We’re happy to announce that, starting from now, you’ll be able to embed recommendations on your websites. Whether it’s your blog, your tumblr or your self-hosted collection of knitting tutorials, everything’s fine.
Just hit the little arrow that’s leaving the box under every recommendation, click on “Embed” and you’ll see an overlay similar to most embed features you know so far. Just change the width to something that fits your layout (a mininum width of 400px is required), copy the code and throw it into yours, we’ll handle the rest.
Here are some examples of great reads and embedded recommendations:
But there’s more: We’ve spiced up the looks of source and article pages to make them stand for themselves a little better. We’ve added some stats (more to come) and included a new filter that enables you to display only those people who recommended and article that you’re actually following. This is the source page for guardian.co.uk, and this is an article page for one of its articles.
Anyway, have fun embedding recommendations, we’d love to see some of them around. Feel free to tell us if anything doesn’t work as expected.
Have you ever used one of those fancy new e-ink readers? Compared to regular screens, it’s an entirely different experience. You can keep on reading for hours without suffering devastating pain in your eyes or being distracted by all the other stuff your tablet or laptop is able to do.
The Kindle is a great device and since we love it so much, we’re starting our Send to Kindle beta today. You’ll be able to register your device and have every article sent right to your Kindle.
If you’re a registered user, simply visit the Dashboard to sign up and join the beta. We’ll be in touch via e-mail as soon as the feature is available to you.
The color blue certainly doesn’t provoke too many emotions. It has a cold feel to it, a distance, almost a lack of friendlyness. Instead of creating an unsettling atmosphere, reading is supposed to feel just like it does in front of a fireplace back home. We expect nothing less of QUOTE.fm.
Today we’ve introduced a few new changes that will lead to an improved reading experience, nourish texts with personality and remind people of one of the very origins of type.
There’s no need to worry: The color blue will remain as there are many reasons to be held against changing it, particularly consistency and a certain recognition value. On the other hand, we’re able to change the type itself and breathe some life into the essential element of QUOTE.fm.
Sure, we’re aware of the fact that typography is a very complex field, for there are many strings attached to the slightest intervention and many sources of errors to be stumbled upon. Ultimately, though, it’s not hard to find a font that expresses the amount of personality we demand. We’ll simply use the most popular, an established classic used in every document in need of a friendly and personal touch. Comic Sans MS.
Here’s hoping that you’re pleased with our decision. We’ve run beta tests over the course of the last few weeks and determined that – in fact – it does improve the overall experience of QUOTE.fm. While it may take some time to get used to, it definately is worth the effort.
Hello! Even though our API is just a few days old, we’ve already got a lot of feedback. It makes us really happy to see how quickly some of you started building cool stuff, for example a chrome extension and API wrappers (on Github: PHP, .NET, Node.JS). Thanks!
Over the last days, we made a few small changes to improve the API and make it more usable.
First of all, all list outputs are now sorted by the time of creation, with the newest entity on top. Also, all recommendation entities now include the user entity inline, saving you some API calls. At last, all timestamps in the responses are now containing timezone information.
If you would like more detailed information, please consult the QUOTE.fm API Github project. The readme will be updated after every tiny change in the API that doesn’t qualify for a whole blogpost.
Again, thanks for all the feedback. We’d love if you continue to make fancy things! Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any requests concerning the API.
QUOTE.fm is a platform built to recommend texts worth reading. Right now it’s possible to award little hearts below a recommendation, Likes, in the same way we’re used to from Facebook.
Facebook incorporates status updates made up of freely chosen content like text, pictures, videos and various others. QUOTE.fm differs from Facebook in the essential concept of linking each recommended text to a certain message: This right here is good, so read it, it’s going to be worth your time.
What does a Like really communicate? On the one hand you could click the heart because you agree that a text is good, on the other hand you could merely be trying to convey that you think it’s a good quote. The latter directly contradicts the intention we have with QUOTE.fm. It’s not about quotes, but the texts they were taken from. So why should you like a text without agreeing that it’s worth being recommended? Sure, one could argue that a Like acts as a light version of a Recommendation. However, this leaves things unnecessarily complex, which is why we’ve decided to wipe out Likes altogether.
The one thing that does remain are Recommendations. If there’s a text you like, go ahead and recommend it. Perhaps with the very same extract, perhaps with a completely different one. It’s entirely up to you. A Recommendation’s a Recommendation.
We’ll eventually come up with a new version of “Like”, which will be integrated into the Read-section as a way of favoriting texts you’d like to mark for later reading without necessarily recommending them to followers.
As so often, less is more. Some of you will surely miss the function, still we hope you’ll eventually get used to its absence. We’re certain that it’ll simplify the platform by a great deal.
