Tag Archives: LivingSocial

LivingSocial is dead long live GoodReads

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I have used LivingSocial since joining Facebook to keep track of books I am reading, have read and to pass this information onto my friends.  The service didn’t offer any other functionality really, a standard suggested books feature but that was about all.  However when recently I accessed the site to update my latest read I was surprised to be confronted with this message.

First of all, thank you for your enthusiastic support over the past four years. Your continued engagement with our these applications means a lot to us here at LivingSocial, and we're sad that we haven't been able to dedicate the time and effort you deserve to keep this community alive and thriving. It's not you. It's us. You see — about two years ago — we tried a new idea, which has taken our team and company in a new direction. This community needs tools and products that are fully supported and continually improved, and unfortunately, this is something we just can't support right now. We know your data is important to you. Before we discontinue the service, we want to give you the opportunity to save it. On August 10th, 2011, we are going to shut down this suite of applications.Fortunately they supplied a handy link to export all existing data to the GoodReads site, which now having signed up seems to be a far superior and greater used service.  I’m often on the lookout for new ideas for books to read and this appears to be a valuable resource. It can also link in with Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and Kindle accounts, allows you to compare your bookshelf against your friends and supplies a number of widgets for inclusion in your site.  So I’m afraid I will not be mourning the passing of LivingSocial. Long live GoodReads!

Red Eyed Monsters read books

The Forever War
Bodyguard Of Lightning
Foundation and Empire
A Clockwork Orange
The Cider House Rules
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
The Tin Drum
In Other Worlds
Elric: Song of the Black Sword
Niagara Falls All Over Again
Postcards
The Pillars of the Earth
Legend
Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham
Use of Weapons
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!
The Player of Games
Sandman Slim
Vampire AD 70
The Desert Spear



Nigel Bachmann’s favorite books »

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Widgets – Poorly coded?

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Is it me or are a large number of widgets poorly coded?  Although they may look good on your site do they actually conform to any standard? As I’m still putting this site together I thought it might be fun to add a couple of good looking widget adding a bit of interactivity.  I grabbed the code for the Twitter profile widget and the Books Widget from LivingSocial.com entered the code into my sidebar and checked the results.  Well, they looked pretty good, but when I used the  W3C Validator I was astounded at the number of errors it brought up.  Now perhaps I’m being a bit anal, maybe its the autistic gene but I’m not even expecting strict compliance merely transitional.  So wouldn’t it, after spending so much time creating a good looking widget, only take a little more effort to add a little conformity?