Just last week I had two people email me with similar site ideas to hn-books.com, and when I launched hn-books 2 completely other people emailed me that they were working on similar sites.
Must be something about hacker books that's in the water. Lots of sites with lots of features and such means better resources for all hackers, plus lots of folks getting experiences doing stuff like this. Most excellent!
Since I've done this, I guess I should say something pithy or insightful. I think the trick is the navigation piece. I see you have categories -- that's probably a good place to start. I started with questions, you can go to my main page, click on the hacker-related question you have, and be presented with a sorted list of answers based on your experience. (see http://hn-books.com/ )
I'm not sure if questions are the way to go either, though, as there are a zillion questions hackers might ask. I'd still like to see somebody come up with some new ideas in this area.
I also ran into the "just what are hacker books, anyway?" question that we get over here all of the time. I finally said screw it, I'll just put things that I believe are hacker-related. But I don't think there's any easy answer to that one, either.
Outstanding site, though! I hope some of these other guys that have spoken to me will post what they've done as well.
thanks for your feedback! Your release of hn-books.com really made me realize I should carry on, that the topic was interesting (which I believed). But I was quite far from being able to ship and busy with a lot of client work, too.
I totally agree that the navigation is the tricky part, and I have a lot of work to do on this :)
I'm really curious to see other people approach to solve the general issue of finding useful books!
In all cases, thanks for the kind words, appreciated!
Just last week I had two people email me with similar site ideas to hn-books.com, and when I launched hn-books 2 completely other people emailed me that they were working on similar sites.
I'm not surprised. I've been working on my own half-baked version. Kudos to those of you who finished the baking.
Daniel, I really like your site and the curated list.
However, I find the categories in HackerBooks.com much more easier to navigate than questions on the right side bar of hn-books.
Both of the sites still need to address the question, 'how do I present the categories without requiring too much navigation'.
I know it's not sexy any more but how about tag-cloud per major category?
Thank you for building this. I admire the simplicity and elegance. Would be cool if the "Mentioned 2 times at Hackernews" was hyperlinked to the mention. Can this be done?
Yes I know about Daniel's site, which was released while I was working on hackerbooks.com. I decided to keep working on it anyway, but it took me a fair amount of time to release.
Useful, and also a neat way to make some side-cash via your affiliate link. I suspect I'll be checking this regularly.
One thing that would be really handy - or at least interesting - is a "most recently mentioned" list. For example, when people were talking a lot about Program or be Programmed a while back, it would have been fun to see that rise to the top.
It may generate some side-cash via the affiliate links - it would certainly be useful to us. We'll see how it goes anyway :)
The most recently mentioned list is a very good idea. I had something similar in mind, like a news-letter that would send the "most mentioned this month", so you can get the trends.
If making cash via an affiliate link is the goal, it would make sense to have the link to the user's localised Amazon site. I much prefer to buy from Amazon.co.uk as I'm UK-based so right now I'll just highlight-> right-click-> google the title and end up bypassing the affiliate link.
On a slightly unrelated note, are there any UX/UI books that are targetted for programmers? I'm a complete noob with photoshopping and can't create a button to save my life. Working on side projects, this is really annoying.
This site is really a good idea. The Amazon links can get quite popular (I know from looking at my Amazon stats on @hackerlinks when I had the affiliate code inserted.)
This is really nice looking. I am working on a concept that encapsulates part of what you've done here and I would love to have a discussion with you. I'm not ready to launch yet, but will be in a couple weeks. I gotta get moving quickly and you provide good motivation!
For books published by the Pragmatic Bookshelf, you should link directly to the publisher, in my opinion. PragProg.com sells DRM-free ebooks (in pdf, mobi, and epub) for cheaper than Amazon. They are a great value and I bet the PragProg folks keep more money this way, which is a good thing.
I dont know if there is an API for it or not but if you can get the Amazon rating of a book and display it on the book description page, it will be great. :)
On AZ ratings: I wrote that down. It's somewhat complicated because Amazon just made it a bit harder to embed that. It now has to be an iframe; the iframe url must be refreshed every 24 hours.
But overall this should be doable to, I'll see if I can make it usable.
Minor bug report: I did a search on xbox (hoping to see Hacking the Xbox) and the Kinect system came up -- you are probably scrubbing against Amazon and it came up.
I really liked the site, congratulations. Just because I am a stack freak, can you tell us more about your technology stack and how fun (or not) was to develop this?
I wonder sometimes if it'd be worth creating a site that aggregates all the most useful and interesting information from social news sites like Reddit, HN, etc. like this site does for books on HN. I spent a long time finding all the best "life hacks" on Reddit the other day and really found some gems.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for creating this!(and thank to the community for voting it up so i could see it)... I've been searching everywhere for book recommendations to help expand my knowledge of NLP and ML, then I suddenly click on this link and there it is! Great site!
