
Show HN: 100M Books – Open a new tab, discover a new book - m52go
http://www.100millionbooks.org/
======
vertis
I really hate to be a naysayer, but this seems doomed to failure.

For a start, people don't want to be challenged. I'd love to know how much of
the bubbling is self imposed. E.g. Ignoring everything else until Google, etc,
gets the hint.

That and the fact that everyone seems to feel time poor. Sorting through
what's valuable and what's not is a burden. I've tried handling the firehose
new Hacker News, or even worse the RSS feeds for all the sites that typically
posted. Doesn't last long.

Having said that there was an interesting paper on using Machine Learning to
summarise the other day. I wonder if that could help with the snippets
problem.

~~~
ehnto
I feel bubbled by accident and I am actively trying to get out of it. That
doesn't mean I would read anything, it just means I want more options
presented to me through various avenues than currently are. But perhaps that's
the issue.

As the internet and it's use has trended away from user driven discovery and
toward curated feed driven discovery, it's become harder to pull yourself away
from the feed of just-okay content and the content is in a very narrow band of
safe vs interesting. It's also almost never productive, just mildly
interesting.

My mind is bored and I know that's not from lack of available subjects. It's
just that the pipes and feeds I set up have become stale. I don't believe more
pipes are the answer, I believe a shift in paradigm is needed for me. Cut the
pipes and retreat back to a curiosity driven discovery approach. HN doesn't
know what I'm curious about at any given moment, nor can it know what
discoveries would drive my development and progress forward, so it doesn't
suffice.

I slowly let feeds and aggregators replace my curiosity and now I am out of
practice. I'm not saying I need to replace HN and others, but certainly to be
mindful that I shouldn't forget to find things for myself and limit how much
of my mindshare I give to the aggregators.

~~~
ehnto
To be cheesy, it seems I have the world of knowledge at my fingertips, but my
hands lay still while content streams to my screen. I do not fetch knowledge
to be used, I am fed knowledge to placate myself.

All this is grand exaggeration and I am much more functional than that makes
it sound, but it's a real problem and I think many others are in the same
boat.

------
jasonlfunk
"Book snippets are added by hand. It's time-consuming!"

It's going to take a long time to do all 100 million.

~~~
m52go
Haha yeah, will need to speed that up somehow. Most quotes I've seen on the
web are more like vague aphorisms instead of insightful ideas.

I personally prefer (and think people will benefit much more) from the latter.

FEEDBACK EDIT: unless, I dunno, am I wrong? Would you rather see a random book
cover with the generic Amazon/Goodreads description? You'd get much more
variety that way.

~~~
AnOscelot
Maybe the best strategy is to show the generic description when it's a book
you haven't personally written the description for. That way you can
concentrate on the books you love or find most interesting, while still
providing a huge variety to your users.

~~~
m52go
Yeah I'll look into doing that. This is my ~4th attempt (after countless
iterations) of book-related projects and I have yet to find a reliable API for
useful book data.

~~~
worldsayshi
Personally I'd rather see a well curated and thought out list than random
books. If I want random books. If I want a random book I can just walk blindly
into a library.

------
maaaats
Has anyone actually read Gödel, Escher, Bach, or is it just one of those
"popular books people pretend to have read after reading the first chapter"?
It looks intriguing, but at the same time very heavy.

~~~
jasoncrawford
I read it when I was in high school. It was fun, especially the dialogues. I
don't recall it being heavy.

~~~
kens
I read it in high school too and found it very thought-provoking; I still
think about some of its ideas. You'll definitely get more out of the book if
you put effort into it, but it's not heavy like reading Knuth or SICP or
anything on category theory, which I never made it all the way through.

I'm not sure how well GEB has aged though since it seemed very tied to a
particular point in AI history. Has anyone read it recently?

~~~
burkaman
I read it a few years ago, I think it's aged very well. The parts about art,
music, and math are pretty much timeless, and I think the overall theme of AI
is general and high-level enough to not really be tied to one era of computer
science. You're not going to learn much that can be practically applied to
contemporary AI techniques, but that's not really the purpose of the book.

------
vogt
I'm a big reader, about 1 book a week or more so this is very helpful to me.
One click integration to add to my "to-read" shelf on Goodreads would be
massively appreciated.

