424 days
Amazon resurrects e-book swapper Lendle
We don't know if Amazon caved to popular pressure or if the powers that be just had a sudden change of heart, but whatever the reason, the online mega-store has decided to give e-book swapping service Lendle its legs back, so now it's back up and running.
Lendle joyously relayed the news to its customers via its website last night:
We’re thrilled to report that Amazon has reinstated our api access, and Lendle is back up and running. Welcome back, Lendlers!
Late today, we received an email from an Associates Account Specialist at Amazon informing us that their concern only relates to our Book Sync tool, which syncs a user’s Kindle books with their Lendle account. Amazon informed us that if we disabled this feature, our access to the api, as well as our Amazon Associates account, would be reinstated. We appreciate Amazon’s willingness to modify the position stated in the original access revocation email and work with us to get Lendle back on line. We have complied with the request to disable the Book Sync tool (which was a very useful, but non-essential, feature of Lendle).
Huh, so this Book Sync tool was Amazon's main beef? We reached out to Amazon yesterday but have yet to hear back.
Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft explained, "The program would collect the data bout which books they own, and send a list of them back to Lendle. The program used a process commonly known as 'screen-scraping' to parse through the user's Manage Your Kindle page and gather the book information. Amazon informed us that they don't allow screen-scraping of user's account information on this page."
So the big change seems to be this: users have to type in book titles through the search tool, and hit "I own it" or, there's an option to buy it. So, handy syncing gone, manual inputting now applies.
The users that will be most affected by this will be those with sizeable personal libraries. Those people who also load up their iPods with all the music they've collected over the years, no doubt.
Croft added, "For the small percentage of readers who own several hundred or even thousands of books, the Book Sync tool was definitely a very useful feature that saved them some time. We are already investigating other ways that we can provide a bulk import feature to these users without screen-scraping the Manage Your Kindle page. We hope to have a new Book Sync solution soon."
While not disclosing the number of users on the site, he said the service is growing at a rate of 100 users per hour.
This experience has made an impact on this e-book lender.
We’ve learned a lot through this process, and have come to realize we need to work towards a Lendle product that does not rely on APIs provided by Amazon or any other third party. To that end, we’ve already begun brainstorming the next version of Lendle.
In its original post about the API revocation, Lendle said they weren't singled out, so we're wondering if Amazon has struck the same deal with other e-book lending services out there. BookLending.com users never had any drop in service and it remains live.
More Amazon/Kindle stories:
- Amazon kills some Kindle e-book swappers, including Lendle
- Kindle books now outsell paperbacks
- Kindle books can now be loaned
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who needs to read more books, in any format.
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