will never lose their data.

Wonderful news!

Glum: Bad news. It's a lot of work. I would rather they had acted on their TOS with Goodreads than allowed us in more than year later...

So true. Though it's a tough choice between loose incompetence and efficiently ruling with an iron fist.

I also suppose there's not much (any?) money in an iOS app.

>122

Right. We'd probably have to give it away, although the scanning license will cost us a buck.

Sorry. Bad mood today. I can't move anything today. I should avoid Talk :)

The timing is bad, but it's still better than nothing.

I'm very excited to see LibraryThing get it's own app!

As a newish iPhone owner, I'm thrilled! And I for one would be happy to pay for an LT app.

123> What's a "scanning license"? At least ZBar is open source licensed under GNU LGPL 2.1 and thus should be free for even commercial software? Anyway, to cover expenses I wouldn't mind paying "a buck" for iPhone client.

http://zbar.sourceforge.net/index.html

...nope, I have no connection with ZBar. Was just checking open source barcode scanner libraries for iPhone "just in case". Seemed like it contains enough features and "good enough" scanning quality. Some reported problems with iPhone 3G focusing, I recall...

I have no understanding of most of what you folks are talking about, but I would be willing to pay for an LT app.

k4k

This might be a good place to mention that I think the LT site *as it exists* performs very well on the iPhone — better than many so-called mobile sites. The only difficulty (for first-time users) is in the Add Books tab. When you click "Search" the focus returns to the same field, so it appears that nothing is happening. Maybe that behavior could be changed for mobile devices. Personally, I've gotten used to it and now do a lot of book entries from the phone. I did not expect to find that convenient.

The problem with the main LT site for mobile use is not that it doesn't work - in fact it works spectacularly on my iPhone. The problem is that it is not optimized for the tasks I want to do while away from a laptop. Lately I have fallen into a trap where I don't add books to my library (I use it in great part as a virtual "to read" bookshelf) in favor of adding to my Amazon wish list which is basically one click. Worse, I've fallen into buying kindle books more frequently than I should which I probably could check out from the library because the number if steps to look that up (ESP when on a phone) is long.

In my frustration I started laying out screens and interactions of what the app would look like. I then started checking out what public API there was and couldn't tell if I could get a listing of my library programmatically ... And then I found this thread.

So, can I write an app? Are there plans for an LT official one? (maybe I could help?)

There are plans for an LT official one (see msg 116). You might try offering your schemes, if only as "what I would like to see in the app". I don't know if you can actually help them or what.

130> I think you can also write your own app, as long as you stay within the Terms of Service. Just make sure you make it clear yours is the unofficial one.

In my mind BookCrawler is the best iPhone app at the moment, and I've been using it for several months whilst I wait for an LT one. You can import CSV files into it, but unfortunately it wants a different format to the one that LT asks for.

Therefore I've written a script that converts an LT CSV file into a BookCrawler-compatible file. Are there any other BookCrawler users who would find this useful?

133: I think that would be useful. :)

I've made available the script to convert LT data into a BookCrawler compatible format. Let's take discussion of it here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/117292

How about:
A custom url for use with a barcode scanner app, to queue up books to add to your catalog.
like

librarything.com/m/fuzzysteve/(some semi-random string of characters, like a salted hash of the username)/(isbn)

Which can then be used with a barcode scanner like https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android

As long as there's a scanner app that can post to a custom url, people have an easy way to add books.

Yes yes! I certainly would.

My features for an iPhone App -

1) In-app scanning and uploading and adding to LT account (Amazon app does in-app scanning to retrieve product listings)
2) Mobile listing and search of personal library

Those are the most important to me. Others that would be nice...
- local book event push notification and add to calendar function
- other social features of LT like seeing other libraries

Of course, I'd be willing to pay for this App on top of my lifetime subscription. The ability to just use my phone to scan up items would be a life saver and encourage more use of LT by more people I think. Dragging out the Cue Cat (which I can't find at the moment) and hooking up a laptop over by the bookshelf is a bit of a hassle.

CliffordtheRed,

You can scan books with your iPhone today. I use the Red Laser app (http://redlaser.com) which I see is available for the iPhone along with the Android. It works best with an iPhone 3GS or later because of the autofocus. It was $2 when I got it and now it's free.

With it you can scan a stack of books. The list of books can be emailed to yourself. The attachment in the email can be imported into LT with http://www.librarything.com/import For each import file you can set tags and collections so it pays to scan similar books in a batch.

It's not an ideal method of entering books but would be as good as any function that would be issued as part of a hypothetical iPhone app.

James

I also agree hugely on being able to see and add to my collections on the fly. I use an iPod Touch, so if it could be offline with syncing capabilities, that would be fabulous.

Also, I would definitely pay for this.

That is great news. However, I would suggest that the site could use some updating and streamlining at this point, and if that were undertaken with a responsive web design approach (see http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_responsive_web_design_revolution_coming...) it could also solve the problem of mobile access. It would also mean LT staff would not have to maintain 2 (or more) parallel systems.

Can we have an update on the status of a LT app for iPhone?
Messages 71 and 116, together with the recent announcement that LT have integrated scanner capability with LibAnywhere seem to reasonably raise the expectation that an app could be available soon.

Message 119 doesn't seem to relate to the current message 118, when it says
"The API is in a similar situation. It's not clear whether it's allowed by Amazon's terms " similar to what?

I think it's pretty clear that many users would be willing to pay for an app that let them scan barcodes and add to their own collection, can we have a clear statement of the state of where this stands at the end of 2011?

Given the level of interest in this, it might even be worth writing some background as to why it's not available instead of the "We're developing a full-fledged LibraryThing app." statement over at http://www.librarything.com/more/sites

Thanks
DrBob

I agree, would like an update on the status of an LT app, in my case I would love one for the Ipad.

Thanks,
Mei

I'm not so interested in the scanning capabilities as I am in being able to see my entire library without having to use the Librarything mobile page. When I'm booksale-ing, my internet connection is tenuous at best. An app that I don't need to hook up to the internet (except to update every now and then) would be awesome!

Adding my plaintive cries to the chorus -- could we have an official status update please?

Here's my plea as well. I'd be glad to pay for such a useful app, and I can envision using it daily on my iPad or iPhone.

Please please please do this! I've been considering importing my LT library into ANobii, just because I love their app and the fact that you can enter books by scanning the barcode (plus, the interface is nice: simple and functional). But the thing is: I don't WANT to have to use two different services (three, if you count weread on Facebook). I love LT. But its lack of a smartphone app is a huge drawback in my book.

Would love an app that lets me search my collection and add books to it, at the bare minimum. Would also be willing to pay (up to $5) for such an app.

I'll see your five dollars and raise you five.

I would also be willing to pay for the app.

Me too

An Android scanner app would make LT almost perfect. Please consider.

I don't much care about an app that would add books (though if it existed I'd probably use it to add to my wishlist when I find something interesting in the bookstore), but I'd love to be able to check whether a book is in my library -- even making the existing mobile site collection-aware would handle this (though the ideal would be to allow me to just scan a barcode and it would tell me "in your catalog", "in your wishlist", "not listed".)

Amen to that, lorax.

Tiiiiiiiim, are you there?

That's exactly what I want as well, Lorax.
Having it be able to remember your complete list without an active internet connection would be the coup de grace (it could operate on daily updates, "push" or something). My internet speed sux on my phone.

"allow me to just scan a barcode and it would tell me "in your catalog", "in your wishlist", "not listed".)" YES. I would also be willing to pay for this.

Another vote for "please"!

Add another mention for wanting a good LibraryThing iPhone app. Need to be able to look at my catalogue, my wishlist, not listed, and see immediately where it is. Let us know if we can help!

Separate development projects like this require devoting a developer's time and money to pay them. Obviously, from other threads, Tim, Jeremy and Co. have other features and maintenance which has a higher priority than this right now.

I've seen some messages to suggest that people would be willing to "pay" for an iPhone (or Android) app. The real question is "how much?" If it is merely $2-$10 that most apps go for, that might not be enough with perhaps 1,000 purchases to recover the development investment.

If an app were scoped out and estimated costs determined, perhaps there would be a way to finance this with a system like kickstarter? Then, people would be encouraged to pledge as much as they could afford or wished to. Payment would be collected if the funding goal was reached.

James

Another vote.

Unfortunately, my usage of LibraryThing is dropping because I don't have good (read: fast) mobile access.

To answer Keeline, I'd easily pay $5, possibly more but I wouldn't flinch at $5.

Sean

Why can there be an app for Goodreads and not for Library Thing. I'm a loyal user but I want the mobile access.

Reason 1: Because Goodreads openly violated Amazon's Terms of Service, risking being shut down/losing all their users' data. Had Tim violated it, uses could have lost significant functionality on the main website. Would that have been worth it?

Reason 2: Because GR (and Shelfari) are based on the Get Rich Quick Internet Startup model. They borrow a lot of other people's money and therefore have lots of resources to get things done. Unfortunately, these investors tend to eventually want to see a nice return on this money and push the sites to either figure out how to cash in (and who cares if is at the expense of the users - the users are the product, not the customer) or sell out to a big company. A big company who will either eventully lose interest because they don't realize being owned by a megacorporation removes all the advantages that made the small startup work. Or they just bought it to crush it and avoid competition anyway. In either case, users are lucky to even export their data before the lights go out.

LT, on the other hand, has not followed this model. Tim personally owns over 50% of the shares in his company. He has a small number of employees. As such, there simply aren't the resources to get everything done that everyone wants. As nice as a mobile app would be, there are plenty of basic site features that still have bugs that need fixing. When you have limited resources, you have to prioritize.

+1 for a Universal App. Scanning barcodes would be a nice touch. I understand the limited resources issue, but this functionality is becoming a necessity if you're going to continue to compete in the market. Kickstarter or something like it is a brilliant idea to get around the resources issue and I think fits nicely with the ethos of your company.

I don't just want a mobile app. I want LT to be here in 10 years (and more!). Having to access it through the web on my phone or ipad isn't going to be a competitive approach and could have a detrimental effect in the long run.

You guys have done such a great job! Keep it up!

Matt

Considering the discussions on this end of the water between Amazon and other organisations, I would not put too much hope in resolutions of the conflicts as pointed out earlier in the thread by Tim.

Suffice to say that it is a commercial argument of strategic control which in new to form policies goes well beyond the historical "data" perspective.

There are reasons why Shelfari is receiving what some could call preferential treatment, I suspect however that exploring those would derail this thread, instead I'll limit myself to an earlier point made in this thread:

"What seems dumb about the Amazon decision, is if I was browsing in Borders and felt I could score 30% off by going to Amazon with my two day delivery. A couple clicks on my iPhone, and then the amazon link and I could order it."

"Exactly. Why do they want to stop this? It makes no sense."

You cannot approach that question from the traditional perspective of Amazon's policies on data links & relations. It is a question which has to be explored from a strictly commercial viewpoint in light of Amazon's strategic targets for growth.

I agree there is a commercial relation that could be formed there, but it is one which would largely be out of Amazon's control. Their aim is to expand towards a distinct element of control. What you have to picture here, and this is very important, is Amazon's board commissioned studies on the phenomenon known as "lock in markets". Many may not see it, but Amazon is on a strategic level a direct competitor to Apple which has fully internalised and enabled exactly that market model for itself. I cannot stress how important it is to realise - minor ownerships have zero relevance on this level - what that means for how Amazon will experiment with derivative models in service of learning to establish requirements in order to transitions towards the very same concepts.