~~~
roansh
+1 for feature request

------
real-hacker
I love the idea of introducing serendipity. A bold idea: reach out to Amazon:
1. Kindle users have marked numerous snippets for their favorite books, and
the snippets marked by most users can be better than your own selection. 2. A
link to the books on Amazon can be good to both the user and to you (affiliate
program?), that could be your business model maybe.

~~~
m52go
Interesting, I might give that a try.

Some Kindle highlights are publicly available on

[https://kindle.amazon.com/](https://kindle.amazon.com/)

...but that site feels abandoned and is hit-or-miss for most books.

------
jasoncrawford
Cool idea, but not sure why it's a new-tab thing? When I open a new tab I'm
usually going to do something, I don't want to be distracted. Would make more
sense to me as a one-page site where you just reload to get a random book.
Anyway thanks for sharing and best of luck!

~~~
m52go
Thanks. It's funny you say that, because I made this after making a 1-page
website and then a mobile app. People liked those, but engagement cratered
because people had no reason to open up a whole new website or app just to
discover new books.

So I made this to solve that. To each their own!

Regarding distraction...it's a personal thing. I've been running the extension
on my own browser for a few days and I usually just ignore it when I open a
tab with purpose.

~~~
vahe
I think having a single-page website is very valuable since it will allow
people to use this as a homepage in any browser, without requiring an
extension to be installed.

~~~
m52go
Done.

~~~
vahe
Another suggestion, now that I have this set as homepage, is to reduce the
load time as much as possible. I expect it to load instantaneously, with no
javascript or custom fonts - those are luxuries :) Ideally generate a static
page for each book and serve one randomly.

------
vanderreeah
Well done on launching, this looks interesting. I just want to add a very
subjective caveat, which really has nothing to do with your achievement.
Personally, I find my ability to absorb information is contingent upon my
staying in a single realm for either a concentrated or a long period of time.
This sounds self-explanatory, but I really mean that I can't grasp even fairly
simple concepts unless I've encountered them and read about them in more than
one or two books. It's as if I require a kind of mental seed-bed for even the
crudest thought to grow. So to read a book about mathematics, followed by a
book about agriculture, etc etc, is bound to leave me bewildered. Again, this
is just me, I'm sure your app will be useful and diverting for many people.

(Parenthetically, it reminds me of the advice Charles Olson wrote to a younger
writer: "Best thing to do is to dig one thing or place or man until you
yourself know abt that than is possible to any other man. It doesn’t matter
whether it’s Barbed Wire or Pemmican or Paterson or Iowa. But exhaust it.
Saturate it. Beat it. And then U KNOW everything else very fast: one
saturation job (it might take 14 years)".)

------
medell
I really like your Why, nudging the polarized political discourse with this
small step. Well done.
[https://medium.com/@100millionbooks/why-332a1c325299](https://medium.com/@100millionbooks/why-332a1c325299)

~~~
throwanem
It's interesting to see humility cited in an explanation of why someone
created something that suggests you read what he, or those curators he
eventually chooses to whom to delegate, thinks you should read.

~~~
m52go
That's why I'm making every effort to expand the sources of these suggestions
by crowd-sourcing them as much as possible...while also maintaining a
collection of topical, temporal, geographic, and other metrics on my side to
ensure the collection doesn't start swaying in any particular directions.

And a good chunk of the existing collection is already sourced from others
who've used my previous book apps.

The process is still young so it's imperfect, but improving. Do you have any
suggestions how I can do better?

Speaking of humility, it must've taken a good lack of humility on your part to
make such assumptions without knowing the details of my process or the
background of this effort.

~~~
throwanem
> The process is still young so it's imperfect, but improving. Do you have any
> suggestions how I can do better?

Publish your book list, your selection process, and your metrics, to enable
independent evaluation. I looked for such information and didn't find it; if
it's there, surface it clearly. If you're presenting the balanced, apolar
perspective you claim to seek, rather than some flavor of "alternative facts",
this should not pose an issue, I think.

