Judge A Book By Its Cover - BlogSunday, March 19, 2006 Press releaseFor all you lucky people who read this blog, you get to see a press release, before its published! Its due to go out on Tuesday, but here is a sneak peak!You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover! For years we have been told not to "judge a book by its cover." That has now changed thanks to new web site www.JudgeABookByItsCover.co.uk, where people are encouraged to not only judge books by their covers, but also CDs and DVDs. It is a great way to discover hidden gems, and users can find out if they've got the knack of judging covers by seeing how many people agree with their judgement. Charts show which covers are the best, worst, and most importantly, misjudged! Sheffield, UK March 21, 2006 A new web site, http://www.JudgeABookByItsCover.co.uk lets people do something they've always been told not to - judge books, CDs and DVDs by their covers! "For years shops have sold books, CDs and DVDs by relying on the cover art to grab the shoppers' attention," explains Chris Riley, the web site's creator, "but with so much emphasis on the cover, it amazes me that only now is there a web site where people can judge these covers." The web site is easy to use. Covers are presented at random, allowing the user to judge them on a 5 star scale, from "Rubbish" to "Great". For anyone finding ratings difficult to choose, the "Head to Head!" battle game is also available. After judging a cover, the user can see how many people agree with their judgement, and then compare this to the cover's overall rating. Charts show the best and worst covers, and, most importantly, any misjudged covers; covers that are judged as "Great" when the item has received a poor review and covers that have been judged as "Rubbish" when the item is actually really good. Riley adds, "Judging a book by its cover isn't a bad character trait, like we're led to believe. I've found Judge A Book By Its Cover.co.uk is a great way to discover books, CDs and DVDs that would never usually get noticed." The web site is certainly an addictive resource for discovering hidden gems. Due to its constantly updated catalogue of covers, for which an RSS feed is available, it will never be out of date. The site also maintains a blog, so users can stay up to date with news and recent changes to the site. Webmasters and bloggers can make use of a clever "widget", allowing them to have Judge a Book By Its Cover.co.uk directly on their site, and users can link directly to any covers of interest. About judgeabookbyitscover.co.uk.web6.reliabledomainspace.com: Judge A Book By Its Cover.co.uk, the only web site where books, CDs and DVDs are judged solely by their covers, is the creation of Chris Riley. Covers are rated from 1 to 5 stars, and charts detail the best, worst and most misjudged covers. Launched in February 2006, the site has a broad appeal and is popular with all who visit it. Posted by Chris at 22:22 NewsRight then, more news.
If you spot any issues with the new covers feed let me know and I'll do my best to sort them out. Keep judging, and spread the word, this site lives and breathes on your opinions!! Posted by Chris at 22:15 More updatesI'm busy working on this site as much as I can, and the next raft of updates have been made! They include:
Hope this round of updates keeps you going, please keep providing feedback, and keep judging! Posted by Chris at 20:30 Selecting coversWell, my best efforts at making the selection code for judging covers random isn't going too well. Several people have noticed you can get duplicates, quite often, so I've been trying to stop that by tracking what you've Judged during your visit, and not showing you those covers again.Its not ideal, as it seems to have slowed things down as I feared, but I've not had much more time to think about it. Rest assured it is top of my priority list, and I'm thinking of ways around it. If you have any ideas on efficient code to pull out random non duplicated covers, let me know! Update:Hurray, I've got it sorted so I'm happy with it now. I've taken the number of covers I track you viewing down to 60. This is a good number because you're not likely to judge more than 60 in one session, and performance doesn't seem adversely affected by it. So enjoy judging non duplicating covers! Posted by Chris at 22:29 Site updates and a new feedWell, I've been hard at work making the site even better before I really start pushing it out into the web world. Here are the updates I've made:
Finally I've created a new RSS feed. Related to the item above, it lists out the new covers imported that day, for the last 10 days, so you can keep track of new covers entered into the site. Then you can come and try to spot the cover, and be the first one to Judge it! Posted by Chris at 17:24 |