Please do not take this personal, but LT is at best irrelevant in that focus, at worst a technical competitor (not commercial) to experimental model applications which Amazon has control over through data link as well as other policies. I have to say that I am not so sure that this really is a bad thing, take another look at Shelfari in a year or two tops ...

Think of it this way, LT does not represent a consumer perspective. It presents a mixture of user perspectives mostly professional ones, and that too is something which Amazon is gearing up to tap in to. They have the infrastructures for that, as well as the contacts reach.

I have to admit, I've seen a few other discussions here on the "LT vs Shelfare et alii" thing, unfortunately. It's not a discussion really. It's a case of business model focus. LT has a specialised and dedicated service model. That is a point of strength. It does not however have a reach towards consumers, which is something bigger parties will utilise over time to reinforce the niche of services such as LT until they have the experience base to take on that niche as part of a larger offering where no party can really shop elsewhere ("shop" having more than one meaning here, remember the part of the "lock in market" model).

I'm not saying that LT should change to become another Shelfare, I've seen that argument too often as well. But there are lessons to learn, personally I would let places like Shelfare make the mistakes, so the people behind LT don't have to make those.

As for Apps, I am getting the idea that people are seeing trees, but not really a forest. Which is only logical, since we can only ever really speak for ourselves and we tend to approach matters from individually determined perspectives.

App development "as is" (aka complementary to existing media) is already a thing of the past. An App is merely one tool, part of a toolbox which should serve the same range of purposes regardless of medium. Preferably with a commercial focus, but that too applies to any other medium already in service.

I really think that the better approach is to take this on as a challenge in platform development. The medium should not matter. If LT is to grow, prosper and fully mature as a service model, it cannot simply be a case of site & apps - something we see all too often strand in costly development tracks (remember that costs consists of more than just money directly, time investment for example is also directly related to brand and service operations, incidentally, I do feel that LT should work towards becoming a brand but that's a seperate discussion).

I admit, I do not know much of how LT is developed (as technology and as a business), I can only go by what I see as a user and put that in perspective to my own background. I can say from long experience however that unless LT becomes a name beyond specialised focus it will miss the platform boat. Which is a shame, there's no other service or solution around which has the potential to serve both consumer and professional perspectives without costly investments (I know, parties like Amazon tend to let others run those costs, but still, I trust it is clear).

Exploring LT and all that behind it I am impressed by its origins as well as the principle focus followed thusfar. Do not misunderstand me, its people have avoided most of the typical bubbles which others take for granted or even base their functioning on. They have also avoided, I suspect through a combination of being hands on busy with work as well as principle orientations, losing control of available business paths. It's also stayed very close to its origins and initial professional focus.

But a simple business concept I should mention here, one which incidentally also applies to any life of anything really.

It's hard to keep walking with one leg. It is especially hard to do keep walking and keep up with others who have two (regardless of whether they own both, or just one and they have a discrete big brother networking the other one).

Jouni, I was browsing the recommended site improvements again and saw your post from 4/6/11. Must have misssd it before. I couln't have said it any better myself - "I just want an easy access to list of MY books" on my phone. I am so tired of buying a second copy of a book that I already own but haven't read in a long time!

I haven't used LT in nearly five months. This is sad, as I have loved the site and recommended to others many times over the years.

A mobile app (I use Android) is becoming critical. I am a life-time member (meaning I have paid for this site), and I would certainly pay for an app that gave me access to my current library (so when I book shop I don't accidentally get repeats), and which would allow me to scan barcodes in to add them to the library.

As mentioned above, start-up funding for costs could be sourced at Kickstarter.

I hate to say this, but I will find another library management site (like Goodreads) which has an app.

I could not agree more about the need for a mobile/scanner feature to allow users to scan books or enter information to see if they already own it. The larger your library grows, the greater the chance that you will accidentally buy books you already own, which is really irritating. There is a real need for an app that will let you see what you already own.

Though I am a lift-time member of LT, and really like the program, I have to admit that I will switch programs in a heart-beat if any app comes out that allows me to track my books via both my computer and my iPhone, especially one with a scanner feature. I am keeping my fingers crossed that LT will be the one to finally release such an app!

It's less likely LT will be the one to release an app. It's more likely that LT will be in business 5 years ago instead of all the other companies that are snapped up and either intentionally killed or let die a slow painful death due to ineptness.

However, it's possible that some unofficial app might be released, though with a limited feature set (no scanning)...

Wasn't the purpose of the "OverCat" project to make LT less dependent on Amazon's data? And wasn't Amazon's terms for using its data (specifically, no mobile use) the main hang-up for developing a app?

If I'm right on those two points, the odds are pretty good that LT is working on a mobile app, but one that would only query the OverCat data (so would potentially have some "holes" in it) ... I'm sure it's been frustrating for Tim & co. that they've not been able to offer an app (especially as many years as this has been high on the over-all wishlist), but they're between a rock and a hard place because they can't afford to have Amazon BLOCK queries from LT, which I would guess would be the "punishment" for going against the usage agreement between the two companies.

I seem to recall Tim saying at one point that some of the other book cataloging sites were ignoring "the rules" with Amazon, but he couldn't see putting LT into the sort of precarious position it would be in were they to develop a mobile app that used Amazon data, flaunting the specific terms of that use.

Now, mind you, I have not been following this very closely (having only gotten a "smart phone" last fall), so my recall on any or all points above my be hazy and inaccurate, but that's how I recall this whole app thing breaking down

 

Well, I think the Amazon thing was the first roadblock to a mobile app. I think the second is simply manpower. Thing about it - how many bugs and half-finished features on the regular old LT site need working on?

A mobile app is a job for a full-time developer. It's not something you just bang out in a weekend and forget about. The site is built around working as a website. Lots of functionality will need to be broken off, rewritten and completely recombobulated. Things that happen on the server will need to happen on the client, and vice versa.

There's also constant maintenance as you add new features to the main site that the app needs to catch up with (e.g. Other Authors, Publisher Series, etc.) Plus, when you say "mobile", unless you're really just meaning "iPhone", you've opened yourself up to even more work. One option is a mobile website, but believe me, that has it's own quite painful headaches (dealing with your catalog when it has more than a few thousand entries, for one).

And in either case, there's complications if you want it to work offline. It's not too tough to cache your catalog (though with challenges if it's a website), but what if you add a book while disconnected and want it to sync up with LT when you reconnect? That's a headache, my friend.

Your other option is a highly constrained app/mobile website that can be used offline as well as online. It has a very limited number of features, basically geared around being a mobile copy of your catalog so you can simply look up items, filter by collections or simple searches, etc. No adding books, no rich work page or catalog with access to all the fields like CK data, no editing of existing data.

Now that's something that's not as difficult and could even be done unofficially by someone who was foolish enough to dedicate their precious free time to it. But would it satisfy much of the call for a mobile app? We'll see.

#116 by timspalding> So we've got to make a mobile site. We'd like use the LibraryAnywhere infrastructure, but we aren't sure if we can bolt a scanner onto that or not.

Just noticed this while reviewing your responses on the thread. You might find this useful for bolting a scanner on:

http://chris.m0nk3y.net/blog/post/scanning-barcodes-from-your-mobile-web-apps

Hi,

if the main required function of an iPhone app is simply to scan a bar code and then find the ISBN in your LT catalog, then that functionality already exists.

I use a free iPhone app called ZBAR. It allows you to add your own search URLs. I assume there are others apps that let you do that too but most take you off to commercial sites and price comparisons.

The app already includes a LibraryThing search when downloaded. But if you want to search for books only in your catalog, you need to add your own search URL.

So I have added a search URL called "My LibraryThing" with the URL set to

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marq&deepsearch={ISBN-13}

Where "marq" is your LT userid (or the user ID of the catalog you want to search.)

So this is what happens:

1. Scan a barcode with the iPhone camera.
2. Press the "barcode" button.
3. Press the "My LibraryThing" button.
4. It will substitute the ISBN-13 of the barcode into the {ISBN-13} place holder in your search URL.

So, if I scan a barcode 9780553373851, and then press the "My Librarything" button (which I added), it will show this page:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marq&deepsearch=9780553373851

i.e. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marq&deepsearch=9780553373851

One other thing. By default, after scanning the the bar code the app goes to the first search URL (which is Google as downloaded). I dragged my custom "My LibraryThing" to the top of the list so all I have to do is scan a bar code and it immediately looks for the book in my LT catalog.

That is assuming the bar code is an ISBN. If you scan something else it will use the appropriate search URL for it.

Your other option is a highly constrained app/mobile website that can be used offline as well as online. It has a very limited number of features, basically geared around being a mobile copy of your catalog so you can simply look up items, filter by collections or simple searches, etc. No adding books, no rich work page or catalog with access to all the fields like CK data, no editing of existing data.

Now that's something that's not as difficult and could even be done unofficially by someone who was foolish enough to dedicate their precious free time to it. But would it satisfy much of the call for a mobile app? We'll see.

I think it would satisfy many people; one of the main drivers for people asking for a mobile app is wanting to be able to see, while in the bookstore, if they have a certain title. I suspect that adding "add book" to this but leaving off the work page, editing of data, etc -- just scan the barcode and slurp the ISBN from one user-selected source, Amazon or Overcat probably -- would satisfy almost everyone.

LORAX SAID:
"I think it would satisfy many people; one of the main drivers for people asking for a mobile app is wanting to be able to see, while in the bookstore, if they have a certain title. I suspect that adding "add book" to this but leaving off the work page, editing of data, etc -- just scan the barcode and slurp the ISBN from one user-selected source, Amazon or Overcat probably -- would satisfy almost everyone."

I would be satisifed with this basic function. I often find myself in the book sale in the library or a certain discounted book price store and want to be able to see if I already have book or not, or similarly to see if a particular book is on my TBR read list. Also, the ability to scan a book and add it to my list to read would be all I really need. I am more than OK with doing the title editing and reviews on my PC--who wants to type a review on a phone keyboard anyway.

Lastly, I would like to see this app for Android, since we're not all iThings.

Just to chip in briefly, I'm afraid I'm reasonably tech-unaware (certainly compared with the standard I've seen on here), but I've just been talking to a friend who won't come over to LT because Goodreads has a mobile app but LT doesn't. He agrees LT is better, but is only wanting to use it if he can connect on his iPhone. How have Goodreads managed it, is it largely a man-power issue? Or do they work differently in other ways?

Also, just thought I'd mention most people I've tried to get onto LT are put off largely just because of the clunky interface. It's way better than other sites, it's just less easy to learn to use.

Finally - I've just become a paid lifetime member. Yay!

#176 by BeeQuiet> How have Goodreads managed it, is it largely a man-power issue? Or do they work differently in other ways?

Goodreads "manages" it by borrowing other people's money:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/12/goodreads-venture-capital-mil...

Turns out it's a lot easier to fund all kinds of stuff when you're willing to sell your company to other people. Tim has sold some funding, but still personally owns over 50% of the company. LT isn't as likely to be killed in a few years when a parent company decides it's not profitable enough. Or sold off to some other company who has no idea how to handle it. It's also much less likely to change into the complete opposite of why we like the site so much today.

