Browse Amazon, Randomly
bookbookgoose.comI really love this! I opened it and just jam on the next key (n).
Use this little snippet to set it to auto-next mode, for a great screensaver. Edit - here is the screensaver https://github.com/gourneau/WebSaver
setInterval(function(){$("#book_next").click()}, 500)
Hilary could you please add this bit of code so for auto advancing mode via the query string.
function getParameterByName(name) {
var match = RegExp('[?&]' + name + '=([^&]*)').exec(window.location.search);
return match && decodeURIComponent(match[1].replace(/\+/g, ' '));
}
if (getParameterByName("auto")){
setInterval(function(){$("#book_next").click()}, getParameterByName("auto"))
}
Thanks. I just deployed this update. Have fun!
Hey, there seems to be a bug for slow internet connections, it shows the same image for the next books when the next book image is not loaded.
This is pretty awesome, it is amazing to see all the weird titles out there.
Is anyone else surprised by the amount of: "This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures..." books for sale on Amazon?
Google "Amazon ebook spam" and you'll see several articles about it -- their self-publishing system has really gotten hammered with it. In this case, it sounds like the content is just copied from the public domain.
Another thing, make an obvious link to the amazon page. something like "see it on amazon.com"
And why not add your referral code too?
This is really great - love the idea. Just in case you hadn't spotted, I think there's a punctuation bug whereby characters are sometimes omitted, although it doesn't happen all the time. Not a big deal though.
Example:
Correctly punctuated original: http://tinyurl.com/b6sbozh
Bookbookgoose ignores the apostrophes: http://imgur.com/4U9Ow
[EDIT: Dropbox link was broken - using imgur instead]
Fair warning: the first title that came up for me was NSFW.
That would have been good to know before I started clicking. DANG!
Very cool. Somewhat similar to my book discovery app http://quotab.ly (discover via random quotes). Where did you end up getting your data? Did you scrape Amazon or are you using their API?
Both, actually. The API is too slow to use live for this app.
Nice, any plans to do more with it?
Yes! This was really just to establish the base case -- is randomly 'walking' through all books available interesting?
Love it.
Can you please add filters for "by-genre" and "kindle-only"? Please..
I understand where the name came from, but bookbookgoose just doesn't work for me. Its just too long and unwieldy for me. As for the service itself, I am not sure what type of customer this is servicing. Are there people out there that are trying to find random books to read without any context (i.e. subject matter, recommendations from others, etc.)? Now, I think this would be a lot more useful if you could perhaps do the random thing but filtered by some criteria that makes it relevant to the user. So, for example, I want to read about 'javascript' and I search through random javascript books. It would also help to display the amazon rankings and other stats.
it's probably a play on duckduckgo.
It's a play on "duck duck goose", the children's game. The similarity to duckduckgo was unintentional, but I like it. I actually wanted to call it "bookroulette", but all permutations of that domain were taken.
I own the domain name randomamazon.com. I always wanted to get around to doing something like this.
I like the name. I immediately knew it was a play on duck duck goose.
You could probably use a vacation away from tech.
Not trying to be mean. Just sayin'.
It's pretty cool! But I didn't like the name too =p... One more thing: 'n' and 'b' shortcuts not working on the Firefox (17.0.1).
I like it, can you add random browsing within a category (e.g. I want to browse random humor books)
duckduckgo? Anyways, I actually found this useful. What might be a good addition is current ratings (if Amazon expose such information). Another thing, put the "back" button next to the "next" button; improves usability
great idea, I really like this site! I found a little glitch, it happens when image is too high. Here is a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/IzhRF.jpg
