Socially Fixing Amazon Kindle Reader

Using amazon kindle social sharing feature right now is a waste of time.  We can fix it though…  but first, here’s what currently happens with the SHARE.  

You highlight your text in the book you’re currently reading, click share, pick twitter of Facebook, and off it goes.  Great!  Well no.  If you look at the tweet, all that you’re left with is an anonymous link to amazon.

“Hey guys, look at this… terrible url… which I promise is a really clever quote…  from a book…  also not mentioned…”

sample:

amzn.com/k/1Z1B8PFZSZGWT #Kindle

Yeah, this makes me want to buy a book or embark on a passionate conversation about the book I’m reading that maybe someone else in the twitterverse/fb land also read and would like to talk about.

First, a hack around the “problem” on the twitter side (I avoid fb largely).  Create a second twitter account that just has these kindle shared urls dumped into it.  Write a script that follows this account.  When it gets the tweet, a quick regex confirm it is the appropriate format of an amazon tweet-highlight-share, then retrieve the url.  Parsing the html pulled back from Amazon might be terrible, I haven’t looked.  Anyway, parse out the bits you want, format as you’d like, and then have it tweeted from you MAIN account that you also have an API hook into.  Simple no?  Well, not trivial…  but not INSANELY COMPLICATED to be sure.

Related, this is what a properly formatted tweet from amazon SHOULD look like…  Throw ‘em the bone for the 28 characters of their crappy url.  That leaves us with 116 to play with.  What do we want to include?  Some segment of our highlight and the name of the book?  Basically, we need an (arbitrary it would seem) chunk of our 116 for title and highlight.  What about mentioning author?  Or hashtag?  We might be doomed…  Let’s see what we get…  Damn again.  Need quotes.  We lost two more characters.  Oh no again…  there more for ellipses at the end of our concatenated quote.  Things are looking BAD!  Pull up!  Mountainside.  Too close!  Pull Up!  [Ok, so maybe I can see why they didn’t dick too much with this…  but still…  they didn’t even try.]

“Out of the blackness of the ward, a half-open file drawer of pain each bed a folder, come cr…” Gravity’s Rainbow amzn.com/k/1Z1B8PFZSZGWT

That’s what we get with no hashtag.  But do to the overwhelming popularity (inevitable) of this solution, we all agree that #eread is the ONE TRUE HASHTAG.

“Out of the blackness of the ward, a half-open file drawer of pain each bed a folder, co…” Gravity’s Rainbow amzn.com/k/1Z1B8PFZSZGWT #eread

So in this model, amazon still gets the traffic.  Hell, they’d probably get more traffic.  Going to that page, you would have not only the full quote but also links to BUY the goddamn book (which is, I believe, what they like to do).  Maybe it even has more links over to 1) the #eread hashtag search on twitter, 2) forums for the particular author or book, 3) the usual noise for people who read - X- also read Y 4) follow the author on twitter, and of course 5) follow @kindle or whatever on twitter. 

tl;dr - Kindle, I want to share.  Please let me.  You’ll make money off of it.

(Also, I’m not a pompous ass poseur using Gravity’s Rainbow as a pompous ass poseur example — I’m reading it again.  On the kindle.  Though you can’t actually BUY it for the kindle.  I’ve read the book many times.  I really don’t know what its about…  other than many things.  It makes me happy to read.  If I am a pompous ass poseur, its for other reasons…)

ICEBREAKER — a web media/game project

my little experiment @

http://revzero.org/icebreaker/

blurb:

“A hacking mission deep into corporate networks by the infamous Captain Chiba and her ROMdogs goes horribly wrong.  Icebreaker is an experimental hybrid comic, short story, videogame, and audio project.  Oh, and don’t for get the lulz bomb.”

***

I was trying to make something new, and instead only identified the blocks I can use to make that new thing.

Icebreaker is something I put together over a few months this summer.  I’m not going to lie — you’ll probably recognize the screen size of the main images.   This was supposed to be an iphone app (plural actually but that’s another story).  It was the only way I could think of to try to monetize this experiment.  

I fell short of my personal goals with it.  Its kind of neat.  It bugs the crap out of me every time I finish a videogame segment and the sound just abruptly cuts out.  Some parts are too long.  The pacing is a bit jagged.  I feel like the text bits are WoT (wall of text… COME ON PEOPLE). pacing-wise.  Still, before throwing this uh stuff against the wall I didn’t know what it would look like, how it would flow or not, or even how the bits would interact.  I think I’ll do better with the next go-round.  Like I said, I know what the blocks look like now.  There were some blocks that I knew of but left out too.

