Thoughts on a reading platform
A few weeks ago we wrote a post covering some of the thinking behind our reader for iPad. It got some attention on the web which is great but afterwards, we felt the need to highlight one of our main goals. To build the reading platform.
When we founded Readmill there were a few things we were fed up with. One was imitations of wooden bookshelves, the other that everyone was building closed ecosystems where no innovation could thrive. We decided to go the other way.
One person that has been key in this is James Bridle. When Open Bookmarks was announced we immediately felt that this was a movement that we wanted to support and be a part of. Our reader is using our own public API which means that any ereader or book service could use our platform to add a social component. And we are continuously working to support the full Open Bookmarks checklist.
Books deserve something more than status updates on Facebook and Twitter. And readers need somewhere to store their experiences, their thoughts, their marginalia. And this data should be open (if the user wants it to be of course) for developers to play with, from anywhere, at anytime.
If you’re a developer and interested in books, we’d be happy to give you early access to our API. The documentation is already on GitHub and if you want to try out the site, send an email to henrik (at) readmill.com. Let’s hack!