Indeed, I thought it would probably be something like that, thought there would be no harm in me asking.

Nope, none indeed! It's something most people never realize about LT and its competitors. Having been bit by what happened to Delicious, I might pick LT even if I didn't think it was as superior as it is.

Yes, an app would be great. Easy peasy press a button and you're done. I'd certainly buy it if and when it materialises. But given the obviously massive obstacles involved in getting the thing up and running, and the effectiveness of the current website on an iphone, comments like #166 and #167 above just baffle me. Are you so incredibly stretched for time that you can't type a title and hit search? Is not being able to add a book the second you get it with no effort on your part so dreadful that you would dump LT? I'm a lifetime member too, yeah, we've paid for the site, but we didn't pay much. Sick of buying duplicate copies? Then consider making the extraordinary effort of searching your own library. Good luck with the app LT folk, and thanks.

I realise that I gave some confusing information above.

The URL

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marq&deepsearch={ISBN-13}

is only useful when you are auditing your collection. e.g. I use it to scan a bar code of a book with my iPhone and it will tell me if I have catalogued that ISBN and where in my house it should be shelved.

If you want to scan a bar code in a book shop and see whether or not you have any edition of the work of which that ISBN is one of the editions, you need to use

http://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q={ISBN-13}

. Importantly, the browser also has to know who you are, so you must at some stage have entered you userid and password to log into LT on Safari. After you have done it once it seems to remember. (It used to forget after a while but doesn't seem to anymore).

This URL takes you to the LT work page and if your collection contains one (or more) editions of that work, there is a section "Your book information" that shows the details of your editions. Even though the screen is microscopic, you can easily tell if you have any edition of the work you have just scanned because that section is pink(ish). Of course you can just magnify it but an LT improvement would be for LT to work out that you are looking at the page from an iPhone and reorganise the page appropriately.

If you don't have it, obviously that section doesn't show at all. You can easily see the usefull information like the average rating and how other people have tagged the work, (which is what I mainly use it for) but I have bought books and later discovered that I already had them twice.

Note also that the URL

http://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q={ISBN-13}

is the one already pre-configured for LT in the app, so you don't have to do anything, except perhaps to drag it to the top.

181> Thanks, helpful! About logging in - there used to be a cookie that expired once a month, Tim recently made it expire yearly instead. So you'll have to log in at least once a year...

182>Thanks, that explains it.

I would also like to add that the "double join" required (i.e. scan an ISBN bar code -> find the work associated with the ISBN -> find the edition(s) in my catalog associated with the work - usually with different or no ISBN) requires that the editions be properly combined into the right works.

I am not very familiar with LT's competitors, but the main thing that attracted me to LT from reviews was that LT is said to have a richer and more sophisticated data structure. This would be why this double join functionality would work more reliably on LT.

It seems like wrong thinking to jump to a competitor because they have bolted an iPhone app to their web application when the functionality of that iPhone app will be unreliable because it is not supported by reliable data.

And especially because as I have said, while waiting for LT to bolt a bar code scanning iPhone app to their web application, you can easily bold LT to an existing bar code scanning iPhone app.

I'd just like to add that I am not in the least concerned with having an LT app on my iPhone. The site works reasonably well on Safari. I may try marq's tips with the Zbar reader app.

I don't wish to snark, but in all seriousness: If one finds oneself frequently purchasing books that one has forgotten one already possesses, then the real problem is one of impulse control. I don't believe there will ever be an app for that.

#184 by Muscogulus> I don't wish to snark, but in all seriousness: If one finds oneself frequently purchasing books that one has forgotten one already possesses, then the real problem is one of impulse control. I don't believe there will ever be an app for that.

You may not wish to snark, but you clearly are. The problem is not impulse control at all. Before LT, I would not only re-buy a book but often, I would not buy a book because I thought I might already have it.

What it's really a symptom of is making heavy use of your local library or borrowing books from friends. Combined with just naturally not being blessed with as wonderful of a memory as you clearly are. ;)

I have 5000+ books cataloged, 3000+ of them in Your Library (which means I physically own them). I haven't read all of them, not nearly, nor have I cataloged everything I've read. There are a lot I bought because they looked interesting, from the cover copy and a glance inside...and remembering all of those just isn't going to happen. But cataloging all my books on LT was triggered by buying, for the third time, a book (a romance) with an intriguing concept, fascinating cover copy, and really bad writing/plotting/characterization. Each time I bought it, read it, said Ick and got rid of it...and then forgot about it because it was bad. I got halfway through the second time before I recognized it; the third time I caught it three or four chapters in. But in each case I'd already bought it.

Now, I buy mostly from yard sales, book sales, used book stores - so I don't spend much on a book, but it's annoying at best to have wasted money, time, and space on a book I didn't want. LT has been a lifesaver, and putting my catalog on first my Palm and now on my phone has helped immensely.

And yeah, trying to remember if that book I've been wanting for a while has already been found, or if I'm still looking, is another problem.

>185

It's kind of you to spring to the defense of the three or four members who complained of having bought books they already own. I guess it's consistent with your generally upbeat and constructive contributions to the thread.

OK, so I was snarking. Guilty as charged. But it does seem a little trying to me that LT members should ask Tim to make them an app that would save them from buying duplicate books. Suppose he drops everything and fulfills their request. Then what?

"Thank you, Tim, you're the best, and oh, can you come up with an app that would summarize the books I haven't had time to read? I realize you can only do this for e-books, at least at first. But in time maybe you could make my iPhone interface with a scanner, then it could read my printed books aloud to me! I'd be willing to pay for that...."

Fine, I'm snarking again. Here's what I have to say that's constructive: This thread probably won’t attract LTers with smartphones who are satisfied with the status quo. So let me speak up for them.

I agree that having access to LT is useful when book shopping or browsing a library. I notice you have an "I thought I had this book" list. My lists include "Borrowed," "Loaned out," and "Misplaced," and I consult them often. What I don't understand is why it's so difficult to access our LT database and lists with a smartphone browser.

I admit I haven't become acquainted with Windows Phones or the three thousand flavors of Android. Maybe some of these give lousy access to the LT site. But having recently struggled to use an ill-advised mobile interface to a local library catalog, I'm in no hurry to see LT throw a mobile shell around the current site.

#187 by Muscogulus> It's kind of you to spring to the defense of the three or four members who complained of having bought books they already own.

Well, in this thread. I've read it far too many times on other threads to think it's just a tiny minority. I think if Tim ever commissioned a survey of LT users, it'd rank up there pretty highly.

Now, as I said above, I'm not demanding an app. I think it makes sense that LT doesn't spend their limited resources on it. You wouldn't expect the guy who sells you tamales from the truck to have an app that tells you when he'll be passing through. If he did, it'd be great But you don't expect it. Apps don't make sense for everyone.

As a side note, I'll mention that I don't have a data plan for my cheapo android phone. Far too expensive for my needs. And wifi access at the bookstores I frequent is spotty or nonexistent. But then, I know how to craft up a good offline copy of my catalog. Not everyone is up for that, though.

#187 by Muscogulus> It's kind of you to spring to the defense of the three or four members who complained of having bought books they already own ... it does seem a little trying to me that LT members should ask Tim to make them an app that would save them from buying duplicate books. Suppose he drops everything and fulfills their request. Then what?

Well I'm another one who has inadvertantly bought a book twice, and who relies on accessing my LibraryThing catalogue to help prevent it happening more often. There are substantially more than merely "three or four members" who have experienced this, even if not all of us have felt it necessary to add it to our reasons for desiring a LibraryThing mobile app.

Rob, you've been a member long enough to know that Tim is, and always has been, interested in things that members feel would make the site even better. It's one more thing that makes LibraryThing a great community, as well as such a convenient catalogue system. It isn't unreasonable, in this age of Pimp my Electonic Product, for people to want a LibraryThing app for their devices, and to be keen to understand why it isn't easily possible. We are, frankly, a bit spoilt that way.

This group and this thread are intended for exactly the purpose that they're being used for: discussing the things that we think would improve the site, and the reasons for and against. But you know this. Your snarking isn't necessary, however unimportant the mobile app request seems to you. If you find this thread annoying, don't read it!

Hmm, I guess it does seem strange for me to join a thread called "iPhone app" to say, "Who needs an iPhone app?" I should explain that I've been following this thread for months and have tried a LT Local app and LibAnywhere. But the more I read here, and the more experience I get with the LT website on the iPhone, the less I feel the need for a dedicated app. This discussion has done a lot to shift my thinking.

The other thing that gets lost in the discussion is that lots of people have android phones. :)

Cross-platform mobile development isn't for the faint-of-heart. So my initial suggestion is a good mobile app that can also work in offline mode. Unfortunately, my work in that area has run into severe limitations with mobile apps. A big one is the amount of storage space available to them.

You wouldn't expect the guy who sells you tamales from the truck to have an app that tells you when he'll be passing through. If he did, it'd be great But you don't expect it. Apps don't make sense for everyone.

No, he doesn't need an app because he has a Twitter feed. :-)

Even though I am an iPhone user, I would be happy with a basic mobile site (like the /m site but with a few more details and it must be scalable!) that would display well on a smart phone.

Local storage would be nice and the DB feature defined in HTML5 has possibilities for this depending on how widely it is implemented on the anything goes Android platform.

My main need is the ability to see if I have a book already. Individual look ups would be OK. However, seeing series or author lists with check marks would be slick.

I don't expect the app to scan, enter, or edit book entries. There are too many complications to make such a program.

James

There is already an app (I won't name it) that allows you to bar scan in books and looks them up for you and all that. I'm annoyed that I have to move my whole librarything.com list over to the new app. I wish they would have just developed one!!

There is no "just". App development is an incredibly expensive and time consuming operation. And most people expect them to be free or practically so, especially if they've already paid for an LT membership.

I just came on Library Thing to see if they were thinking of producing an app such as 'Book Retriever'. I am a teacher who has put her classroom library on Library Thing. I really need a way for my students to scan books they borrow out. At the moment I really don't know if I am losing books. I am trusting my students. As Rachel says I really don't want to have to move my whole library over to a new app. Any hope?

Hate to throw cold water on things, but a special purpose app like one for checking out books from an LT library is even less likely.

It seems like two questions. Does LT (Web application) have a book check-in check-out function? I have not seen that feature in LT and my guess is that it doesn't exist explicitly. You could set up a collection for each student and when a student borrows a book you move it into that student's collection and move it out when they bring it back. You could do something with tags. There might be better ways but if they are not workable, your first need is for that kind of functionality to be added to LT.

Secondly, you want to be able to easily activate that functionality when you scan a book's bar code with a mobile app. The way that would work will depend on how the first requirment is implemented in LT.

The best thing I can think of at the moment is:

1. set up a collection for each student.
2. add books that are already borrowed by students to those students collections.
3. when a student borrows or returns a book, scan the book's bar code with your mobile app to locate it in LT web.
4. move it in or out of the student's collection.

The best thing I can think of (in terms of simplicity) is a clipboard with sign-in/sign-out.
Name -------- Book -------- Date out -------- Date back
Billy Bob -----Avalon High --3/5/12 ---------- 3/21/12

Personally though, I don't care if my kids keep my books. I buy them for 50 cents a piece at book sales and tag sales and if it means so much to them that they can't return it, then I'm just glad they HAVE a book. Most my kids can't afford food, let alone books.

