New at BookMooch (Feb 24, 2007)

– FREE HAND-OUT BOOKMOOCH CARDS
– SECOND LIFE BOOKMOOCH SPACE
– NEW FEATURES

======================

FREE HAND-OUT BOOKMOOCH CARDS

I’m sending out business-card sized little info cards (yes, the dead-
tree kind) that you can give to your friends and coworkers to tell
them about BookMooch, as well as use as book marks.

You can get from 20 to 1000 cards free (50 to 100 is typical) if you
live in the USA and send me an email telling me how many you want. Be
sure to include your postal address when you email me.

More info and a picture of the cards at:
http://bookmooch.com/about/helpus

======================

SECOND LIFE BOOKMOOCH SPACE

We have an cozy space on Second Life, the virtual world, where you
can hang out and discuss books with other Moochers.

To go to our space: search for "bookmooch" in Second Life and
teleport to it

We’re planning on scheduling get-togethers for Moochers on Second
Life. To receive notifications of Second Life/BookMooch events, send
a blank email to:
join-bookmooch-sl@bookmooch.com

======================

NEW FEATURES AT BOOKMOOCH

– HISTORY IN BRIEF – the history page now defaults to a clean "less
details" table, so you can easily see a person’s previous books and
all their feedback at once. A "Show details" page gives you all the
data, or you can click on a single transaction’s "DETAILS" button
http://bookmooch.com/m/history/

– PENDING IN BRIEF – books you’ve sent are now shown with fewer
details, and there’s a "SHOW DETAILS" button to see everything. The
page now displays up to 50 pending items per page, so most people can
see everything they’re up to all at once. I kept the book covers and
other details on books you’re to receive, and that you haven’t yet
sent because I thought these are books you want to see the covers for
(for instance, to spot a book you get in the mail, and quickly mark
it as a "received"). However, this is certainly up for discussion,
and I could certainly do things like do-not-display-your-own-postal-
address on books that have already been sent to you. http://
bookmooch.com/m/pending/

– ACCEPT THIS REQUEST – mooch requests now offer the option for the
book owner to "accept" the mooch request, and they can also indicate
when they’re likely to send the book (defaults to "tomorrow") This
is not a required step for book owners, but it does move books in the
owner’s "pending page" to a "books accepted to send" grouping, and
many BookMooch members have indicated wanting to know if their mooch
request has been accepted without the stigma of the "delay" feature.
Note also that the "delay" feature no longer uses the word "apology"
so that people can feel ok indicating a delay.

– 2 EMAIL ADDRESSES – you can now put multiple email addresses in
your profile, and emails from BookMooch will go to all of them. This
is useful if you want a work & home email address to get wishlist
notifications, for example. Note that email sent by BookMooch on
your behalf (such as when you mooch) will come From: the first email
address you list. http://bookmooch.com/m/profile

– LOST & CANCELED CLEARER – when you click on "lost" book or "cancel"
this mooch, the page has text explaining what will happen to the
points if you do this.

– CONDITION NOTES DISPLAYED – condition notes are now displayed on
the "cancel" page, as well as on the details for a transaction page,
which you get to from the history page.

– POINTS CLEARER – the points log now displays and links to the other
party (if there is one) in a transaction. And from now on, Charitable
gifts show up in the points log. http://bookmooch.com/m/points/

New features (Feb 20, 2007)

A lot of new BookMooch features went up today:

– HISTORY IN BRIEF – the history page now defaults to a clean "less
details" table, so you can easily see a person’s previous books and
all their feedback at once. A "Show details" page gives you all the
data, or you can click on a single transaction’s "DETAILS" button
http://bookmooch.com/m/history/

– PENDING IN BRIEF – books you’ve sent are now shown with fewer
details, and there’s a "SHOW DETAILS" button to see everything. The
page now displays up to 50 pending items per page, so most people can
see everything they’re up to all at once. I kept the book covers and
other details on books you’re to receive, and that you haven’t yet
sent because I thought these are books you want to see the covers for
(for instance, to spot a book you get in the mail, and quickly mark
it as a "received"). However, this is certainly up for discussion,
and I could certainly do things like do-not-display-your-own-postal-
address on books that have already been sent to you. http://
bookmooch.com/m/pending/

– ACCEPT THIS REQUEST – mooch requests now offer the option for the
book owner to "accept" the mooch request, and they can also indicate
when they’re likely to send the book (defaults to "tomorrow") This
is not a required step for book owners, but it does move books in the
owner’s "pending page" to a "books accepted to send" grouping, and
many BookMooch members have indicated wanting to know if their mooch
request has been accepted without the stigma of the "delay" feature.
Note also that the "delay" feature no longer uses the word "apology"
so that people can feel ok indicating a delay.

