why isn't p.g. being user-friendly?
greg, you still haven't answered my question. why doesn't p.g. offer to people the ability to request that a p.g. e-book be e-mailed to their kindle account? seems to me that would be user-friendly... if you don't know how to do this technically, i'd guess that someone here can probably help you figure it out. -bowerbird
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 04:06:56PM -0400, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
greg, you still haven't answered my question.
why doesn't p.g. offer to people the ability to request that a p.g. e-book be e-mailed to their kindle account?
seems to me that would be user-friendly...
if you don't know how to do this technically, i'd guess that someone here can probably help you figure it out.
-bowerbird
I don't know how to do that, and didn't notice you had asked earlier. We haven't emailed books before, but I agree it might be desirable. I can think of some details that matter (i.e., preventing emailing books to strangers; books that are too big for email). The readingroo.ms site is, as always, available for anyone wanting to do experimentation. Slightly related, there was a fellow who was interested in a PG app. It would do that sort of thing... but I don't expect to see a PG app anytime soon. We did a pair of apps where I work (one for idevices, one for android), and they take constant care & feeding to maintain. -- Greg
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Greg Newby <gbnewby@pglaf.org> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 04:06:56PM -0400, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
greg, you still haven't answered my question.
why doesn't p.g. offer to people the ability to request that a p.g. e-book be e-mailed to their kindle account?
seems to me that would be user-friendly...
if you don't know how to do this technically, i'd guess that someone here can probably help you figure it out.
-bowerbird
I don't know how to do that, and didn't notice you had asked earlier. We haven't emailed books before, but I agree it might be desirable. I can think of some details that matter (i.e., preventing emailing books to strangers; books that are too big for email).
The readingroo.ms site is, as always, available for anyone wanting to do experimentation.
The humble bundle site manages this by letting users add the humble bundle kindle address to their authorised kindle email addresses, and providing an email address for the kindle device to humblebundle. This then automates the emailing/library storing of any books the user wants to download to their kindle. I found their system neat and fast. Z
On 10/30/2012 01:33 AM, Greg Newby wrote:
We haven't emailed books before, but I agree it might be desirable. I can think of some details that matter (i.e., preventing emailing books to strangers; books that are too big for email).
That would be very hard to do in a secure way. We'd have to check each person's email to avoid people spamming other people's Kindles with big files or with unappropriate content. We'd have to implement a full fledged user system, with email address, password and email confirmation. This is confidential data and quite impossible to keep secret on a system like ibiblio, where all web servers run as user nobody. Furthermore Amazon could easily block that if they wanted because our IP adress would be known. They probably have a big spam filter already that would block us anyway. And it would be a wrong political signal. Why should a volunteer organization work hard to make a the crappy devices of a multi-billion company user-friendly? After all it is not PG being user-unfriendly but Amazon. Our politics should be to make people complain to Amazon. The solution is quite easy: Ask Amazon to implement a function in Silk that lets user save books to the "Books" tab. Make lots of people ask. Regards -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
CMIIW, but don't you have to manually add an email address to the "approved" list before it can send things to your kindle? This is how it was back with my K2 and K3, not sure if they changed it for fire. If so, it would be trivial to have a system where a "user" can specify the username that the email comes from as part of clicking the send-to-kindle button. (Like, a text field or something). So I whitelisted alex.buie123@mailer.gutenberg.org, and someone else whitelists bowerbird321@mailer.gutenberg.org, etc, so you have to know someone's "secret key" in order to send a book to their kindle. Bonus points for remembering the person's "tripcode" (if you will) and email addy between book sends (in a cookie?) I think a full-blown login system is overkill for this. Greg: I'd love to try implementing such a thing on readingroo.ms, what are your thoughts on it? On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 6:18 AM, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
On 10/30/2012 01:33 AM, Greg Newby wrote:
We haven't emailed books before, but I agree it might be desirable. I can think of some details that matter (i.e., preventing emailing books to strangers; books that are too big for email).
That would be very hard to do in a secure way.
We'd have to check each person's email to avoid people spamming other people's Kindles with big files or with unappropriate content.
We'd have to implement a full fledged user system, with email address, password and email confirmation. This is confidential data and quite impossible to keep secret on a system like ibiblio, where all web servers run as user nobody.