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Using_LibraryThing_as_an_Integrated_L... - this is how some people are using LT for checking out books.

LibraryThing Scanner is an Android app (I don't know if there's an iOS equivalent) that lets you find or add a book by scanning the ISBN. I find it painfully slow (or did, way back when when I tried it) so I don't use it, but you might be able to apply it to checking out the books. Though I don't think the mobile site lets you do much in the way of editing (adding comments and the like, or moving between collections) - again, not something I use (my smartphone lets me go to the full site instead). Oh, and RedLaser and other iOS apps can be used to add, I don't know if they can be used to find.

>181 - marq, thanks for your instructions on using a bar code scanner to look up books on LibraryThing from your phone. I have an Android phone so I had to use a different scanner, but I was able to set up a custom search with only a few changes.

For Android phone users, I downloaded "Barcode Scanner v3.53". I opened the settings page and under the "Result settings" I created a custom search URL, based on marq's instructions.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/USERNAME&deepsearch=%s

(This application uses a different string than "{ISBN-13}")

I scanned a book isbn and then hit the "custom search" button and it took me to my web browser and right to LibraryThing and to the book in my catalog.

I'm guessing you could use marq's other search strings as well, just substituting %s for the {ISBN-13} in his examples.

Thanks again!!

Thanks tjsjohanna. I'm happy you have found it useful.

I'm mainly using

http://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q={ISBN-13}

That one is very useful when browsing books in a shop by reading the bar code to bring up the LT work page and especially to see how fellow LT users have tagged and rated the book. Sometimes I use it to check that I do already have a book that I think I do.

A few days ago I scanned a book (9781471101472) and it failed to find the work because no one on LT had an edition with that ISNB yet. (Still no one has any edition so the work doesn't exist). So if it is very new (or perhaps not of interest to discerning LT users), it won't be found.

(Of course, a lot of older books don't have the ISBN in a bar code if they have an ISBN at all.)

202>,

It seems to me that you would want a search of your books and not all of LibraryThing.

Consider these complications:

What if you have selected a cover image from Amazon that changes the ISBN? In that case you will not be able to find the book by a scanned ISBN on the desktop or any other method.

Further, many classrooms have multiple copies of some titles. These would have the same ISBN. This is why libraries have independent barcodes for check in/out that include their own book number that is unique to each book.

I agree that even if there is an iPhone app in the future, it is unlikely to include a check in/out system unless that feature is part of the main LT application.

As I have stated before, it would be easier for the LT team to develop web pages that display well on smart phone browsers rather than try to keep up with apps for 3 or perhaps 4 platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile). Even if there were only one mobile platform to address, it would take having a specialist on staff or under contract to build such an app and the money isn't readily there to cover the sizable expenses such development would occur not just once but on an ongoing basis for upkeep. Each time a new LT feature was added, people would be asking when it would be available on the mobile apps built.

Are there 1,000 LT people for each platform who would pay $100 for the app for their platform? Possibly not. Nevertheless, $100,000 is a good ballpark figure for the cost to develop such an app for each platform for a complex site like LT.

By making a mobile-browser-friendly web site then this need is obviated. There is the /m site but it does not play well with the main Safari web browser (the tiny text cannot be scaled and I have already provided the trivial change to make this possible) and it does not have a way to display some of the important features of the main site: collections, author pages, series pages, etc. The /m site was a stop-gap solution that does not seem to have received much attention, even for the tiniest of changes (such as the screen scaling bug).

From the action we've seen and the comments made from Tim & Co., I'd say that mobile apps are an interest but not a priority for LT.

James

> 203 What if you have selected a cover image from Amazon that changes the ISBN? In that case you will not be able to find the book by a scanned ISBN on the desktop or any other method.

LT (with help from its users) combines all editions with different ISBNs (or non at all) into a "work". If you scan a bar code which is recognised as an ISBN and plug it into "http://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q={ISBN-13}", it will go to the work page of that ISBN. Assuming you are logged on to LT in your mobile device browser, that page will tell you about your edition(s) attached to that work, even if the ISBN of your edition is different to the bar code you scanned. (Assuming the edition with the ISBN you scanned and the edition you own are both properly combined into the same work).

Sure, if you use "http://www.librarything.com/catalog/USERNAME&deepsearch={ISBN-13}" and you have changed the ISBN of the edition in your catalog, you won't find it.

(BTW, I don't think I am the first LT user to say that the function that changes your edition's ISBN when you choose an Amazon cover is an emanation from the depths of hell).

I agree totally that pages that display better on the small screen is a higher priority than a mobile app.

Also, none of the search strings suggested by tjsjohanna or myself are actually ISBN specific on the LT side. Actually, for that reason there is small chance that they will do the wrong thing.

So, if you print out a bar code sticker with a number specific to an individual copy of a book and then put that in the comments field of the record, the (user catalog) search string (with the appropriate modification for bar code type) should still work. In fact that would be more accurate because you could prefix it within something like "MYBOOKID" (e.g. MYBOOKID2536273829 in the comment field and also in the search string "http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marq&deepsearch=MYBOOKID{app specific symbol for barcode type}").

BUT, you might have to work out how to change the search mode to include comment fields. Manually, to the right of the search field in the "Your Books" view, there is a drop down that selects what fields to include in the search. If it is changed and you press "Search" the URL momentarily changes to something else before going back the the "deepsearch" one. It happens too quickly to record what it is.

Actually, I found it in the browser history.

http://www.librarything.com/index_catalog.php?searchmode=isbn&view=YOUR_USER_NAME&search=APP_SPECIFIC_BAR_CODE_SYMBOL

This would be a specific search for ISBN in your catalog. A list of fields for the search mode can be found in http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Search#Catalog_Search (Acceptable modifier prefixes without the colon).

So you could use "comment" if you have a custom bar code sticker on your books and you have put the number in the comment field of the book.

>202 - marq, you have interesting findings! So it seems like a non-official mobile LT app might be possible:

1) Scanning ISBN and searching person's own catalog is possible and you have provided URL and explanation how it works. Wonder how to handle the usernme and possible password issue, but overall it seems doable. I have used ZBar in current project and basic integration was incredibly simple.

2) Would like to add books in similar URL way, any experiences with such? Would be happy just to add a book and fill-in missing details later (cover image, merging with other language variants etc.)

3) Is there any way (URL) to fetch user's catalog with all or limited info? Would like to store locally, don't care too much whether cover images are missing. The ISBN vs. work seems like a possible problem, if working offline only.

Update: found it, I guess. Would require heavy HTML parsing, no iOS experience with such components unfortunately.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?view=jouni

...oh, I am NOT planning to create iOS app at all. No time, family first, busy at work etc. Just been thinking about one since mid 2011. No hurry, but...

...oh, I am NOT planning to create iOS app at all. No time, family first, busy at work etc. Just been thinking about one since mid 2011. No hurry, but...

There's the Book Crawler iOS app, looks like it can import CSV formatted files.

207> Hi. The password doesn't seem to be a problem once you have logged in to LT in the browser once. jjmcgaffey above (182) said the cookie will expire after a year. I have tried to add a book in the normal way (once it had been located in LT by scanning, press the add button), but I found the add a book page loaded very slowly. It might be because I have too many sources selected.

208> That look like an interesting app. Someone above wanted to be able to have an offline version of their catalog.

209 (re: 208) - That would've been me.
I'll have to check that app out.

208> That does look interesting and well maintened app. Unfortunately it's not "connected" to LibraryThing and I don't want to switch over to Goodreads. Of course something is better than nothing at all :)

The app description did say it's getting cover images from Google Books, which seems like a possible idea (would have to check Google Books API license). But since Google has released an Objective-C sample app, guess it should be ok

http://code.google.com/p/google-api-objectivec-client/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk...

Wonder, if getting book covers from Google Books would be ok for Amazon to let LibraryThing to open a real API for developers instead of having to deal with HTML files?

Amazon to let LibraryThing

That makes it sound like Amazon has some sort of operational control of LT which is absolutely not the case. The only control Amazon has over LT is the same control it has over anyone else using it's interfaces.

I understood it's not quite that easy. Amazon is a minority owner after buying someone else who was a minority share holder of LT. Additionally there is some data received via Amazon API(s), not to mention the trouble identifying what it exactly was. For example you change book cover image to something Amazon provides, system changes book ISBN to point to Amazon and suddenly it looks like ALL book data is from there - even when it's not true, even if everything else was modified by user.

Many API licenses usually say that, if your use is prohibited, then you have to get rid of all the data fetched via that API. Therefore it might not be just a question of cover images and where they come from, as I thought.

But seriously I have no idea and it seems like people running LT don't really want to touch the issue any more. Can't blame, their original idea 2009 was shot down by Amazon quite badly. Few other (mobile) apps were forced to be removed from distribution at the same time, too. By Amazon.

So I drafted a plan to create a totally offline client based on user catalog backup. No direct connection whatsoever with LT, user would be in between LT and mobile app. Should be ok... and just to play safe for LT, I don't even want to ask what would they think about the plan. Seems like it's safest for everyone, if they don't say anything one way or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but...

...planning without execution is just day dreaming :)

So now I'm officially done with the whole iPhone client idea and will archive the screen layouts, feature list and roadmap notes I wrote yesterday. Now is the critical time to see how much do I really want such an app, compared to everything else that needs to be done.

Well, enough talk! (that was a quote from Conan the Barbarian).

Amazon's minority ownership of LT share's do not enter into this. If you want more detail, lots can be found in the search.

Has LT ever tried putting out an "all-call" asking if anyone would volunteer to write an APP for LT? I'm more than positive there are enough nerds on this site that someone would be chomping at the bit to at least attempt to create a small text-based one. Especially because many colleges would allow computer software engineering students to receive course credit for such an undertaking.

My school had special honors for people who did field-related volunteer work that kids fought to get into (easy course credits). I personally volunteered over at Librivox for my credits.

If I had any software programing abilities beyond VBA programming with Excel, I'd be first in line to volunteer!

I'm more than positive there are enough nerds on this site that someone would be chomping at the bit to at least attempt to create a small text-based one.

Yep, I'm fairly certain someone would.

...says the woman who's created how many scripts to make bits of LT work better? Love you, brightcopy!

Sounds like a good idea to me. Whether it sounds like a good idea to Tim, is of course the important question.

I'm sure brightcopy won't be offended, jj, but the profile page entry "... And now a dad!", would make me rule out him being, or identifying as, a woman. Or was that just circuitous 'revenge' for the number of times you've been called 'jim' in Talk?

Not that there is anything wrong with being called Jim.

I would never take offense for being mistaken for a woman.

Well, maybe in person. :D

@208 "There's the Book Crawler iOS app, looks like it can import CSV formatted files."

Got it, tried it, hated it. The layout is horrible, IMO (authors, tags, and collections should be a subset of books and the place where you upload books should be reasonably close to where you add them {as opposed to in settings...really?})
It claims to be able to import CSV files, but even having my fiance (who writes and checks programming scripts for a living) follow their own instructions, importing still fails majorly (it can't even re-import the stuff that I exported as an example).
I might upload my PZ7 books (because I'm most prone to re-purchasing them), but I'm not wasting my time uploading all 2,500 of my books all over again.

