This web site relies on the Amazon API to search for books and get the images and information. It is now broken until further notice and I don’t know when I’m going to be able to fix it.

The State of Colorado recently enacted some legislation that Amazon doesn’t agree with and so they just closed the accounts of every one of their Associates whose address is in Colorado, including the one used here on MyBookLog.

Here is the email they sent me:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill.

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010.

We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

This web site is 100% driven by the Amazon API.

So just like that….POOF! … it is broken.

I don’t know who is right or wrong in this situation. All I know is that one day I have a web site that works and the next day I don’t.

I will fix it as soon as I can figure out what to do. Stay tuned.

Today they announced that you can pre-order the new Amazon Kindle 2. One of the cool new features is that it has text-to-speech capabilities. So it can read your books to you! Check it out by clicking on the ad below:

Technorati Tags: Amazon Kindle 2, ebook, electronic book, ereader, text to speech

Came across an interesting article in the New York Times today about book groups and the difficulty of finding just the right one.

It seems there are dozens of problems and incompatibilities that crop up. Some people want to read the books that Oprah picks; others want to read classics; still others want to read chick lit. And so on.

If you’ve got a few minutes, it’s an excellent article.

==> Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?

-Ryan M. Healy

Technorati Tags: Book Groups, fighting, oprah

My Book Log is not about how many books you own or how many books you buy.

It’s about how many books you actually READ.

Think about this: Most best-selling books may not actually be the best-read books. Just because somebody buys a book doesn’t mean he or she reads it.

Full bookshelves and an empty mind are not the goal.

That’s why My Book Log encourages you, more than anything else, to track and review the books you read. It’s a tool for recording the literary landscape you’ve traveled… and the vistas stretched out before you.

What’s more, because My Book Log tracks how many books you read in a year, it’s also a tool to motivate you to read more.

Have you only read four or five books in the past year? Do you think you can double your pace and read 10 this year?

My Book Log can help you achieve that.

Have you experienced a major life interruption (like a newborn baby), and you fear you won’t be able to read as much as you used to?

Then use My Book Log to help you track your pace — and maintain it. Ultimately, it is a game you play against yourself or among friends.

How many books can you read?

-Ryan M. Healy

Technorati Tags: book logs, literacy, mission, Purpose, Reading

I’ve always loved to read. I read anytime I get the chance. When I was a boy in school I went to the school library and checked out book after book and spent time in the library reading. At lunch I would hang out with other friends who also liked to read and we would talk about the latest thing we were learning in our books…usually UFO conspiracies and fun stuff like that.

When I get a really fun book that grabs me and I can’t put it down…I don’t. I will drop everything else and read all day long and long into the night to finish it. That is rare though. It happens with Terry Pratchett novels but rarely does it happen with a self-help or business book. Of course occasionally I’ll also read in bed before I go to sleep but that isn’t a habit, it is just hit-and-miss.

No, the habit I’ve cultivated over the last couple of decades is to make sure I take a book with me when I go out for lunch.

I love…simply LOVE…sitting in a restaurant alone, eating great food, especially Chinese food, and reading for an hour or two in the early afternoon. That’s the luxury of having had a salaried job. I was able to take whatever time I wanted for lunch. I guess usually I don’t spend much more than an hour away because I always made my own jokes about my long lunches (before someone else could get a shot in) and one of my co-workers told me it really didn’t seem like I was abusing it. Maybe I just wasn’t missed!

Another thought I’ve always had about my lunch reading habit is what I call “the true cost of reading a book.” Before I got my Kindle I would tuck away each receipt for lunch in the book I was reading at the time. If the book has a lot of pages or if it didn’t really captivate my attention and it took more sittings than normal it could really accumulate quite a few receipts! So I would calculate the cost of the book plus the cost of each of the meals I ate while reading it and that is what it would truly cost me to read that particular book. You’ve got to see those hidden costs.

But even with the “high cost” they have been worth every penny. I look forward to exploring new worlds at the dinner table each day.

With just this amount of time devoted to reading I’ve been able to stack up quite a bit of book logs. I wish I had started this site much sooner to have kept track of everything I’ve ever read.

Recently I quit my job and have started doing web development full time. I never took time out to eat breakfast before but now I am making time to start the day right, and that includes some reading time at my kitchen table in the morning. I’m eating more lunches at home but I’m still reading while I do. We’ll see if this double exposure makes my book logs increase at twice the speed as well!

When and where is your favorite time and place to read?

Technorati Tags: book logs, reading at lunch, the true cost of books, time spent

The Boy Genius has pictures of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 here.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Kindle 2.0

Though I haven’t written about it much yet, I bought a Kindle a while back. I’ve really enjoyed it and I plan to upgrade MyBookLog with many Kindle friendly features soon. I’ve heard that Amazon is close to coming out with Kindle 2.0 which is purported to have a larger screen. Is it as large as this one from Plastic Logic…

Technorati Tags: Kindle Plastic Logic

I think you’re going to be quite happy with the site performance now. MyBookLog.com has been moved to a new server and now the database errors are mostly a thing of the past! Whew!

I think I’ll name names.

We originally hosted this site at GoDaddy. They put your web site on one server and your database on another. I’m not sure what they put inbetween but it is not very reliable. Sometimes the database would be there, sometimes it wouldn’t.

So I went looking.

Earlier this week I moved MyBookLog.com to DreamHost. I didn’t realize it at first but they also put the database on a different server. I spent a solid day trying to get things set up and I’m not sure how reliable their database was because I couldn’t get that far. Repeatedly the whole site would just become unavailable for a long time…randomly. In frustration I gave up on them.

The next day I moved the site to HostGator. Much better! It’s been fast, the database has been reliable and I was able to get it up-and-running in a couple of short hours. Of course I had a lot of experience by then.

Hopefully you’ve noticed this improvement in the last few days. I know I’ve been enjoying the increased speed and the reliability.

With that problem solved I’ve been able to concentrate on some other improvements. I have created a “widget” that you can use to display what books you’re reading now on other sites. If you’ve got a WordPress blog like this one for instance, you can add a small JavaScript snippet to your sidebar.php template like I’ve done here.

You can get your MyBookLog Widget code in your settings.

I’ve updated the home page with some interesting facts about the loggers here on MyBookLog and the books they read. Who owns the most books? What book has the most 3 star ratings? Those questions are now answered on the home page. Check it out and see if your picture is featured!

You haven’t uploaded a picture to your profile yet? Why not? Log in and click on the Settings link in the upper right corner of the screen and upload one today!