This web site relies on the Amazon API to search for books and get the images and information. It is now broken until further notice and I don’t know when I’m going to be able to fix it.

The State of Colorado recently enacted some legislation that Amazon doesn’t agree with and so they just closed the accounts of every one of their Associates whose address is in Colorado, including the one used here on MyBookLog.

Here is the email they sent me:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

This web site is 100% driven by the Amazon API.

So just like that….POOF! … it is broken.

I don’t know who is right or wrong in this situation. All I know is that one day I have a web site that works and the next day I don’t.

I will fix it as soon as I can figure out what to do. Stay tuned.

I think you’re going to be quite happy with the site performance now. MyBookLog.com has been moved to a new server and now the database errors are mostly a thing of the past! Whew!

I think I’ll name names.

We originally hosted this site at GoDaddy. They put your web site on one server and your database on another. I’m not sure what they put inbetween but it is not very reliable. Sometimes the database would be there, sometimes it wouldn’t.

So I went looking.

Earlier this week I moved MyBookLog.com to DreamHost. I didn’t realize it at first but they also put the database on a different server. I spent a solid day trying to get things set up and I’m not sure how reliable their database was because I couldn’t get that far. Repeatedly the whole site would just become unavailable for a long time…randomly. In frustration I gave up on them.

The next day I moved the site to HostGator. Much better! It’s been fast, the database has been reliable and I was able to get it up-and-running in a couple of short hours. Of course I had a lot of experience by then.

Hopefully you’ve noticed this improvement in the last few days. I know I’ve been enjoying the increased speed and the reliability.

With that problem solved I’ve been able to concentrate on some other improvements. I have created a “widget” that you can use to display what books you’re reading now on other sites. If you’ve got a WordPress blog like this one for instance, you can add a small JavaScript snippet to your sidebar.php template like I’ve done here.

You can get your MyBookLog Widget code in your settings.

I’ve updated the home page with some interesting facts about the loggers here on MyBookLog and the books they read. Who owns the most books? What book has the most 3 star ratings? Those questions are now answered on the home page. Check it out and see if your picture is featured!

You haven’t uploaded a picture to your profile yet? Why not? Log in and click on the Settings link in the upper right corner of the screen and upload one today!

I’ve just updated MyBookLog.com to do two new things: First, if you’ve got a book with a valid ISBN but it’s not listed in Amazon you can now add it yourself manually. Second, if you notice missing or bad data on any book you can edit the book information. And Third….THREE!…Three new things!…you can upload your own cover images. So if the copy you have has a different image than the default image, or there is no default image, you can upload yours.

I know you didn’t expect this since a lot of other sites don’t have these particular features. But you are a book lover and we trust you with the data about your books.

In the not too distant future, maybe next Sunday A.D.?, I’ll try to add a way for you to add books that don’t have an ISBN.

Yesterday I finished an update to the site that brings us to the latest version of Amazon Web Developer Services. With that update came a lot of new information about the books we love. So when you look at a book page you will see how much it weighs, what its dimensions are and how many pages are in it. I think it’s kind of cool! For example, the books I’ve entered so far onto this site (and there are many, many more to go) add up to these interesting numbers:

Combining all 111 of the books I own:

* they weigh 69.73 pounds!
* their list price totals $1152.73!
* there are 32,187 pages in them!
* they require 7.58 linear feet of bookshelf space!
* they would be 42.04 feet wide if I stacked them edge-to-edge!
* they would be 62.79 feet high if I stacked them top-to-bottom!
* I could replace the ones available at Amazon.com for $950.84!

When you look at your personal home page you’ll see the same information about your book collection!

You can now update your profile on MyBookLog.com with a photo that will be displayed on your permanent link page and on all of your logs. You can see an example on my book log. It’s easy to do in your My Account page. Don’t worry about the size because we will resize it to fit the site. But my personal opinion is that square pictures look best, so if you can use an image editing tool to crop your photo to a square before you upload it that would be the best, but it’s not required. Let people see who you are.

If you are the author of a book you can tell everyone that on your MyBookLog page. When you log a book you can check the box that says you are the author. (Please be honest!)

For example, here is a book that Ryan wrote:

If your book is not available from Amazon drop us an email and we can arrange for you to get your book listed here on MyBookLog.

I’ve been doing a lot of logging to show (at least) what books I own. I’ve added popups when you hover over an image to give you more information about the book. You can see the large image of a book if you go to it’s book page and hover over the image you see at the top.

From now on when you start reading a book come to MyBookLog.com and start a log on it. When you enter the date that you started reading it your personal home page will be updated with that book under the “What I Am Reading Now” section. Maybe you read more than one book at a time? Well just start a log on every one of them and they will all show up. The books you’re reading will stay there until you come back to your log and tell it when you finished reading it. That’s a great time to go ahead and rate and review the book too. You can also record how many times you’ve read the book as well as whether or not you own the book. I’ll be doing more with all of this data for you later.

Try out all the features on the site. I fixed quite a few bug today!

Two weeks ago I completed some programming that makes MyBookLog more personal. You can find a My Account link in the top of the right-hand column. From there you can tell the world a little about yourself by writing something in the “About Me” section. You can change your password, change your screen name, change your email and even let the world know what you are reading now. And when you are done doing that you can refresh your very own MyBookLog web page with this information. Everyone who registers at MyBookLog now has a permanent page with all of your information on it. You can share that with your friends. For example my screen name is Elwood so you can see my personal MyBookLog page at MyBookLog.com/loggers/Elwood/.

Another update I’ve made to the book logs themselves is that you can record more information about the book that you are logging than just your rating and review. You can keep track of whether you own it, have read it or are in the middle of reading it.

I have plans to add fields in the future for the date you started reading it, the date you finished reading it and how many times you’ve read it … is this your first reading of it, your second, etc. So when you start reading a book you can come to MyBookLog and open a log for that book and record the date you started. That’s going to make it show up in your own MyBookLog page as a book you are currently reading. Then when you finish it you can enter the date you finished and optionally your rating and review. All this and more!

I logged a bunch of books this week and stumbled upon a few more bugs that need to be ironed out. Ken is doing a great job of fixing things and polishing the site.

I’ve also written some new descriptive text for the site. I expect it will be posted by the end of this weekend.

In other news, Ken has added “BETA” underneath the logo of the site. This is in preparation for our first launch of My Book Log, during which we’ll be actively soliciting beta testers to join us and help improve the site.

I’m very excited about My Book Log. Not only because I love books, but because it has the potential to become the largest community of book lovers on the Internet.

In case you’re interested, here’s an article about the big trend toward social networks. It’s called “Social networks poised to shape Net’s future.” I believe My Book Log will become one of these influential social networks. With your help, of course.

-Ryan M. Healy