218, 219> Sheesh! No, I'd somehow firmly decided you were female (and was surprised at it). Sorry! (adjust brain, adjust, adjust...).

Hmmmph - I thought at the time that I should change that to "person" (which would have been more appropriate anyway), but didn't bother.

Considering I'm one of the many who subconsciously read your username as "Jim" for quite a while, I wont complain at all. :)

208, 220>

Agreed. This iPhone app is not much more than a stopgap.

First of all, the CSV it imports is not the same fields or order of fields available in an LT export.

Second, it is very slow with large collections until you change a preference setting on it (it should change it or suggest that it be changed once the count gets above 1,000 or so).

Third, imports that contain quote marks and other characters don't come in cleanly.

Fourth, and not surprising, any images are Amazon images and not my images.

Fifth, the handling of collections is very bad. If I have hypothetical tags like the following, each combination is handled separately:

A
B
A, B
A, C
A, B, C
B, C

In this simple example I have six entries instead of three for the collections.

Some of these problems are hampered by the type of data available (or not) in an LT export (tab or CSV). But there are other parts that reflect the challenges of dealing with large chunks of data in an iPhone app.

Of course there is no access to author or series checklists.

It wasn't designed to work with LT data so it is only a very partial solution. When you update your LT data, you have to figure out whether to purge the DB or find a way to get just the new stuff into the system.

James

How should the first screen look and behave in a hypothetical LT smartphone sized App?
Getting a full graph of screen to screen transitions is the first step from here to there.
Meanwhile, waiting for the godogeek to arrive.

You mean a storyboard with images for each screen? That almost deserves its own thread.

It might also be useful to come up with some achievable functional sections to determine what the app can do:

Search My Library
See author checklists
See series checklists
Mark a book as reading/read
Show boostores near me (based on From records)
Add a book (not a requirement for me since I have real computers and other methods for this activity)

I'm figuring that the mobile app (or better mobile web site) should do things you'd want to do "on the road" while visiting a bookstore/library/etc. If the goal is to find books you lack and avoid duplicates and compare upgrades then the above would cover most of these needs.

James

So long as I can see what books I have (and search through them) without an active internet connection, I'll be happy.
If iPhone would create some way for me to search in my excel/word files that I keep in dropbox, e-mail, google docs, the cloud, etc. I wouldn't even need an LT app.

Most HTML5 installations (used by Safari on the iPhone, btw) include some kind of database for local storage. This could be SQLite or something else. They are not super fast because of the processors, flash storage, and memory in phones. However, it should be possible for even a mobile website to store data if permitted to do so.

There is an iPhone app I use called PDFReader by Kdan which is better for large PDF files. It will display other file types as well but for the feature I will mention, it needs to be a PDF. If you can output your Excel/Word to a PDF and load it in this app on the phone, you can do a text search. For my really big PDF (500 pp) it is too slow or hangs (not sure which). However, for smaller ones it seems to work.

James

225> Search or filter via collections - or display collections with the books - or something. Separating my Wishlist and Discarded books from the ones I have is the biggest limitation on the current mobile site (as in, it can't do it).

227 - Your first suggestion didn't really pan out for me because searching a webpage requires a) my entire library be viewable on one webpage b) I be online and c) as you mentioned, time.
I couldn't figure out how to get my entire library viewable on a single page, unless I created my own website.

Although, I am glad you mentioned your first paragraph, because while looking up how to make it feasible for my uses, I discovered how to conduct searches ON the current page, instead of doing a Google search.

Your second suggestion worked like a charm, however. I really like that PDFReader and it plays very nicely with Google Docs (where I uploaded the PDF version of my library). Now, all I have to do is remember to download my library to CVS format, convert to PDF, upload to Google Docs, and download to PDFReader every time I add to my library (which is significantly easier and cheaper than re-printing my entire CVS file every time I add to my library!)

Until LibraryThing creates an app that pushes your library information down to the app every time you get an internet connection, PDFReader shall be my go-to.

Danke schön

225,227# What I want is offline storage of Wishlist as a first use case.

230>

Yes, that should be on the short list. I should have thought of that. I put my wishlists (categorized) in Amazon and use their app to interact with them.

James

Here's the human interface guide. Two
achievable steps are to draw the look and
checklist the behaviors in order of Wishlist priority.

I don't think I would leave LT completely as I have put too much work into my collection (tags, where from?s, date read, etc.), making sure all my authors' info is correct (gender, dates of birth/death, nationality, etc), adding pictures to my favourite venues, etc. That said, I would definitely move (in the sense of duplicate, not replace) my collection to the first site that makes an iPhone app I like.

LT's site has many great functions (statistics! wahey!) but they do seem to be incredibly slow in going along with new technologies and integration across platforms. That their Facebook app should still be in the current stage it is in (which is cringeworthy) is inexcusable. It's becoming a big joke. As for an iPhone app, I'm not holding any big hopes anytime soon. I am constantly trying to get people to LT, they always seem interested in the beginning until we hit the two big hitches: their Facebook app is a joke compared to Goodreads (so they go there instead) and they have no smartphone app, so on there they go with anobii or one of the other ones freely available. Farewell potential new users. I tried. And, the thing is, with more and more new users choosing Goodreads over LT, it becomes ever more tempting even for a dedicated user to give Goodreads a try, despite the work one has put into one's LT collection. (Especially when you keep seeing your Facebook friends' Goodreads activity all the time!) In other words, I would - and maybe others as well - possibly be convinced to sacrifice LT's functionality for better integration across platforms and devices, and thus more interaction with friends/community.

>233, First of all, you can give GR "a try" if you'd like, and while a couple things there may be considered slightly "better," for the most part it is the "facebook" of reading sites. If that's what you want, fine, but I think most LT users are interested in more important things. The functionality is the one thing LT wins at, if they dumped that to just try and be a GR clone then they would lose everything that makes them better, and they'd simply be an imitation to something tons of people already use. Talk about fail! If all you're interested in is chatting with others across platforms, maybe a move to GR would be in your best interests. But I have recently moved back to LT because the site is better, and because some of us don't give a crud about facebook/apps. Some of us are here for the books.

╭━━━━━━━╮
┃　　● ══　　┃┃
┃LT█Wishlist█┃
┃title█author┃
┃█0█████o████┃
┃█1█████i████┃
┃█2█████ii███┃
┃█3█████iii██┃
┃████████████┃
┃████████████┃
┃　　　○　　 　┃ 
╰━━━━━━━╯

via bubutiko, invalidname on T

233 - I agree with 234. I think you've missed the major points of LT if what you're looking for is predominantly a Facebook-style social network. While LT is very definitely a "social network" (to an extent), it's far more utilitarian than other social networks which are meant, more or less, just for "hanging out." If you're going to compare it to social networks, it's definitely more in-line with LinkedIn. It's people sharing usable information, experiences, etc.

That being said, the utilitarian uses of LT are the reason why so many people are upset about the lack of even a basic app. It doesn't get more utilitarian than a mobile app.

iPhone app = (beauty + purity)² ÷ utility ; # for utility ≠ 0

There is an interesting comparison of LT vs GR here (http://faerye.net/post/cage-match-goodreads-vs-librarything). The comments below are interesting too. I have never used GR so I don't know how fair it is.

As a GR user also, I can tell you that is quite fair. GR is centered around being social geared towards books, while LT is centered around book cataloging with added socialization. GR is full of little tweens adding all sorts of not-yet-released books to their shelves, with massive OMQ SQUEE!!! "reviews" full of huge absurd animated GIFs all about how they omg will just die waiting for this amazing book to be released why isn't it out yettttt?!?!?!!1!! and other folks along those lines. I am thrilled by the smaller, more intelligent population of this site, along with its focus on books rather than appeasing authors and making money off users.

238 - That was a very interesting article, indeed. I think it's fairly safe to say I'll not be going anywhere near GR anytime soon.

1) I have to wade through enough inane crap on Facebook to find anything interesting. Why would I want to join another social networking site to wade through more inane crap?

2) I have many highly literate friends, but there are SOOOO many types of books out there that not ONE of them shares my book interests. I couldn't care less what my friends are reading. I'd rather talk to complete strangers for hours about books we BOTH enjoy, than to spend five seconds with a friend discussing books I cannot stand.

3) Given that many of my books had to be entered manually into LibraryThing (due to the fact that I'm apparently the only person in the world that is aware of their existence), the ability to completely generate data from scratch is incredibly useful to me.

4) I'm sick of ads!!! I bought ONE Star Trek book for my grandmother THREE years ago for Christmas and both Amazon and Google STILL plague me with Star Trek ads.

Seems like creating iPhone app isn't as easy as I thought, exported backup files (CSV) has some complications... Well, it's a start - stopped short by CSV problems. http://jomnius.tumblr.com/post/29945141878/my-books-on-librarything-so-close-and...

>240, re: 3) I'm not sure about the amount of works GR has compared to LT, but if they are missing something you can indeed add it, or ask for a librarian (regular unpaid site members who are able to edit book data) to do so. And as for 4, I use AdBlock, so I didn't even realize for the longest time that GR even had ads lol. I totally get your frustration though. Ads are annoying and targeted ads are horrible. Also note, you are certainly not required to add your RL friends. GR has a Facebook connection but you are under no obligation to use it, plenty of people don't. And it's only recently that they've made it so prominent. But you can find people on there through groups, just like here, or by looking at favorite books and seeing who's reviewed them highly, etc. Not that I'm trying to convince you to join, as I said I prefer it here!! Just wanted to clarify those slight misconceptions. Have to dislike them for the right reasons! haha.

I don't feel right about using adblocks on a free website (if I were to frequent it). As someone mentioned in the article, if you enjoy the site, you shouldn't be depriving them of a potential revenue source. I personally feel that's something akin to piracy.
As for adding books, from what I read about GR afterwards, it's something of a hassle (whether you do it yourself or have one of their librarians do it). And considering how many books I've had to add, "hassle" is just bad as "not possible".
As for my comment on the social aspects, the "friends v strangers" thing is akin to dealing with a scorpion v. a tarantula; they both are frightenig IMO, just one is less so than the other. The lone fact that GR is primarily a social site (and always has been, judging by the comments in that article) is enough to scare me away.

Ads are irritating and I have never once clicked on one, so yeah sorry but, I'm blocking them, everywhere.

How was adding them supposed to be more of a hassle? I'm curious, because I haven't added any here so I can't say how it compares, but either you just type the info in, or you make a post in the librarians group with the info and it's done for you, often within a few hours. So not sure how it's a big fuss.

I'm confused, do you not interact with people here? You seemed to indicate you do... so I don't really understand what you're saying there. It is indeed very social, especially with many of the users' obsession with their ranks, and getting "likes" on their reviews and junk. But it's still about books, too. Again, I am not trying to suggest you go there, sway your opinion or anything, not in the least. Just trying to keep information straight is all. Though I think we've moved a bit off topic... lol

241>

Look at the export available from LT for CSV and tab-delimited. The latter has more columns so should be more useful overall. However, almost anything from Common Knowledge (CK) is not available so that includes series, original publication date, canonical title, etc. There is a series column but it is not populated from the CK:Series. Book cover images and "Other Author" data are also not available.

