Pullbot's Latest News
Storylines have been in the system for a while now, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce them to you formally. I've just finished a screencast that introduces Storylines that I encourage you all to watch if you have 5 minutes to spare.
You can check out recently added Storylines and use the atom feed there to subscribe to them as they are entered. You can add a range of issues from a title to a storyline. You can reorder via drag and drop the issues on a storyline, and enter labels for each part of the storyline. You can remark on storylines too.
Also, directly from an edition you can link up and edit the storylines that edition is apart of. Now, instead of using the 'issue subtitle' you can better catalogue the comic books in the system.
Will you be in or around Toronto this weekend? If so, why not stop by the Paradise Toronto Comicon (July 12-13) where we'll be making our first meatspace appearance!
We look forward to meeting you all and jabbing about the app, where it's headed, what you'd like to see (or not see). I might even shower for the occasion and break my new record (soap's overrated don't you... wait off topic).
Note: booth #'s haven't been assigned yet, so look for the large banner or the space where all the un-cool people are hanging out.
Swag for 100 existing users
As a reward to our loyal fans, we've done up a special run of 100 'tote bags' to be bestowed upon the first 50 (well maybe 49 cause we might keep some for ourselves ;->) of you who visit our booth each day (the con runs Saturday and Sunday). I've posted a mock-up of one for you to take a peak at, and please be gentle with the comments -- I code, I don't Illustrate.
What could be handier for carry around all the books you'll score? Well, I suppose one of those granny carts with some long-boxes might be...
If you can, try to remember your facebook password (don't write it down, your sysadmin would scold you) so you can login at the booth to do a quick double-check that you are, indeed a registered user (or just jot down your facebook uid (that # that shows on your profile address)) or 'become a fan' so your picture will be in the list.
Other ways to Enjoy
Over on my personal blog I list all the guests at the show with links back to their page here.
Discovered a new artist you didn't know about? Add them to your pull list.
Bought an indie title you haven't been able to find anywhere else? Add it to your permanent collection.
Find a real gem? Recommend it to your friends or write a review.
As part of our prep for the convention, I recently re-did the about page so you might want to take a peak at that, 'become a fan' or 'write a review' or scroll through the long list of accolades I put up and think to yourself "I wish I said that".
Also, I've done the first of a planned series of 'screencasts' where I take you through different features of the application. The first one is really basic and I take you through pulling by title and by creator.
Photos
We hope to be able to document the convention a bit, so I've made a Photo Album to keep the memories in. Who knows, maybe we'll even be able to update over the weekend from the show itself?
There is a feature there to 'add fan photos' so if you take any of us (or heck even with our banner far in the background) upload it in!
Those of you who don't want to meet us, you might want to head out near the airport to the Polaris (formerly 'Toronto Trek') SF & Fantasy Convention. We won't take it too personal. We might hunt you down after to avenge our shattered hearts though! Or, maybe we'll wait. And wait until you least expected it...
AND!
If you're still reading, get yourself ready for next weeks beta launch of the New Facebook profiles (which means I'm going to have the app down for a short while at some point to add an extra server to the cluster to handle things (see -- now that it'll be 2 servers I can call it a cluster -- fancy eh?))!
I suck at documentation and hype, but with our appearance @ the Paradise Toronto Comicon this weekend I've got to do some of it. I've updated the About page with the following:
Eliminating layers between Creator and Fan, Publisher and Retailer
Features
- Build your "pull list" by title and/or creator to be notified of what comics are due in stores each weekly as well as when new solicitations are released so you can be sure they are on order @ your local comic shop.
- Manage your collection: keeping track of what editions you own, and have read; which are your favourites -- be it the book itself or just the awesome full-size cover.
- Show off your collection on your profile and add to the system any back issues we don't yet have.
- Stay on top of what your friends are reading, liking and remarking on
- Remark: review, comment, discuss, recommend anything in the system. (Well -- not just yet!)
- View Previews of comics before they hit the shelves
- Follow Storylines to keep track of those massive cross-overs and tie-in events, or just the few issue arc within your favourite titles
For Publishers & Creators
Add the app to your Facebook Page to easily share with your fans what comicbooks you have due or are upcoming.
For Bloggers
Embed comics into your blog and website to enrich the experience of your readers as well as save you time.