Furthermore Amazon could easily block that if they wanted because our IP adress would be known. They probably have a big spam filter already that would block us anyway.
And it would be a wrong political signal. Why should a volunteer organization work hard to make a the crappy devices of a multi-billion company user-friendly? After all it is not PG being user-unfriendly but Amazon. Our politics should be to make people complain to Amazon.
The solution is quite easy: Ask Amazon to implement a function in Silk that lets user save books to the "Books" tab. Make lots of people ask.
Regards
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
On 10/30/2012 02:06 PM, Alex Buie wrote:
CMIIW, but don't you have to manually add an email address to the "approved" list before it can send things to your kindle? This is how it was back with my K2 and K3, not sure if they changed it for fire.
My default email worked right out of the box.
If so, it would be trivial to have a system where a "user" can specify the username that the email comes from as part of clicking the send-to-kindle button. (Like, a text field or something). So I whitelisted alex.buie123@mailer.gutenberg.org, and someone else whitelists bowerbird321@mailer.gutenberg.org, etc, so you have to know someone's "secret key" in order to send a book to their kindle.
That means people would have to authorize one random *@gutenberg.org address on their Amazon account, then remember that address and re-enter it at the gutenberg.org site, plus they have to remember their Kindle email address and enter that one too. That is 3 steps to get right, and quite incomprehensible steps for a non-tech user too. I think it will be a big user-interface fiasco and as user-friendly as Greenland is by Australia. That data would still be too sensitive to leave on an open system like ibiblio. All in all I think it is not worth the candle, but if you want to implement that on readingrooms I'll be glad to put a link on the bibrec pages, with the appropriate parameters, so it would be one click from the bibrec page to your "login" page. Still the wrong solution politically. Regards -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
We haven't emailed books before, but I agree it might be desirable.
You have maybe a problem with the PG terms of use in that some Amazon email addresses cause the book to be sent by 3G, which costs the end customer real money, i.e. distribution costs, whereas you can also choose to email to a slightly different email address which only sends via wifi, i.e. for free.
After all it is not PG being user-unfriendly but Amazon.
See feedbooks.com for an example of a website which is reasonably "user friendly."
The solution is quite easy: Ask Amazon to implement a function in Silk that lets user save books to the "Books" tab. Make lots of people ask.
I asked back in 2011. Amazon promised to do it (not to "Books" but rather "Documents" so that it would be compatible with the other Kindles.) But they haven't done so. Good luck.
Just to point out something: you can only email books to a Kindle from an email address you have approved in your Amazon account, so you can't spam people with e-books (not easily, anyway). One thing that could work is to provide a form where a person could enter the email address he wanted to mail to, and give the person the option (unchecked by default) to remember the email address in a cookie so he doesn't have to fill it in each time. That way the email address would be tied to the computer used, and there would be no need to create a database of users. James Simmons On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de
wrote:
On 10/30/2012 01:33 AM, Greg Newby wrote:
We haven't emailed books before, but I
agree it might be desirable. I can think of some details that matter (i.e., preventing emailing books to strangers; books that are too big for email).
That would be very hard to do in a secure way.
We'd have to check each person's email to avoid people spamming other people's Kindles with big files or with unappropriate content.
We'd have to implement a full fledged user system, with email address, password and email confirmation. This is confidential data and quite impossible to keep secret on a system like ibiblio, where all web servers run as user nobody.
Furthermore Amazon could easily block that if they wanted because our IP adress would be known. They probably have a big spam filter already that would block us anyway.
And it would be a wrong political signal. Why should a volunteer organization work hard to make a the crappy devices of a multi-billion company user-friendly? After all it is not PG being user-unfriendly but Amazon. Our politics should be to make people complain to Amazon.
The solution is quite easy: Ask Amazon to implement a function in Silk that lets user save books to the "Books" tab. Make lots of people ask.
Regards
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
______________________________**_________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/**mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d<http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d>
participants (8)
-
Alex Buie -
Bowerbird＠aol.com -
Greg Newby -
James Adcock -
James Simmons -
Joshua Hutchinson -
Marcello Perathoner -
Zara Baxter