FriendItem – Social Book Service
by Jonathan Lonczak
May 4, 2011 10:00 AM –
Install
FriendItem is Social Book Service. FriendItem is an application which is providing total solution relating to books and reading activity, which enable you not only to manage, review, underline and evaluate books, but also share the contents with friends.
The basic data can utilize millions of books in the world through ‘Google Books’ and you can add books to your library by using keywords search function or recognizing barcode of the book. In addition, this application can provide a sharing function with friends through Facebook, Twitter, Email, which enables you to discuss books with your friends comfortably and makes possible to write review after reading a book as well as producing monthly statistics on what you read. All these functions will motivate you have right reading habit and read books as much as possible.
Price: Free
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Adds books to your virtual library and allows you to share them with others!
- Keeps track of books that you have lent out or donated!
- Allows you to write reviews and take notes on books you have read!
- Allows you to document your entire reading history!
- Allows you to sync all of your FriendItem content with Facebook!
- The back button now works!
Cons
- The application is not formatted properly for tablet devices.
- FriendItem has only included their social book service in their initial Android offering, while there is many more sharing options on their website for sharing.
- The interface will not go into landscape view on tablet devices.
- The underlining feature appears to only be note taking on a specific passage within the confines of the FriendItem application.
Features:
FriendItem is a social book service that allows you to share your personal library of books with others. This application allows you to scan in, or manually input the books that you have read in to a virtual library. You can also scan in books that are recommended to you by others so you can create your own reading list!
In order to add books to your personal library in FriendItem you have to scan in the barcode on the back of the book you wish to add. FriendItem will automatically populate all of the corresponding information about the book. This information includes ISBN, Author, Published Date, and Publisher. If you are either unable or unwilling to scan the barcode for the book you wish to add; all you need to do is hit the search button and type in either the book’s title or the author’s name. In order to add books to your future reading list you follow the same steps as to add a book to your personal library.
After adding a book through one of these methods you can input information about the book into the program. Each book can be given a status of “Have Read,” “Reading Now,” or “To Read.” This allows you to keep track of which books you still need to read and share an active reading list with friends. You can also add in the dates that you began and finished reading each book. This allows you to gauge how quick of a reader you are as well as get an idea of the reading level of the book.
After reading a book you can add in a review or notes for a certain passage. This application allows you to type in the page of the passage in the book you wish to underline and then enter in the paragraph that you wish to underline and write notes on. Then when you review the book in your FriendItem library at a future date you can see all of the important passages in one place along with your notes as to why a specific passage was important to you.
The review option allows you to give each book that you have read a rating on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. This will be shared with others through FriendItem and is also useful to see what types of books you enjoy. For the more dedicated book reviewer, you can also write your own written review to go along with the 5 star rating.
One of my favorite features of FriendItem is the ability to change “Ownership Status.” This feature allows you to keep track of books that you own, want, borrowed, lent or donated. I especially like that it gives you the option to keep track of books that you have lent out to others. This is useful because it can be hard to keep track of who has borrowed from you and I have lost many good books that way.
Finally, FriendItem allows you to share your library, reviews, reading status, and notes with others through Facebook, Email, and Twitter. If you wish to share information on a single book you can post that information directly to your Facebook, Twitter, or send it out by email. If you wish to share your entire library with everyone in the world then you can share it through FriendItem’s social service.
The syncing between the FriendItem application for Android and FriendItem’s Facebook Social Service is flawless. It pulls over all of the information that you input in to FriendItem on the phone and syncs it with their Facebook page. On the website you are awarded badges for accomplishing specific reading achievements and have many advanced sharing options which are not yet available through the Android application.
Watch on Mobile
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FriendItem Book Library
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FriendItem Book Search
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FriendItem Information
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FriendItem Book Properties
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FriendItem Book Information 1
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FriendItem Book Information 2
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FriendItem Book Information 3
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FriendItem Barcode Reader
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FriendItem Settings
Usefulness:
FriendItem is extremely useful for sharing all of your reading information with others. I find it very helpful to keep track of all the books I have actually read, as well as keep track of all of the books I want to read.
I love that it allows you to keep track of what books you have loaned out to friends. Even the ability to see what books you have donated is extremely useful. It would be hard to keep track of which books you had donated and which books you had lent out without this application.
I also love how easy it is to add books to your library or reading list. This application does an excellent job giving you the maximum amount of information for the least amount of work.
One feature I do have a problem with is the underling feature. I wish there was a way to integrate the underlining with the actual book. That way as I reread the book I have “underlined” I can see my notes. The way the FriendItem interface is set up it appears to force you to copy and paste the section you want to “underline” in to the FriendItem application and then input your notes for that passage.
This is useful for seeing all of your notes and important passages for one book in one place, but I do not feel that this is as easy or as useful as underlining a passage in an actual book.
Ease of Use:
FriendItem is extremely easy to use. The interface is very straightforward and user-friendly. The only problem that I experienced while using this application was that the back button was not enabled for in application use. Since I began reviewing this application that has been fixed through a software update and I am happy to say that the back button now works splendidly!
Frequently Used:
FriendItem is excellent if you are in a reading club, reading group, or like to share what you read with your friends. I consider myself more of a casual reader and may find myself going in to this application once or twice a month to add in book recommendations from friends, but doubt that I would find a need to use this application frequently or to it’s full potential.
Interface:
The interface for FriendItem is good overall. Your personal library is displayed as a bookshelf with the cover art of each book being displayed prominently on the main page. The visuals are very good on a smartphone, but are somewhat unfinished on a tablet.
I will say that the interface has improved since I began using the application. Originally it would only display in a windowed mode on my Galaxy Tablet. Since the latest update it does format the application to take up the full screen of my device once loaded. The update did not fix the initial FriendItem loading screen which still only takes up a small portion of the screen as it is designed for a 3’7″ inch smartphone.
The application also does not support a landscape view of your library on either the Galaxy Tablet or Motorola Xoom. The formatting on the Galaxy Tablet also looks like they just took the graphics for the smartphone interface and stretched them in order to make it work on a tablet. You can even see the lines of the grid that the books are held in. Though this application may work well on a phone it is far from finished for a tablet.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Game,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
FriendItem,
FriendItem Social Book Service
Categorised in: Books & Reference, Lifestyle, Productivity, Social
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