It’s very hard to take a photo of a mobile phone screen.
This is what the screens look like on a decent phone.I’m very excited to announce LibraryThing for your mobile phone!
(I don’t know know about you, but I hate it when company say it’s “very excited,” but this is me, Tim Spalding, and I am very excited. Really. Take my pulse; this is the highlight of my damn week!)
The URL for LibraryThing mobile is:
http://librarything.com/m
You can see it in action on a fake screen at:
http://www.librarything.com/mobile-tester.php
The idea is simple—you get the most important features of LibraryThing through your cell phone’s “internet” feature. So you can check whether you have something—by title, author, tag or ISBN—when you’re in the bookshop, browse your catalog, and read your reviews. You can even accesss your “Pssst!” recommendations. But I don’t know anything about cellphone security, so you can’t add items, and you can’t look at private libraries—even your own.
Don’t fret, you almost certainly have SOME kind of internet connectivity on your phone. My old black-and-whie Sprint phone had it. Abby’s old, crappy Verizon phone had it. The only difference is how many lines you’ll see at time, and whether the Amazon covers come in. Needless to say, internet access usually costs something. My phone costs $5/mo. and regular “minutes”; Abby’s phone charges a piratical 1 cent per kilobyte—so I tried to keep the pages super clean. LibraryThing is not responsible if you run up $500 in charges.
Many thanks to the LibraryThing Mobile beta testers, Astrud, Birdie, Deirdre, Edward, Sarah, Woodrow. There are probably some more problems, but I am—see above—too excited to wait any longer.
So, the question is: Does it work for you? What else do you want it to do?
PS: Yes, I am still interested in an iPod version, and plan to work on it soon.
PPS: I can’t find my copy of Amazon Hacks. Does anyone have the URL for an Amazon Mobile link? I need to include it if I’m going to draw on Amazon’s cover art. Of course, I’d include links to any other mobile book sites. Are there any?
Labels: 1
On my cellular phone I see too many details per book in my list. Therefore, it takes far too long time to scroll through my list. A function is needed where you only see author and title, nothing else. If you had that view, it would be much easier to scroll through your own list when you are in a shop. The purpose is to be able at a glance to see if I already have this book at home or not. I dont want to scroll for 30 minutes as it costs too much. And I have not found such a short view yet.
On my cellular phone I see too many details per book in my list. Therefore, it takes far too long time to scroll through my list. A function is needed where you only see author and title, nothing else. If you had that view, it would be much easier to scroll through your own list when you are in a shop. The purpose is to be able at a glance to see if I already have this book at home or not. I dont want to scroll for 30 minutes as it costs too much. And I have not found such a short view yet.
The main thing I want from the mobile app is to be able to look for ToRead or ToBuy tags when I'm standing in the book store and can't remember a single title on those lists.
I am bummed that I can't add books. I understand your comment about security, but I am unsure about how adding new books is a security risk. I use my LT to document the books I have/have not read/listened to (I am a librarian) and being able to add books to my list while I am at the grocery store/book store/library would be an awesome add.
Loving it so far! Thanks!
Text is very very tiny on my Sprint LG phone, model LS670. It won’t let me zoom in. On regular web sites I tap twice on the screen to make it zoom in. That doesn’t work on the mobile site. Otherwise love having my list of books with me.
Love it. Really use mobile acces a lot.
I would like to be able to search on shelves. My current work-around is attaching the shelve name a a tag to all my books. But I don’t like work-arrounds.
Text is far too tiny on my LG Optimus V. Almost impossible for me to navigate from page to page. Zoom ability is definitely needed. A next and previous (a good distance from the numbered pages) would allow those of us suffering from FTS (fat thumb syndrome) to at least browse thru our list page by page. Better yet, allow for better navigation by page number. I also want to be able to sort or view by tags so I can see what I have on my wishlist or other other tags.
A search function would be useful as i usually am trying to find out if I own a particular book… and digital on the tab plus author/title comment.
I was using Amazon Mobile in a store to scan a barcode for price comparison, and I couldn’t help but wish there was an app where I could use my iPhone to scan the barcodes of my books to enter them into LT via LT Mobile. Any chance it’s on the horizon? I have so many books still to upload…
One is indeed on the horizon – you can also use the Red Laser app (available for iPhone, &c.) to do this now: http://www.julieduffy.com/technology/inner-librarian/
font-size = 1 is unforgivable – it is totally contrary to all usability principles. 100% is safest – people will (usually) have their device set up to display what they can read.
Being able to list/browse one designated collection would be nice – we have approaching 2,500 titles and just listing them by title or by author is useless
Interesting.
got a new version of this fit for Android? We may do a review of it if you are interested.