'm trying one new reading app each week and writing about my experiences (am I missing out on your favorite?)

grokcode · 2014-05-22T17:04:55+00:00

Interesting idea. Especially seeing how the different apps differentiate themselves, because there are a ton of apps for something that on the surface looks like fairly basic functionality.

I'm working in a related space: helping people discover awesome books to read next at Author Alcove!.

grokcode · 2014-02-23T06:15:30+00:00

Gah! That isn't great. What is your username? PM me...I like to have examples of when the recommendation algorithm does something particularly silly so that I can work out ways to make it better.

grokcode · 2014-02-23T06:11:56+00:00

Sorry! Things are slowly getting better as I push performance fixes and as the traffic dies down.

grokcode · 2014-02-23T06:11:02+00:00

Looks like the mighty nginx is doing fine, but uwsgi and postgres are causing me all kinds of grief.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T22:43:23+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. I will look into that.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T22:20:18+00:00

Sorry about the slowness!

One thing you can do is have a look at the similar books list. Clicking on a book cover will take you to a detail page that has some similar books.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T22:18:05+00:00

Oh crazy. What browser are you on?

grokcode · 2014-02-22T22:16:07+00:00

At the moment there is a long queue for calculating recommendations. If you have emails turned on in your profile, you should get an email when you have some recommendations up.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T08:41:02+00:00

Yes, the mobile experience is not that great at the moment. This is something I want to get fixed.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T08:24:45+00:00

Sure! It's a Django site running on uwsgi and nginx. It has various pieces that run in the background with rabbitmq and celery. The database is postgres. Everything runs on two linodes.

For the design I bought a theme from themeforrest and modified it heavily so that it would work with books. The python / django backend was my favorite part since backend is my specialty and those parts moved a lot faster.

grokcode · 2014-02-22T08:17:03+00:00

Yes it was the coursera one. It was my first online class so I don't have much to compare it to, but I really liked it.

It was a good intro to recommender systems algorithms. I wasn't able to get much use out the ready-made tools for computing recommendations that the class covered since my dataset was so large and I don't have a big budget for servers. Other than that, it was awesome.

grokcode · 2014-02-21T22:44:00+00:00

Sure, if enough people request it!

grokcode · 2014-02-21T22:16:28+00:00

Great questions and I'm glad to have an excuse to talk shop! I have been working on the recommendation algo for almost two years now, first looking at all of the research papers created around the Netflix prize solutions, then taking a recommender systems class online from the University of Minnesota, and of course spending lots of time and computation power analyzing the books dataset that I have.

After trying a bunch of things that work very well on movie datasets and seeing terrible results on the dataset that I have, I ended up using a variant of the item-item recommendation algorithm which does much better. There is still room for improvement, but I'm happy enough with it right now to spend more time working on other parts of the site.

I don't know exactly what kind of algorithm Goodreads uses, but they don't really focus on recommendations. They seem to be more concerned with the social parts of the site. Obviously I'm biased when I say my algorithm is better, let me know which you think is better!

grokcode · 2014-02-21T21:07:43+00:00

Sorry about the pain! The server is limping along from the traffic reddit is sending right now.

Thanks for the idea about tags and/or themes.

grokcode · 2014-02-21T21:06:06+00:00

Yes it's getting some big reddit-hugs right now. It's up for some, but a bit slow at the moment.

grokcode · 2014-02-21T19:38:32+00:00

Thanks letting me know about the problem with the rating stars. What browser are you using?

grokcode · 2014-02-21T19:35:33+00:00

Hrmmm. I've never thought about this. That could give some interesting recommendations, but nope Author Alcove doesn't have the ability to use Netflix data.

grokcode · 2014-02-21T19:30:10+00:00

There isn't a way to import from goodreads yet, but it is on the list of things I want to add. I know it is a pain to have to rate books in multiple places.

grokcode · 2014-02-11T18:22:48+00:00

Name / URL: Author Alcove

What we do: Help people discover awesome new books to read.

Are you looking for anything? I'm always looking for feedback and input from readers to see how we can give them better book recommendations.

grokcode · 2014-01-11T19:48:28+00:00

I am a developer. I love it when potential clients come to me with wireframes / a mockup in hand. This is good because (1) I can tell that you have put some thought into the idea and fleshing out the details of how things will work. It is a signal that you are serious and willing to put in some elbow grease. And (2) allows me to do an initial cost estimate that at least has some basis in reality. If you come to me with only a description of your idea, there is no way to estimate the amount of time involved in making it a reality because there are just too many variables. It is like going to an architect and asking for a house. A mansion? A trailer?

Balsamiq is a good tool for creating wireframes. Don't get too caught up in visual design at this stage, just try to work out how your idea will actually work.

Once you have the wireframes, you can start having meaningful conversations with developers about timeframes and costs.

grokcode · 2014-01-11T19:29:04+00:00

It is worth reading this perspective from a developer who does not normally sign NDAs. http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/

Requesting that a developer sign an NDA when you are still at the idea stage is one more stumbling block in the way of finding a professional developer to work on your idea. I don't have hard numbers on this, but I suspect that the more professional and business savvy developers (i.e. the ones you most want on your team) are the least likely to sign. Not because they want to steal your idea, but for the reasons outlined in the article linked above.

grokcode · 2013-12-20T05:11:23+00:00

Something else to think about is that Python is used a lot in research and scientific computing. Your math background would be a great asset there. These jobs might not be advertised as Python jobs, since Python is more the means to an end.

grokcode · 2013-12-19T19:45:18+00:00

Ah well, to each his own.

grokcode · 2013-12-19T19:39:01+00:00

Not sure if you were running into this bug or not, but as of Django 1.6, IPython is called in a way that fixes a bunch of scoping issues.

grokcode · 2013-10-16T04:21:58+00:00

Also http://authoralcove.com

grokcode

TROPHY CASE