The ISBN for your copy (not any others for the same book) is what is exported. Hence, any attempt to scan the ISBN barcode in a store to see if you have that title at home won't work unless you have access to the other ISBN values which have been combined.

As you experiment and get it to a certain point, be sure to test against a moderately large library such as 7,000-10,000 volumes to make sure it still works well.

Watch for handling of quotation marks, apostrophes, single quotes, and other special characters. Make sure they look reasonable.

Keep the functionality simple at first, test the performance, and add other essential features. Repeat as often as necessary.

James

244 - I've never participated in GR, but from what I read, people who used both LT and GR seemed to be in accordance that it isn't as straight forward on GR as it is on LT. And many of the books I've had to manually add don't have much/any of their publishing information available online (even WorldCat and LoC), so I'm not quite sure how the librarians can help. I had to manually enter the information by actually looking at the copyright information in the book and then adding my own picture.

As for social interactions, for the amount of time I spend on LT, socializing gets only a tiny sliver of my attention. The whole purpose, for me, of LT is cataloging and collecting information. Socialization is a tiny thing that I'll do vigorously in very short bursts. I'm only in three active conversations (this one, my 75 book challenge {where I'm mostly talking to myself}, and Why I voted "no" {strictly because it's interesting to see the language issues people have with tagging, I don't actually talk in that conversation}). Occasionally, it would be nice to be able to easily talk to someone about something I'm reading, but my desire for that is predominantly to ask questions, not analyze, share favorite parts, etc. I'm not sure where I indicated that I do much socializing on here (the two scenarios I offered about discussing books was more of a "lesser of two evils" kind of comment).

And yes, I agree we've gotten well off topic. I was thinking that myself when I posted this morning.

245>

Managed to parse my CSV file with about 1000 books, no problems. Maybe someone could send me a large library for testing? Or smaller one with long book reviews, since those seem to make the biggest challenge? Also shorter one(s) with non-latin based characters, as at least a umlaut didn't get through correctly. Anyway, no luck with LibraryThing TSV files unfortunately. Current status at http://jomnius.tumblr.com/

Scanning ISBN barcodes works ok, so far implemented a "scan anything and display as alphabetical listing without duplicates". It would be possible to save all into a file and either export to Dropbox or email to someone. That "would be possible" means I've done both operations, but not in this app yet. Basically would need one sample file which has been successfully imported into LibraryThing. Need to know what should be in such a file... or maybe just plain text email, which can be copy & pasted?

Oh, all the choices! Decisions, decisions...

You are right about search in book store, exported data doesn't seem to contain enough info (CSV). There is nice simple search API for LT website, but I'm hesitating... maybe in "next version". However I could implement a local text search for author names, book titles etc. Just haven't thought about what it would look like on screen: humongous amount of data on such a small screen :)

Guess I need to start thinking about UI layout next. Text based list(s), since no book cover graphics available. Maybe alphabetical listing in 3-5 different ways (author, title, tag). Display on one row title and author and maybe... well, tapping on a row displays details view with everything. Looks boring, but it's an obvious step forward. Oh, guess one author just might have written several books --> grouping! That means multi-level alphabetical ordering, relational database, multi-step searching, several...

Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1015 "cannot decode raw data"
UserInfo=0x4c12e0
{
NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=http:my.brain.com,
NSErrorFailingURLKey=http:my.brain.com,
NSLocalizedDescription=cannot decode raw data
NSUnderlyingError=0x4dcec0 "cannot decode raw data"
}

jouni in 247>,

I figure that loading the data is one thing (but a challenge for programs that don't know how to deal with CSV quirks like double quote handling) but searching against that data sitting on the iPhone can be another matter depending on whether it is sorted and/or indexed.

The Book Crawler app is challenged by both of these. The default for BC is to try to do a search as each character is typed rather than wait for enough characters or the submit button. An option exists to turn off this per-keystroke search but I had to email to learn about it.

Around 2000 when I was coming from the antiquarian book trade to earning my living as a PHP programmer, I had a Palm VII and wanted to use its wireless (pager network) to search for books on http://used.AddALL.com. However, the "browser" was not designed for straight HTML and the network was expensive and had a low cap. The screen was only 160 pixels wide. All of this required special handling. in my case I made a PHP/MySQL web application to pass on the query to AddALL, grab the results, scrape through them, and put the desired data in my own MySQL table. Then the program would show an initial summary (23 books from $99 to $260) which could be clicked to "drill down" and get more detail. The MySQL "cached" results were used rather than hitting the AddALL site again. The Palm VII had a PQA (Palm Query App) that held the web form and showed the HTML results. It worked and was fairly impressive for a dozen years ago.

I mention this because it may be necessary to request content from the regular LT site and grab just the parts desired through screen scraping techniques. To LT it would be no different than a page request by a stationary or mobile browser. However this proxy could put the content that is relevant for the mobile browser or app with minimal delay. I have considered making such a proxy to view LT data on the iPhone browser. Of course, it might be very specific to me since the PHP app might need to be logged in to my LT account. Storing the proper cookies could be a real issue for this kind of thing.

Obviously a full API for LT would involve the ability to send a request (even via a structured URL and/or GET variables) and receiving minimal data and structure in response. We can do half of that now with some clever use of the URLs but we still get the full HTML of an LT page. The HTML portion of a typical catalog page for me is 3.9 MB--that's a lot for a mobile browser to download. That doesn't count all of the graphics, etc.

It is possible to get some of one's book cover images but the URLs are not easy for us to associate with the book ID number from an export in all cases.

There's lots to think about. I can export my 7,400-book library in CSV or tab-delimited for you to try against. There are a few books with multi-paragraph description and private description fields and a few with diacritical marks in the author or title fields. There are even a couple Japanese books with Kanji characters in the title field. It might be a good stress test.

Consider the workflow to update the mobile catalog. would it be deleted and reloaded with a fresh export? If so, how much processing is needed to make an index before the catalog can be used efficiently? Otherwise, how does one do an incremental add based on LT's export all or nothing system?

James

248 >

Reading CSV is no problem, using a true and tested 3rd party library for that (which was a bit buggy and still can't handle TSV). Btw seems like "collection" (My Library, Wishlist) are listed under title "TAGS" and tags (2012, adventure, France) are listed under title "COLLECTIONS", which might confuse some generic csv importing apps?

Scraping webpages is something I don't really like. Done that, always a problem to get right at first - and keep uptodate whenever webpage format/content/layout changes. Maybe in next version :) But sure, there are some interesting areas where it might be used. Duly noted and listed in backlog!

Basically first version is just an offline read-only personal book catalog backup file browser, nothing more. Less if only possible (minimal viable product ideology). Definitely not editing local data and uploading changes to LT website == no API, I think?

Not much progress, just added a dummy details view last night. Experimented and failed with UI decorations, too == bought about a year ago a nice leather look-and-feel set with Mobile Design Kit (by Tapptics), but have no idea how to get graphics out from PSD file. Well, not easily. Don't have Photoshop nor experience with that kind of things. Some pics at http://jomnius.tumblr.com/

Trying to avoid thinking about database, so guess I'll do "export scanned book ISBN numbers via email" next. Problem with (internal book data) database is that first dozen versions will be wrong, buggy, incomplete or just plain bad and doing app changes after each fix iteration is frustrating... Rather think about it first and do only the final version :)

CSV with 7400 books, hmm... Have to think what are minimal fixes needed so that I would dare to create ad hoc version to be sent for other people. Maybe next week (one of my kids has 3-day baskelball tournament this weekend, not planning to do any coding in immediate future).

Request for help: need a few exported LibraryThing catalogs as both CSV and TSV files for checking whether my iPhone app can parse them correctly. Must have book reviews, since those seem to be the difficult areas.

I could send you my catalog, but only about four hundred (out of 2500) of the books have reviews.

Is TSV the same as tab-delineated?

Yes - Comma Separated Values and Tab Separated Values.

Thanx, really appreciated!

Received already files from Keeline, happy to say a) failed to parse CSV ("unable to interpret current chunk as a string") and b) app didn't realize there was a problem! However TSV was ok, which was unexpected. Successful test case :)

Btw WARNING: yes I am planning to release an iPhone app for browsing your personal LibraryThing catalog offline, but it will not be free. Not trying to get rich or cover expenses, just don't have time to deal with people who download ALL free apps and then complain how "your book app failed to open my book". So it will be 99 cents most of the time, just to block users who are not really interested in this app. Sorry about that.

That's fine!
Many of us were willing to pay, anyway :)

I'd even be willing to pay a whole dollar! ;)

Edited because you can't close a 'b' tag with an '/a' tag for some reason.

Status update for "Exported LibraryThing Catalog Offline Reader and Additionally a Barcode Scanner and Uploader" application for iPhone.

First I need to make up a proper name :) Still like MyBooks, but that seems to be reserved at App Store. Maybe some variation like "MyBooks!" (notice the ! at the end, makes all the difference).

Missing "upload scanned barcodes as file into Dropbox", should be doable this week. Problem is making sure all uploads succeed before deleting barcodes from app, as well as dealing with local temp files (unique names, delete at some point, what if power runs out middle of file creation etc). Also recall there was some special upload file format with more than just plain barcodes, got to check.

Missing proper app graphics, planning to visit local library for some real old books for paper (app background) and leather cover (app titles) textures. Should be doable, I more or less know what I want.

Missing app icon, HUGE problem. Image with size 2048x2048 pixels, to be scaled down to 57x57 (and about half a dozen diff sizes in between). Got to tell a story of (see above for current temp name) with one look. Huh...

Anyway, guess I'll be able to make first ever release for external testers in about a week. Still planning to make "app store" release by the end of this month. Unless something unexpected happens, of course.

First beta release created, here's release note. Big day... well, it's 10.20 PM local time :)

Offline browser for LibraryThing catalog export file

Made for iPhone using iOS 5.0+, supports iOS6

Import view
- Connected to your Dropbox folder /Apps/MyBooks LT
- FIRST export LT catalog into that folder, THEN import from app
- Can import .xls files (Tab Separated Values)
- Can import .csv files (Comma Separated Values)
- TSV recommended for more info and less conversion issues
- Import view blocks app during connect, download, parse and indexing

Book Catalog view:
- Startup view, displays last imported data
- Alphabetical list by titles
- Quick jump/scroll using right side Section Index list
- Realtime search for title and author
- Select a row to view details

Details view:
- All book details from TSV (more) or CSV (less)
- Hides default values like copies 1, language (blank)
- Adds missing author name as "Unknown, Author"

Scan view:
- Alphabetical list by barcode
- No duplicates
- Display barcode and date of scanning
- Delete one by one with swipe
- Send all by email

Known issues:
- App name will change, thus Dropbox folder, too
- No graphics
- No icons
- Missing barcode export into Dropbox
- Alphabetical ordering limited to English alphabets
- Missing About this application etc. info

Should never crash under any circumstances, no matter what.

What do you mean by "no duplicates"? Would it choke if I had two identical editions, same barcode? Different dates, presumably. What about books with no barcodes?

Sounds nice! Here's hoping an Android version can be created...

I would be clear that the .xls file is really just a text file with tab-separated values. Otherwise people will be trying to use binary Excel spreadsheets. Indeed, the TSV files could also have extensions like .txt or .tsv as desired.

Perhaps "no duplicates" means that you can show a list with no duplicates for a work?

