Would you like to take a look at what we are doing at Book Oven? We are building an online collaboration platform for the making of books. Lots still in development, and everything still in alpha (meaning still private, still not finished). But we are starting with a small (private) alpha launch today of Bite-Size Edits, a collaborative proofreading tool.
Or, a word-based online game.
Or, a massive — yet productive — time waster.
Anyway, we’d like you to tell us what you think …
And to get some feedback, while doing some good for the universe, we are starting by helping Project Gutenberg & Distributed Proofreaders edit some of their public domain texts. If it works, we hope to keep feeding error correction into the Gutenberg/Distributed Proofreaders process.
For more info, and to login, see the Book Oven.
There are a bunch of codes below, please use one and post in the comments which one you’ve taken.
You can now sign up without a code.
If you do have time to try it out and have problems, please let me know: hugh@bookoven.com
Also, feel free to use the invites from your account if you think you know others who might be interested…
Again, here is the URL: http://bookoven.com/
And here is a first batch of codes. Use one and post below which one you used.
NC35tMn
qiVPs54M
t4SKKqYJ
04BQ4Mvm
0kNjaT6D
8jQWjqGr
DGdFmMoe
xeUmnguI
np9WXuQr
VeQ6EH9r
0U8IfHaC
IjMYXinz
E2ab51LP
D1zQDQIQ
FhdZg65V
oZjRRXz3
jsquvMrB
REJKxhOf
Update: The codes went fast! You can find more codes here, here and here. It’s late for Suw in the UK, so you may need to try a few codes if they are taken already. Feel free to drop a mail to contact@bookoven.com if you run into problems.
UPDATE 2: Here are some more codes for those who want them:
RtY1xym0
44ZlKosk
0ltvbajd
XYsBaB5G
tZfztJiz
7B064QLl
EH3zfExI
buIOwBiG
h14iQh5W
RxYBTqoI
30 Comments
I’ll take: NC35tMn thanks!
I’ll take: qiVPs54M thanks!
Check out what we are doing in managing the publishing process.
http://www.appingo.com
I’ll take code
t4SKKqYJ
Thanks
I took 04BQ4Mvm – thanks!
Took this one : 0kNjaT6D
I used 8jQWjqGr
Thanks all … feedback desired! Please let us know what you think…
dibs on DGdFmMoe
I took xeUmnguI
Looking forward to seeing what you’re up to!
I’ll take xeUmnguI.
Oops — i”ll take np9WXuQr instead.
np9WXuQr is mine =)
Whoohoo!
0U8IfHaC
Thanks.
I’ll take 0U8IfHaC
I’ll take IjMYXinz!
Thanks!
I’m unable to suggest changes. It appears the button isn’t working.
E2ab51LP
@james, if you edit in the textbox, that button becomes “live.”
I’ll take REJKxhOf
There needs to be some functionality to split or merge paragraphs, which is what snippets look like. I found a snippet that just trailed off, and the context below indicated that it was a continuation.
Or, if you do want snippets to be partial paragraphs, then you must make it possible to merge the context into the current edit.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your feedback :) There is functionality to split/merge the content, but that’s only visible to an author or owner of a project.
Paragraph issues are likely to be caught at an editing stage, whereas Bite-Size Edits is more focused on typos and other glaring errors that need to be addressed during proofreading. We are working on enhancing editing within the Book Oven core.
oZjRRXz3 taken. Thanks!
Wow, and that’s the last one gone.
Suw still has codes available here:
http://strange.corante.com/2009/04/01/proofreading-the-public-domain
and:
http://chocolateandvodka.com/2009/04/01/proofreading-the-public-domain/
It’s late for Suw in the UK, so you may need to try a few codes if they are taken already. Feel free to drop a mail to contact@bookoven.com if you run into problems.
steph: The problem is that a “bite” has to be logical, if you’re going to distribute the work like this. I was fooled into thinking that a “bite” was a paragraph, just from the interface.
Hey Simon, thanks for your thoughts. We debated internally at length within our team about what’s a suitable size for a “snippet”. For now, we settled on sentences because sentences in texts can also be very long, and a paragraph would be even longer, meaning the edit box will fall very low in the page.
Considering also one of the challenges of proofreading is that mistakes become hard to spot when there is too much context as one ends up actually reading the text, we have tried to address this by making the chunks smaller but not too small.
Obviously, we are still looking for the magic length and perhaps smarter ways to serve palatable chunks, so your feedback has definitely given us more to think about. Thanks!
RtY1xym0
I used 44ZlKosk
I’ve taken 0ltvbajd, thanks!
I’ll take XYsBaB5G!
I’ll take tZfztJiz