As for the rest, I wouldn't feel special about it. In these times, I see no
reason why anyone claiming political motives, and apparently declining any
meaningful transparency in sources and methods, merits any kind of
credibility. Your claims are your claims, and prove nothing beyond that you've
made them. You have an opportunity to substantiate them. Perhaps you will do
so.

~~~
m52go
You're right to be skeptical.

I noted elsewhere in the thread that I plan to open access to that information
when it makes sense. This is a weekend project and I really didn't expect this
much attention this soon!

But you made me realize just how important this issue really is. So I just
added a Transparency section (link on very bottom of main page) with the
titles of all books currently in the system, along with a link to a public
Google Form showing all suggestions and how they were handled. I was using
Typeform before but results were private.

It's not as thorough as what you had in mind, but I'll put that in place over
time.

~~~
throwanem
An excellent and amply satisfactory initial response.

------
lostphilosopher
Cool idea, I like seeing book related projects on HN.

Small suggestion: Slow down the image carousel on the homepage it moves to
quickly to process what it's showing you. Also it would be neat to able
integrate this into other projects, for example I like
[https://momentumdash.com/](https://momentumdash.com/) (unaffiliated user) and
I'd rather have this than a quote of the day or what not.

------
hamburglar1
After stumbling upon of 5 /100,000,000 I personally would like to have ~3
sentence summaries rather than snippets. Theres probably a db out there
somewhere

~~~
christofosho
With perhaps a little arrow to open up the full summary.

------
Shywim
Looks cool! Any plan for Firefox? It supports WebExtensions now, though I
don't know if there's binding for new tab pages.

~~~
m52go
I really really want to support Firefox, and there is a way to override new
tab pages, but a work-around and not official (at least, that's my
understanding).

I saw somewhere that official support should be coming in Firefox 57. I plan
to implement as soon as it's available.

~~~
aquacat
Why don't you just make this a web app that people can set as the start page
on any browser?

~~~
m52go
Wow, simplicity strikes again. So obvious, can't believe I overlooked it. Will
do!

------
codazoda
Looks like an interesting idea and I can already see the potential to
monitize. You linking to Amazon sales pages? :)

------
GavinMcG
Chrome should let you randomize which extension controls the new tab, because
I like this but I also like Unsplash.

~~~
fiatjaf
Unsplash is another perfect example of doing nice stuff with Service Worker.
Someone should do it. Then you would only need a Chrome Extension that
randomizes between URLs for the new tab.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286451)

~~~
aquacat
Again, you don't need a Chrome extension to randomize between URLs. Just write
a simple HTML+Javascript page that redirects to a random URL from a list, and
set it as your start page.

------
logichaiku
There seems to be either a problem with your randomisation script or else
(with all power to you for shipping) lauched with you a really small data set.
Well not really small, just books i have had suggested >3 and a few more >2
times, which surprises me having taken the app title as an achievement rather
than an aim.

------
markatkinson
I didn't want to comment till I had the extension installed for a few hours,
and now that I have here are my points:

\- I love it, it is making me so hungry to read more and the snippets are
great.

\- I hate it, because now my reading list is going to go from "I'll only ever
finish this in my retirement" to "there is no point to keeping a reading list
as its now 100,000,000 books"

I really enjoy it, the only issue is that it is a bit of a distraction when I
am about to do something.

------
pveierland
I tried it out quickly and have two suggestions:

1) Pre-fetch the data such that the page can be immediately rendered when
opening a new tab. Seeing a 1+ second loading animation for something done as
often as opening a new tab introduces unnecessary friction.

2) Retain a history such that the user can see which books they have had shown
to them so they don't suddenly lose a suggestion by closing a tab.

~~~
m52go
Thanks for suggestions.

1) agreed, will implement this in a future release.

2) books cache for ~10 seconds for this reason, but yes i see why history
would help. it's a popular request so i'll also add this in a future release.

------
jpalomaki
Imgur style mobile app (or just web site) using this data might be
interesting. Just swipe to see a new book and quote.