I shall be interested to try this out when it is possible to do so.

Among future development ideas, keep in mind that it would be nice to have the author works list and series list (especially) with similar indications that an item is owned. That way one can avoid purchasing duplicates while shopping on the road.

I have considered whether it is possible to put this kind of data in an OPML outliner such as Carbonfin Outliner. The key would be to take the individual author and series pages with the checkmarks for "have it" and translating them to the XML-based OPML standard as used by Carbonfin Outliner. This could be a nice tool to have when on a long buying trip away from home. I have one coming up in two weeks.

James

Yeah. The hard part for that would be getting it down in digestible form - that's all CK, which doesn't export. It would be nice, though. There was something, a good many years ago, about making that stuff available in JSON format...I don't know enough about JSON to know if it would then be useful; also I don't know if it is or could be available that way.

Book data is available via JSON using the LT APIs. There's still no accessing (most) CK data, though.

No duplicates means that whenever you scan a barcode, I check whether it already exists on list of (recently) scanned barcodes and refuse to add a second copy :) Didn't even think about comparing to book catalog, since... well, that single barcode in catalog is pretty useless as you say. Different editions, different language versions, different ISBN formats etc. Would need connection to LT server to check, if you already have "some" version of scanned book. Totally avoiding all LT server access in app version 1.0.

Filename extension .xls was mentioned, because that's what LT export offers by default. Personally I would use .tsv, but got to work with what is given to you. Should test what happens, when file with known filename extension but wrong content is being imported. Interesting things might happen.

Book list displays whatever it can get out of catalog file, no matter whether all "books" are exact duplicates of each others. It's your catalog, your books, your details. Well, I fix something things like add a missing author name, but those changes are not replicated back to LT server. No connection to server.

Version 1.0 is a bare minimum viable product: I'm in a bookstore, second-hand shop, local library and want to quickly check if I "have" (own/read) a certain book. Everything else has been stripped away, as much as possible. No network connection, no graphics, no "distracting" details or settings. All you can do is search a list for something (title or author).

Oh ok, scanning is extra feature... but I have SOOO many books not listed in LibraryThing and needed as easy as possible way to add them. Otherwise what's the point of being able to search, if your catalog doesn't contain (all) your books :)

Testing: create Dropbox account, then send me your email address, I'll send back invitation to TestFlight and things go pretty automatically after that. Need about 5 testers, got two. It's not easy being indie software author working on niche area. Fun, but not easy

Those LT apis, yes been thinking about them... Maybe there will be v2.0.

Huh, that took a looooooooong time! Now I got something as ready as it's going to be for Apple review. Have few plans for future versions, but first need to get something released:

http://jomnius.tumblr.com/

Fingers crossed that both Dropbox and Apple approve this :)

...and then I might think about trying to find out how LT people might think about this without making any kind of official or public contact, hmm... Can't have their endorsement without possibly getting all in trouble with possible version 2, which might (or might not) use LT data via their API in some potentially innovative (i.e. not the way it's actually meant to) ways. Unbelievable how difficult things can be. Maybe. Sigh.

The application "LT Catalog" v1.0 has been submitted to Apple for review. Average review time is 9 days and getting data inside the app is pretty difficult, which might even increase it.

Fingers crossed, hoping for best :)

Hello,
Sorry to barge in 4 years later, but I just released a barcode inventory app called "Barcode Library" (https://itunes.apple.com/app/barcode-library-scan-catalog/id573542953?mt=8).
For now, it only exports .csv files to Drobbox or email, but I would be happy to sync directly with LT accounts if there is interest and if the API allows it.
Thanks!
Benoit

#264,

As one of the beta testers, I would like to say that the app achieves its primary goals very well. I see these goals as:

* Provide a means of remotely browsing one's LT catalog on the iPhone

* Allow barcode scanning to build up a list of ISBNs that can be emailed and imported to LT's bulk import

As with any new app that is a companion to a complex system like LT, there's opportunity to wish for additional features and perhaps some of them will be implemented.

When this is available generally, I recommend that LT users who own an iPhone give it a try and see if it does not provide them with a useful tool to take on the road when shopping for books and avoiding buying duplicates, unless you want them.

James

...and it's available on App Store since about 45 minutes ago :D

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lt-catalog/id579432710?mt=8

"Did you already read that book, did you even buy it? Twice? Wouldn't you like to know! Now you can - with this offline browser for your LibraryThing book catalog export files!"

Update: app was rejected once, because I didn't make it clear that import by email works only (ONLY) when you export tab-separated-values into file with filename extension .xlslt (XLSLT). So that's the default .xls filename extension with lt (as in LibraryThing) == .xlslt

I purchased the app, and it provides me with the basics of what I need. Thanks!

Can I suggest, as a minimum, that you make the instructions on uploading your data much clearer (a welcome message that explains it thoroughly, or a wizard). The ideal process would be:

(1) Register the .xls file type to your app, on the iPhone
(2) Display a message explaining that Safari will open and they should log in and tap on "Export as tab-delimited text", then choose LT catalog from the menu.
(3) Open Safari to http://www.librarything.com/more/import - perhaps even in an iframe so you could display the instructions
(4) After import, de-register the file type.

It would also be very useful to have an 'authors' view, and equally useful to be able to tap on publishers, tags, authors, and so on, to create a search.

Thanx, all written down to be considered for future versions! Don't think I can dynamically register any file types at runtime, but I'll check. Would make things easier.

Opening mobile web browser is easy, but the page text will be quite small. This is one big area already on my checklist, experimenting with some creative ways to integrate web browser inside the app... Currently planned earliest for version 3.

Different views, especially list by authors is planned for version 2 :)

Oh just in case it's not clear: I have no connection with LibraryThing at all, just a happy user.

So how hard would it be to adapt it for Android?

Robert

I have never done any Android apps, no plans while focusing on iOS. Should be pretty simple, it's just getting a CSV file inside app, parsing and displaying contents as a list. Took me 2 months of evenings, including all the graphics :)

Guess it's a question of motivation: I needed this app myself and since nobody else was going to do it, had to do one by myself. Money is not motivation (but I do keep it at minimum price to avoid spammers), sold 4 copies in a week. Actually more than I expected, so very happy!

Will there be an adaption for an iPad app as well?

By default iPhone apps work in iPad, too. Everything is just bigger :) No special iPad version planned, will think about what a generic "sort by any available field" might look like first. No good solutions yet...

Love it, love it, love it. I have been waiting for such a needed tool. I've gotten to the point where I cannot recall if that's a book in my library or just a book I know and have bought too many duplicates. The ability to use it w/o internet was just what was needed. I've been in too many used bookstore basements with no reception.

#274,

Be sure to post a review in the App Store so that others can know your sentiments. Granted this is a narrow vertical, displaying a collection of books for one particular website.

I have found it helpful myself since the beta testing stage. With 7,600 books, I can only afford to get duplicates when they are intentional. I still use the main site and the /m site sometimes but this app is getting more of my use.

James

I have a new phone. I can get my list of books to load up but I can't get the screen to enlarge. What is wrong?

#276,

I take it that you are referring to the /m site. It was set up in such a way that the iPhone browser (and likely others) zoom feature is disabled. Quite some time ago I posted a tiny change they could make on the /m page code to allow it to zoom properly. It has not been implemented. You can try this static page on your phone browser to see that it can zoom: http://keeline.com/ip/. The main key is in the meta tag compared with the current implementation.

Otherwise, if you are using an iPhone, export your catalog as tab-separated values. Change the extension to .xlslt (think of this as Excel for LT). Email the newly-named file to yourself. Install the 99¢ LT Catalog app. Open the email app and click on the attachment. It should load into the LT Catalog app.

This program can let you view your LT catalog by title without an Internet connection. You can also scan barcodes to be emailed to you for upload to the bulk import feature of LT.

James

Mine is not an iPhone. It is a cheaper smartphone called an LG. If LT can't implement a tiny change to make it zoom, well, then, just phooey to the whole thing. Good Grief.

eta: thank you, Keeline

You know how Tim works; he only adds new features to one area at a time. His next target is supposedly the Add Books page and I don't know if he ever intends to get around to the mobile page again.

#278,

Well, this is an iPhone thread so I thought there was a good chance you were asking about using one with the LT /m page.

An interesting detail for me would be whether your phone will zoom the text with the meta tags as defined in my sample page: http://keeline.com/ip I don't have access to an Android phone (or several) to see how they handle this code which was designed to work on HTML5 for the iPhone's Safari browser.

James

280, I'm sorry but I don't understand a word you are saying. My phone is only two days old and I have spent 48 hours completely frustrated with it. Maybe I can get my husband to try to figure out what you are saying tomorrow evening. :(

The zoom works fine on my Galaxy Note (original, not II, running 4.1 Ice Cream Sandwich) in both mobile Firefox and the default browser - I can also enter text and click the Go button and it goes away (and shows up in the URL in the default browser - I didn't see it there in Firefox but I wasn't looking then).

Collectorator, he's asking you to go to the site he highlighted (type it into the location bar) on your phone, and try to zoom there.

Doing anything on the Internet on a smartphone is something of a pain, though. And (on the rare occasions I need to go to LT on the web) I avoid the librarything.com/m site entirely and just go to librarything.com (and refuse if it offers me the mobile version) - but then it's a pain to _see_ the site, even though you can zoom. Even on my Note, which is huge for a smartphone (though I did it more often on my Samsung Galaxy S, which is only large for a smartphone).

I typed my username into all three boxes. Nothing happens and nothing zooms. My phone, and the whole world, hates me.

Just to be clear, the page on Keeline.com is not intended to be functional. It doesn't collect data or process it. It's sole purpose is to test the browser's zoom functionality.

On the iPhone's built-in Safari browser, a zoom can be accomplished by double clicking on the screen or by using two fingers in a reverse pinch (moving the tips apart).

These gestures do not work on the /m site because it was coded to prevent that (probably in error). It does work on the sample page.

Working with the regular site on a phone browser is something I do but it is tedious. Everything is so small but when you try to zoom by the methods I mentioned, it is very easy to click on one of the dozens of links on a page and go to another page you didn't intend.

Even under the best conditions (WIFI), the LT pages are a challenge for the phone browsers because of the connection speed and complexity of the pages. Still, for certain data you might need on the go, it is the only option just now.

Good luck with your new phone. I gather this is your first smart phone.

James

Okay, yes, now I see that by going to your URL I can see that my browser on my smartphone (yes this is my first one) will indeed zoom and unzoom. So, there's a positive. :D Thanks for your help, Keeline.

That the LT page will not zoom is really just annoying as hell. If it would zoom, I could see what I have when I'm in a bookstore. As it is, I guess I will start carrying around a magnifying glass.

Good grief.

For the iPhone, the /m page won't zoom.

For the regular site, the page will zoom but it can be slow to load and render. You have to find a spot without a link to perform the zoom gesture. It takes some practice and is sometimes frustrating.

See if you can get used to it. At the moment there is not an Android app like LT Catalog that can take an LT export and let you view the contents when you don't have an Internet connection. LT Catalog was made by a member here and it is discussed above. I find it useful and was a beta tester.

James

FYI I am working on a simple Android app to browse and search your library while offline. The data comes from the tab-delimited export file.