One unused block relates to something that author Warren Ellis linked and commented: the idea of socially reading a text.  I agree 100% with the assessment that the text itself is still one way, solo.  Still, in our now interconnected world, we could connect the readers over to a place where other readers are.  (A link.  An iframe. This could just be embedding a mobile skinned forum into your book app.)  Your readers swarm to YOUR forum where they can, in true internet fashion, interact politely and civilly with other readers of your text.  Just don’t ever go in there yourself.  Ever.

Along with this, your app could provide a catalog containing direct links to purchase your other books and probably a whole bunch of other stuff.  Previews?  Appearances?  News?  Since it is wired, this would be a call out to something hosted on your website so you can make all the changes you want.  More blocks.  Less creative blocks, but still potentially valuable to the thing… (wtb cool name for text thing).

Comments/hatred/suggestions — let me know!

@tcotav

New Sucks (A First World Problem)

We remodeled our kitchen four years ago replacing appliances.  One particular beastie we got rid of was a massive groaning yellow refrigerator.  Two days ago, I noticed the freezer was a bit warmer than it should be.  ”Dammit,” sez me, “I must have propped open the door somehow for a longer duration.”  I closed the door and made sure it was sealed up.  Problem solved?  Short story lacking point?  Oh no.

It ends up that the fridge continued to get warmer.  Yesterday, I threw away thirty or so pounds of shit that would never have been eaten yet was not worth removing from the appliance.  Fridge kept getting warmer.  Houston…  we have a problem.

The GE repair guy was out today.  He was certified to fix our brand of appliance.  Just wanted to make that clear before we get to the punchline.  He was here not too long poking at the thing.  Punchline:  probably better to just replace it.  Cost of parts and labor would approach the cost of new.

Four years.

My wife asked him “what would be a better brand then?  or a better model?”  His answer: “They’re all the same.  We don’t even make them.  They come from one of only two manufacturers.  Yours will be from either Korea or Malaysia.”  It was Malaysia.  GE just puts the stickers on them in the end.  Four years for the fridge.  4 YEARS.  So we’re off to buy another shitty short-term fridge.

In context, this is yet another piece of trashpliance with a four year life span.  We replace our TV’s and our laptops in that cycle or less, no?  I don’t, but I’m a cheap bastard.  Overall though, this is exactly what we do.  We need to get the next new thing.  We upgrade.  Can you JUST IMAGINE the advances in refrigerator technology — the LEAPS that will be made in the next four years????  Yeah — boggles the mind.

So we want a cheap current thing.  How do they get that current cheapness?  They end up having all of the different “choices” we as consumers demand, but these choices all come from the same one or two manufacturers overseas.  All of them.  The illusion of choice is largely stickers, a few different plastic moulds, and paint.  Korea or Malaysia.  Why not North Dakota?  Lots of room there.  People would gladly head over.  Sure it’s flat and when it snows…  its flat and snowy, but people want jobs, right?  

Another thought — somewhere along the way, a fridge got lumped into the pile of short-cycled trashpliance along with the washer, dryer, dishwasher, and everything else in your modern fancy kitchen I’d bet.  So what?  That’s what we want, right?  Well, (and again, I’m drowning in first world problem here, I GET that, but go ahead and point it out to me again just for sport if you’d like), all the food went bad in the fridge.  It’ll run  us another grand or so I’d imagine (we’re going this afternoon to figure out that hit).  I can’t just drop the ****ing thing into the trash out back.  Yes, you see where I’m going — I’m annoyed because I’m inconvenienced.  Boohoo?  Indeed.

All of this is what we want through right?  We need more corporate profits.  We have to get them all running lean and mean (which mostly means offshore, sweatshops, robots (not joking), with a few overpaid white men in their 50s making millions to steer the fine vessel).  BUT, it is driving down the price of the appliance (even though you’ll have to buy new ones two or three times per decade versus the old one which would’ve kept your beer cold into eternity… assuming the electricity kept flowing of course).  We think only of that sticker price, not looking at the cost over time.  

anyhow — none of this is new or exciting.  People have said it better/smarter/longer/shorter than me.  I’m just killing time while the furnace repair guy finishes up (which is a whole OTHER story).

book req: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction by Barry C. Lynn