~~~
m52go
I made this a while ago but it never caught on:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/peruse/app/launchstorm.mp4](https://s3.amazonaws.com/peruse/app/launchstorm.mp4)

My hunch is that people don't want to go out of their way to discover stuff.
Hence the extension...we're always opening new tabs!

------
dangom
I really liked the idea. Congrats and keep it up!!

The only issues I have is that opening a new tab now makes me forget why I
opened a new tab for, since I immediately see new content.

I also don't like the 1s latency and the little circle animations until the
book info shows up. Is there a way of removing that?

~~~
m52go
Thanks! Latency is unintentional. I can put an option to get rid of the
loading animation in the next release.

------
lionyo
I like using Wikipedia's Special:Random as a new tab to get a new fact every
time

Set as your home page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random)

------
woliveirajr
Now this extension requires new permissions that seem to be unneeded for the
goal... why that ?

See the icons from my pages and see which pages I visited ?

~~~
m52go
TL;DR: that was a mistake in 1.0, and it was quickly removed in 1.1.

The #2 feature request was to show Chrome's Top Sites list somewhere on the
page (you know, those sites Chrome shows by default on the New Tab page). So I
implemented it, and that required a new permission called 'topSites' which
sounded innocent, so I did it.

I guess I should've looked into the details, because I had no idea it would
ask users to read all sites they've ever visited...all I needed to see were
the top 8 (in order to show links, not harvest the data).

But still that's a no-no. I can see why it'd sound shady, and I'd be wary of
granting such permissions myself. The people who wanted that top sites list
will have to get by some other way.

In hindsight, I should've done more research before requesting the permission
: / Lesson learned.

------
frindo
Is there a way to limit the tabs that it opens on? I think this would be nice
to have when I'm trying to waste time but if I'm trying to open tabs for work
I could see this getting really annoying. Looks cool though :)

~~~
codazoda
I imagine it's only for new blank tabs, which typically have some frequent
visited sites listed on them. I can't see how it would effect productivity
(well, unless you often click through to the books).

------
big_spammer
Opening a new tab is a channel for getting people's attention. Have you tried
to do something else in the new tab instead of showing books? Is anything
other than books more valuable?

~~~
artur_makly
We thought the same, and created JuicyDrops - a customizable instagram
@profile or #hashtag feed:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/juicy-
drops%E2%9D%...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/juicy-
drops%E2%9D%A4/ebbdhcjccehfpjlkcjnaeeieidgeghel?hl=en)

*We were pleasantly suprised that people used it as a marketing research helper.

------
jkuria
JGreat project and I just added it to my browser. Could you please add reviews
or ratings? I want to know that a book has been favorably reviewed before
investing time in reading it.

------
BlanketLogic
Thank you. Loved it. Installed it a while and kept refreshing the tab. Great
stuff. I would be happy to pay for using such an extension. Thanks.

------
vowelless
Very cool but why is there no way for me to easily click to go to the Amazon
page? I would be more than happy for you to use your affiliate account.

------
desireco42
Here is one more point against chrome, I use opera, I will not switch
browsers. Maybe just give url that we can make as homepage.

Otherwise great idea.

I am big fan of momentum homepage.

~~~
m52go
Here you go, just updated the site:
[http://100millionbooks.org/standalone/](http://100millionbooks.org/standalone/)

~~~
desireco42
Thank you.

------
jmstfv
How did you assemble database of these books?

------
spark3k
I don't know what could be more distracting in a work day than this. :/

------
tintor
Nice idea.

It showed me the same Bruce Lee book three times within 5 minutes.

~~~
m52go
Thanks for checking it out.

Snippets cache for ~10 seconds. Also keep in mind the library of snippets
isn't huge yet, and selection is totally random, so there will be repetition.

~~~
sushid
It might be a good idea to make it pseudo random, similar to how Apple tweaked
their shuffle algorithm to make it more palatable to the listeners.

Something like repicking a book when it has been shown t seconds ago would
mitigate this problem.

------
andrepd
The Other Browsers dialog is broken on mobile.

~~~
m52go
What's your browser+device? Works for me on Android 7 on Firefox and Chrome.

------
Animats
Isn't this really an ad server?

~~~
m52go
How so?