The browsing/searching parts are mostly done. The main remaining part is getting the export file into the app in a simple way and parsing it in the app rather than by hand -- being a Java newcomer it'll take me shamefully longer than it should.

Once that's done and working I'll put it on the Play Store (free) and post a link here so that anyone interested can try it out.

>287

Very interesting. I look forward to this!

>288

I've finished a first version of an Android app, and written more on the "Android app" thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/121348#3796848

I just bought jouni 's app, and have imported from DropBox but the app crashes just after it starts indexing.

iOS 6 on iPhone 4

>290 Wow, can you send me crash related text from console (using the free iPhone Configuration Utility)?

Alternatively you could email the list to yourself as an email attachment with filename extension .xlslt, open in iPhone Mail app and tap on the attachment file. That will open LT Catalog app and import that list.

Also you could email email me the catalog file and I could debug it? Until now there has been zero known crash bugs.

Hi. I couldn't find a contact method in app, or your website, so I posted on your blog under the LT post with more information

The email attachment method hadn't worked either. The import step seems to finish, and it crashes at the index step regardless of whether it's email or DropBox.

I've found your email now off the blog. When I find out exactly how to send you crash reports will do.

Well the LT scanner (Android) is fabulous! Entered a dozen books with it in no time

>292 Thanx, received the file and could reproduce the crash. Unfortunately it's not related to Dropbox latest update or anything external like that. A genuine built-in parser bug, related to your book "The Dribblesome Teapots and Other Incredible Stories" :(

The problem is that LibraryThing export puts quote mark (") before the start of book title, but not at the end. Therefore parser keeps going on beyond the actual end of book title until it finds next quote a lot later and thinks that's where the title ends. As result parsed book data does not contain as many data fields as file header promised. When I try try check a hardcoded location how many copies of book you got, that data location doesn't exist and app crashes due "out of bounds" error i.e. trying to read a non-existing memory location. This is not allowed, thus operating system crashes the bad behaving app.

So actually this is a bug in LibraryThing export, but I got to live with whatever they offer and be happy with it... Well, of course it could be that the book title actually does start with a double quote character for some weird reason. Quite possible.

Quickest way to make import work is to manually edit your XLS file (in Excel or OpenOffice) and add closing title qoute mark (or remove the weird starting one) on columns B and Y on row 959 (search for Dribblesome), I'm afraid.

Fixing the problem inside app is troublesome, because some book comments can contain tab characters, which is the default field separator character in tab-separated-value export. Therefore I must respect double quote (") as a field starting character or app will crash for failing to parse comments. It did while I was testing before release.

Hmm, possible fix could be that I respect quotes only inside user generated data like review, comments and private comments? Nasty, but might work. Maybe. Unless user enters the whole book data manually, like for some book before ISBN was invented... Hmm. Wonder, if tag or collection name could contain single quote character just for the fun.

Sorry for the trouble!

Ohh, this is horrible! Title of three editions of that book do start with a single lonely double quote character !!!

http://www.librarything.com/work/994041/editions

Well. Guess I could make title a special case and hope it will never ever contain real tab characters as part of the title. Right? But what to do with the quote, it really is a valid part of book title... as far as LT Catalog knows, because it doesn't know anything else, but what was imported. Argh!

Also summary field mostly contains title for the second time, so now that's two special cases. Unless summary contains something else, but that can be checked by comparing to previously parsed book title. Unless there's title and something more, when it can't be compared so easily. Hmm.

I can see how this slows down the import another few seconds... and reduces the amount of hair I got growing on top of my scalp.

I note that the Amazon listing has the unbalanced quotation marks (leading but not trailing). That tells me that it is the likely source of the problem. The cover images I found online did not have visible quotation marks on the covers so I don't think it is correct.

I don't know how many other Amazon titles have this issue. Since the books are part of Amazon's used book listings, it could be a problem with the first seller to upload the title.

At first glance, it seems unlikely that there would be tabs (t) in the data itself. Perhaps there are cases.

When processing a line of the input, can the code be made to "fail gracefully" so that a problematic entry is skipped with an error message such as:

Could not add '"Dribblesome Teapots...' on line 959 because of problems in the data (unbalanced quotation marks, not enough fields).

Then, if the user wants to retry the input file after making manual corrections (or changing their LT data and exporting again) the skipped title(s) can be used.

A problem with this I could foresee is if there are many errors. Perhaps you'd stop (gracefully) after a certain number of errors (say 5) and inform the user. Perhaps offer to email the error log with messages like the above.

Most users of this app will not be programmer types so it is important to consider the typical book-loving LT user.

James

>296 So it comes from Amazon? Meaning there could be more than one rare every now and then? That's not very nice...

Yep, exellent solution: I can check after each row whether it seems to be valid or not and ignore invalid ones. Not perfect, but good enough. Good idea about emailing the troublesome entries!

When processing a line of the input, can the code be made to "fail gracefully" so that a problematic entry is skipped with an error message such as:

I don't believe that a CSV file is required to put line feeds between lines but if the one from LT always does and that's the only source of CSVs you need to worry about then I guess you could make that assumption.

Don't you also need to worry about commas inside the title, which would be a lot more common than tabs.

But what to do with the quote, it really is a valid part of book title... as far as LT Catalog knows, because it doesn't know anything else, but what was imported. Argh!

That's an LT export bug. If there actually is a quote mark inside the title field then it should be escaped, I think by doubling it.

The export used for this app is the tab-delimited with a default extension of .xls which must be changed to .xlslt for import into the app.

The previous post refers to comma-separated values files. On LT that export does tot have as many fields. Neither is ideal.

James

>298 Both CSV (comma-separated-values) and TSV (tab-separated-values) contain one item on one row separated by "line breaks of some kind" (says wikipedia). The exception is that any field inside one row can be quoted and then contain pretty much anything, including line breaks. In case of LibraryThing exports, those can be found for example inside reviews, but there were other fields, too. All nicely quoted so far.

You are right, LT export "should have" escaped that random double quote character at start of title!

Well, the fix I could do is to validate number of expected fields, ignore corrupted results - and hope that parser is magically at the right location i.e. starting to check a brand new book instead of being at linebreak inside a review :)

Sounds good. Also report the bug in the Bug Collectors group.

Keeline The change to .xlslt is only needed if using the email attachment method. The app looks for .xls if in DropBox. Some in-app documentation would really help to clarify as I had to read a bunch of different LT threads to figure out how to import!

Jouni: Looking for the crash information was slow as the internal name for the app is MyBooks or something like that so it took me a while to find when I was expecting a name starting with LT or Librarything or Catalog...

I've removed it in my LT catalog, re-exported and all works now. Thank you!

I guess a .xls file created with OpenOffice doesn't work. Bummer. Back to BookCrawler.

Created how? If it _exactly_ matched LT's export, it should work - but why would you do it that way, rather than doing an LT export?

It doesn't work with an Excel binary format file from any source (which will be what OpenOffice creates if you save as .xls). You need to save as a text format: .csv which is comma separated, or tab separated. The confusion arises because when you do a LibraryThing export in tab separated format, it saves with the extension .xls even though it's not an Excel binary format file.

As keeline said in 259:
I would be clear that the .xls file is really just a text file with tab-separated values. Otherwise people will be trying to use binary Excel spreadsheets. Indeed, the TSV files could also have extensions like .txt or .tsv as desired.

Um. I started with the .csv export from LibraryThing. That didn't work. There were comments about creating a .xls file so I did so using the only means available to me - OpenOffice. Every file I attempted an import with I put into Dropbox>Apps>LT Catalog.

Do the tab-delimited export - although it's actually a text file, it gets downloaded with a .xls extension. Put that in Dropbox and it should work.

If you really want the CSV export instead (it has a lot fewer fields, but it may have what you want - it has some that TD doesn't, and vice versa), download it and just change the extension to .xls (don't pass it through Calc or Excel or whatever), then put that in Dropbox.

>302 When I started writing the app "MyBooks" was available, but unfortunately reserved when it was time to make a release. Can't help it now, but reading console should be a rare occasion. Happy you managed to figure it out, was very helpful!

>304 the filename extension comes from LT export, can't help it. It's totally wrong, should be ".tsv" but yet again - can't help it. Bummer.

On the other hand "LT Catalog" application is pretty liberal with file content. Basically only want columns with headers containing "Title", "Author" and "Date" in whatever order or case. The rest either can be there or not, really don't care. So writing a (tab-separated-value) file in OpenOffice or MS Office is possible. Or writing a script to convert anything to that format should work, too.

LibraryThing TSV export contains "author (last, first)" and "author (first, last)", which is ok. Just want anything containing "author".

...ok, there are few special cases like copies, ratings and encoding which are filtered away, when they contain non-informatic default values. But they can be missing, not needed at all. Just hidden, if not helpful...

>308 Sorry, but CSV support was removed. It was buggy in different ways to TSV export bugs and at one point I just decided that it's better to make a release (any release) than use any more time to support both formats. CSV contains less data, so TSV was chosen.

Anyways... there's a school skiing holiday in a week, so I'll try to put together a fix. There's lots to do, so I'll have to see what can be done and what has to be dropped off. New version should be available in app store in about 2 weeks from now, latest at the end of February. One review at Apple takes a week.

Planned: crash fix definitely (as defined above), also iOS6+ compatibility. Anything else is a bonus, but will check changing list order from title to author. Maybe also some user guide :)

Tab separated export worked. Thanks - I like the dipspay. Perhaps something could be put in info to indicate which export option needs to be chosen? My plan is to use this with anything in my to be read collection that is not in my Library collection . For now I'll create that with OpenOffice. Any chance of this being a feature in the future?

>310 you mean filter by collection? Search is already checking full data, so e.g. searching for "read but unowned" would show books from that collection (and all others where that exact string would be in other fields e.g. title or tag)... but sure, it's a bit difficult. Can't do a search on a search.

OpenOffice: create sheet where FIRST row contains title strings, see above: got to have something with title, author and date. The rest whatever. Everything after first row is one book on a row, must have something for each column. I recall empty value was ok, as long as each row contains as many fields as there are columns (titles). That's it, save as tab-separated-values file. Rename filename extension to .xlslt if you want to email it to yourself, from Dropbox you can import .tsv, .tsvlt, .xls or .xlslt.

Should work, never tested :)

For that "collection" thing, I'm thinking about a generic solution, but have to check if I can do that in a few evenings...

...oh ok, seen Facebook app for iPhone? It has this icon at top left corner, which opens a full-screen scrollable menu. Something like that would be nice. Space enough for user manual entry, different sort orders, filtering by categories. Would be nice, me thinks...

Yep. Stuff to put inside that side menu is bigger problem, but first things first: crash fix.

Experimenting for update, reading old notes about api issues around November 2009 as a reminder. Nevertheless tried using some LT APIs:

1) isbncheck to convert one specific scanned ISBN to isbn known by LT (License: Unrestricted; hit it no more than 10/second. Developer key: Not needed)

2) and then whatwork to convert that to work id so that I could offer a link to work page in web browser (License: Free to all with attribution)

...and what do I suddenly receive? verify.php !!!

I give up. Pitakaa prkle tunkkinne.

...ok, maybe I should be grateful. Better to get it now, when it's not "implemented" inside app. Think positive, saved lot of time for something else. No APIs, none, nada, zilch, zip, zippo, zero. Well at least I can go walk in rain, it's close to freezing point.