Wow, good idea. I've browsed it this morning and it's an excellent website. Some things I might add is a link to the context of where the book was cited and also better categorization. (i.e. effective C++ in compiler book). But otherwise, amazing. Thank you
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|15 years ago|reply
Just last week I had two people email me with similar site ideas to hn-books.com, and when I launched hn-books 2 completely other people emailed me that they were working on similar sites.
Must be something about hacker books that's in the water. Lots of sites with lots of features and such means better resources for all hackers, plus lots of folks getting experiences doing stuff like this. Most excellent!
Since I've done this, I guess I should say something pithy or insightful. I think the trick is the navigation piece. I see you have categories -- that's probably a good place to start. I started with questions, you can go to my main page, click on the hacker-related question you have, and be presented with a sorted list of answers based on your experience. (see http://hn-books.com/ )
I'm not sure if questions are the way to go either, though, as there are a zillion questions hackers might ask. I'd still like to see somebody come up with some new ideas in this area.
I also ran into the "just what are hacker books, anyway?" question that we get over here all of the time. I finally said screw it, I'll just put things that I believe are hacker-related. But I don't think there's any easy answer to that one, either.
Outstanding site, though! I hope some of these other guys that have spoken to me will post what they've done as well.
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
thanks for your feedback! Your release of hn-books.com really made me realize I should carry on, that the topic was interesting (which I believed). But I was quite far from being able to ship and busy with a lot of client work, too.
I totally agree that the navigation is the tricky part, and I have a lot of work to do on this :)
I'm really curious to see other people approach to solve the general issue of finding useful books!
In all cases, thanks for the kind words, appreciated!
[+] [-] dionidium|15 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised. I've been working on my own half-baked version. Kudos to those of you who finished the baking.
[+] [-] prpon|15 years ago|reply
Both of the sites still need to address the question, 'how do I present the categories without requiring too much navigation'. I know it's not sexy any more but how about tag-cloud per major category?
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
It's fairly simple so far and more features are planned.
I'm submitting early on to get some wider feedback. Thanks to all the HNers that reviewed this before today already!
[+] [-] TobiasCassell|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgruhier|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] albedoa|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taylorbuley|15 years ago|reply
Or was it the opposite?
[+] [-] swombat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KishoreKumar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
I will probably come up with some kinds of list, and will definitely work on better sorting/filtering.
[+] [-] benwerd|15 years ago|reply
One thing that would be really handy - or at least interesting - is a "most recently mentioned" list. For example, when people were talking a lot about Program or be Programmed a while back, it would have been fun to see that rise to the top.
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
The most recently mentioned list is a very good idea. I had something similar in mind, like a news-letter that would send the "most mentioned this month", so you can get the trends.
Would you find that useful ?
[+] [-] joe_fishfish|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tejaswiy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianwaj|15 years ago|reply
In this respect you'll see new Amazon links every so often in: http://twitter.com/hackerlinks (the tweet will begin with Amazon) http://hackerbra.in/links
This site is really a good idea. The Amazon links can get quite popular (I know from looking at my Amazon stats on @hackerlinks when I had the affiliate code inserted.)
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
I didn't know about hackerlinks either - just subscribed!
[+] [-] instakill|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dansingerman|15 years ago|reply
I wish I'd thought of it.
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeslush|15 years ago|reply
Congrats!
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanlrivera|15 years ago|reply
For example http://www.hackerbooks.com/book/rails-for-net-developers-fac...
Should link to http://pragprog.com/titles/cerailn/rails-for-net-developers instead of Amazon.com.
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
I'll try to make more "publisher-specific" linking.
[+] [-] chintan100|15 years ago|reply
I dont know if there is an API for it or not but if you can get the Amazon rating of a book and display it on the book description page, it will be great. :)
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
On AZ ratings: I wrote that down. It's somewhat complicated because Amazon just made it a bit harder to embed that. It now has to be an iframe; the iframe url must be refreshed every 24 hours.
But overall this should be doable to, I'll see if I can make it usable.
Thank you!
[+] [-] davidjhall|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
Two conclusions:
- how the search works needs some explanation a bit!
- I will probably add an advanced search so you can specify exactly how you want the search to occur (eg: ignore the description....)
Thanks for your feedback!
[+] [-] soapdog|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HackrNwsDesignr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
I plan to write a couple of blog posts explaining the "how" later on! It's been an interesting ride really.
[+] [-] rhizome|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marknutter|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NnamdiJr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d0m|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply
I plan to display the actual conversation in some way on the site itself, if I can. Lot of people told me it would be useful.
I will also work on some topic extraction, yes!
[+] [-] marijn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thibaut_barrere|15 years ago|reply