– 2 EMAIL ADDRESSES – you can now put multiple email addresses in
your profile, and emails from BookMooch will go to all of them. This
is useful if you want a work & home email address to get wishlist
notifications, for example. Note that email sent by BookMooch on
your behalf (such as when you mooch) will come From: the first email
address you list. http://bookmooch.com/m/profile

– LOST & CANCELED CLEARER – when you click on "lost" book or "cancel"
this mooch, the page has text explaining what will happen to the
points if you do this.

– CONDITION NOTES DISPLAYED – condition notes are now displayed on
the "cancel" page, as well as on the details for a transaction page,
which you get to from the history page.

– POINTS CLEARER – the points log now displays and links to the other
party (if there is one) in a transaction. And from now on, Charitable
gifts show up in the points log. http://bookmooch.com/m/points/
johnbuckman

– PORTUGUESE FIXES – the graphical home page and member tabs were
updated with translation fixes for Portuguese. If you see ways to
improve the home page & tab translations for portuguese or any other
language, let me know. http://pt.bookmooch.com/

New at BookMooch (Feb 18, 2007)

The new machine at bookmooch seems stable now, so I’ve taken the
opportunity to do put an update on, with a few changes

– CHARITY: you can now easily give to a specific charity, with a
“give directly to this charity” button when charities are listed
http://bookmooch.com/m/charity

– WE MAKE A BIT: the “amazon info” links now explain that we get a
small commission if you buy from that link

– DOUBLE THE FUN: the most “risky” change is my attempt to fix the
“you’ve added this book twice” or “you mooched this book twice”
problems that occur occasionally when someone double-submits the same
page before the first page has finished its work (there’s been some
discussion of this on the list). These problems don’t happen often,
but they’re confusing as heck for the user and our tech support
volunteers, and they do mess up the points total, so I do want to fix
it. The fix to this requires a “lock” be placed when one of these
actions starts, and then the lock is removed when the operation
completes. The reason this is “risky” is if the lock accidentally is
not removed, even just once, then no-one else can do that action ever
again (at least not until the server is rebooted). So far, things
look good, but I’ll definitely be watching it.

– BUGS FIXES: the type of book binding was not being translated to
foreign languages, long user descriptions in the bio page were not
wrapping, the “worldcat” link described it incorrectly.

-john

New at BookMooch (Feb 3, 2007)

– SECOND LIFE & BOOKMOOCH
– UPDATE ON STATS
– NEW FEATURES

=============================================
– SECOND LIFE

We’ve created a space on Second Life for BookMoochers to get
together, chat about books in our garden, and enjoy classical music
with a oceanside view. Second Life is a virtual world, it’s no-cost
to join, and it’s lots of fun.

Read more about it here (along with a slide show):
http://bookmooch.com/about/second_life

If you’re really into Second Life, consider joining the "BookMooch
Second-Life Discussion" by sending a blank email to join-bookmooch-
sl@forums.bookmooch.com

=============================================
– UPDATE ON STATS

It’s been a super-long time since I sent a "BookMooch News" update.

Since the last announcement on October 15th, we’ve just about doubled
in size. Back then I wrote:

> – CURRENT STATS as of Oct 15th: BookMooch now has 100,000 books,
> 10,000 members, and 20,000 books have been mooched. 900 books are
> being mooched right now.

and current stats as of today are:

– 190,000 books titles available
– 19,000 members
– 1,700 books are being mooched right now
– 75,000 books have been mooched (almost 4x more!)

and if you look at our charts, you’ll see that most trends are
accelerating.
http://bookmooch.com/about/stats

=============================================
– NEW FEATURES

With the crazy growth BookMooch has had, most of my time has been
trying keep the site running reliably and quickly, and there have
been a few hickups and slow patches over the past few months. The
worst of that should be over now, and BookMooch is once again running
smoothly, and you’ll see new features appearing again regularly.

Nonetheless, there are some new things:

– LOST BOOK? The receiver or the sender can now mark a book as lost.
However, you’ll have to wait 4 weeks (if the book was sent in the
same country, or 12 weeks if to another country) before the system
will let you do that.

– BOOK SORTING – books are now sorted by author, and not by Title or
"any-damned-way"

– LIBRARIES INFO – an "other web sites" link on each book detail will
take you to a page with more links, including a very helpful site
which will tell you what libraries in your area have that book

– LOTS OF CHARITIES – quite a few charities have been working with
BookMooch to great effect, such as "Reader to Reader" http://
www.readertoreader.org/ and that’s why you’ll find a "charity" link
on your main member menu. If you have a few more points than you
need, consider donating them, as we really can do a lot of good with
those books. I’m revamping the charity page soon so you’ll be able
to see all the charities that are involved. Over 200 members have
given about 1500 book points to charity, which is fabulous! Read
more at http://bookmooch.com/m/charity

CSV export in charts

All the charts now have an option to export to CSV files (plain text) which can be imported directly into Excel.

To use this new feature, go the “customized” chart option at http://bookmooch.com/about/stats

and choose which chart(s) you want to see, along with whether you want to see the charts as graphics, or get the CSV source data.