For Comic Shops
Coming Soonish!
Accolades
- "It's one of the best apps facebook has, i think. Keep up the good work. I can't wait to see the wonders it'll do once it goes golden release." -- Kevin Chung
- "Best Facebook Application EVER!" -- Andrew Muir
- "I'm loving this app! " -- Andy Riggins
- "I'm really enjoying this application. I've always enjoyed showing off my collection.. I'm having a lot of fun adding issues to my collection here :)" -- Michael Eshom
- "Love this app!!! Whoever set this up, you have done a great job!!" -- Dan Danielian
- "This is a great application....cant wait to see it really take off" -- TJ Shevlin
- "THIS IS AWESOME!!" -- Elizabeth S. James
- "Thanks for this...really." -- Morgan Jeske
- "Seriously, this is the best thing anyone's ever come up with for this place! Thank you soooo much!" -- Eric Kim
- "i absolutely LOVE this application. ive been waiting for this. THANK YOU!" -- Geno Mehalik
- "Wow! Someone actually came up for a practical application of an application. Great work!" -- Robert Rousseau
- "Thanks so much for this great application. So far this is the only truly useful application on facebook." -- Stephen Abrams
- "This is easily my favorite app on facebook. I love the new profile box features. Great work." -- James Bos
- "I've been waiting for something like this!" -- Tim Bavlnka
- "An amazing application... Saves tonnes of time bouncing around different sites and makes it really easy to compare with your friends and talk about whats cool. Releif,,, I'll be on top of what issues I need if I am away and simpole fun." -- Warren Wesson
- "I LOVE this app… Keep up the awesome work! ^_^" -- Leanne Wilingham
- "Very cool!" -- Cullen Bunn creator of 'The Damned'
- "Hey Chris, I'm actually a really big fan of that application and added it to my page. Great job on that, by the way! I have been recommending it to everyone." -- Jermey S. Atkins -- Directory of Publicity Dark Horse Comics
- "I'll definitely be hyping your app to all my self-publishing friends as a great way to pimp their books. I think you're definitely right- your app has the potential to be a great tool for self-publishers. Even better than most other facets on the internet, actually- on Comic Books Beta, Dead Man Holiday gets the same amount of shelf space as Wolverine #66, and that's pretty cool. It lets people make up their minds based on the product itself. I think stuff like CBB, and the internet in general, is going to do a lot to even the playing field in the coming years- it already has greatly, in my opinion. This: "Eliminating layers between fan and creator, publisher and retailer" is excellent. You're a good man, Chris Nolan!" -- Colin Panetta -- Creator 'Dead Man Holiday'
- "That's pretty damn cool!" -- christopher folino - Creator 'Sparks'
- "I added it and it looks great. Thanks much!" -- Mike Baehr -- Fantagraphics
- "I really like your application, btw. It's both one of the best comics services I've seen and one of my favorite facebook applications." -- Warren Cleven
- " it looked like a cool way to keep all of my lists together instead of paying for some program or having to go through the box, its a great app and I'm excited to see where it goes." -- Tony Lovetro - 1,000,000th pull
- "I run a shop down in Austin, TX called Funny Papers, and I love the Comic Books Facebook application" -- Derek @ Funny Papers
- I just discovered your app, and I think it's awesome! At this point I'm resisting the urge to stay up all night and submit titles, but I have work (and school!) tomorrow so I had better not." -- Pat Reilly
- "your app is awesome. In Beta it is still very impressive, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Nice work and thank you! I'm looking forward to watching it evolve." -- Andrew McIntire -- TFAW
- "I really love it and I'm hoping to make a few more people regular comic readers with it! It's a great simple organizer. You've done a wonderful job on it." -- Jon Gorga
- "I just discovered your Comic Book application in FaceBook. It is very cool and I think you have done a great job with it." -- John Mayo of "The Mayo Report"
- "You know... I never add applications... but I added this one. :)" -- Liana K
A few of the 230+ Publishers
- Archie Comics
- Avatar Press
- Boom! Studios
- CMX Manga
- Dark Horse Comics
- DC Comics
- DC Universe
- Dynamite Entertainment
- Fantagraphics Books
- IDW Publishing
- Image Comics
- Marvel Comics
- Marvel Adventures
- Marvel Knights
- Marvel Universe
- MAX
- Oni Press
- Random House
- Slave Labor Graphics
- Tokyopop
- Top Cow Productions Inc
- Ultimate Marvel
- Vertigo
- Virgin Comics
- VIZ Media
- Wildstorm
If you're a comics creator or publisher we've now added support for another way for your to promote yourselves!
"Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand." Learn more at Facebook Pages or just jump right in and create your page now.
Pages are also great for you to be able to separate your personal self from your professional self -- i.e. no need to accept friend requests from fans you've never met, you can just direct them to your 'page' instead of your 'profile'. Facebook isn't MySpace after all ;-)
Once you have your page, you can go to our about page and use the 'Add to Page' link in the top right. You'll be taken to the simple configuration screen where you just need to select if you're a publisher or a creator, select your entity in the next step and then wait for your page to get refreshed.
Your page will then include a 'Comic Books' section which shows any titles which are due each week, and a list of upcoming titles that we know about. If there are books missing, or with inaccurate data just add/find them in the system and then back on your page follow the 'edit' link and queue up a manual refresh of your page to get the latest information otherwise it'll be updated automatically each week.
If you're a fan, check out the list of entities with Pages and follow the 'become a fan' link on any of their pages.
Here's a list of some people/organizations who have already taken part in the launch of this feature:
- Top Cow Productions, Inc.
- Fantagraphics Books Inc
- Digital Webbing LLC
- Mysterious Transmissions's Dead Man's Holiday
- Raven Entertainment Studios
- Adam West
- Comic Books on Film
Also, popular writers Jeff Parker and R.D Hall are in the process of setting up their pages so check back with them in the next little while.
We're planning support for titles/series and shops too so if you're interested in either of those, let us know so we can adjust things accordingly.
Last Saturday, June 7 2008, Comic Books Beta hit it's one millionth pulled comic. Amazing Spider-man #556 was the lucky edition, and Tony Lovetro was the lucky collector.
Tony says "it's a great app and I'm excited to see where it goes."
We'd have to agree! But first let's recap where we've been.
Having opened the beta just over 7 months ago it's been a balance between adding new features and adding new comics and upgrading and changing servers numerous times in the process. The initial focus of letting people know when new issues of their favorite comics come out was expanded to allow you to enter titles in yourself, be it to expand the back-issue collector or to get lesser-known works some much needed attention.
Some things we're looking forward to as to head toward 10,000,000 pulls:
- Support for Facebook Pages so creators and publishers can streamline their official presence on Facebook
- The upcoming re-design of the Facebook Profile. We'd love your feedback on what you'd like to see (and not see) taken advantage of -- think new ways to manage your minifeed, adding your comics to your 'info section' of your profile, a whole tab dedicated to your collection and not just a small box on your profile, a new 'publisher' to share comics with your friends and more.
- Preview artwork on select comics as provided by publishers. If you're not sure if you want to pick up a book some week, you might get lucky and have 3 or 5 or more pages of the book to check out ahead of time.
- An all new commenting/review/recommendation system so you can engage with your friends and other app users across the site.
- Some 'tours' of the site to take new (and old) users through the different areas of the system in case you're missing out on some of the functionality that's there.
- Expanding the toolset for bloggers to leverage the data in the system.
- Our first convention appearance -- we'll be @ the Paradise Toronto Comicon July 12 & 13 in our home-town of Toronto. We look forward to meeting any and all users who make it out to the show. I wonder we'll have swag for the faithful?
- An announcement of a 'brand' for the site and maybe some updated icons. It's a bit hard telling people to check out 'comic books'. Yeah, you know just search for comic books on facebook and you'll find it...
Phew, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself -- or take up too much more of your time.
Thanks for being with us for the first million and hope to see you at 100,000,000 (see I couldn't say 2,000,000 because in the few days it's taken me to write this post, we've exceeded 1,112,000 already)!
So... check out the new solicitations archive for a whole whack of books scheduled to ship in August.
I decided instead of trying to remember to make a post here every time a new batch of books got added, I'd make a little archive and stick them all in there.
So you'll still get your notification of all your books which match your list from the solicitations but it'll be easier for you to go in and get out anything new that you might want to add as well.
There is an rss feed if you're into that kind of thing so you can be automatically notified via other channels as well.
If you're tight with any of the other publishers whom I don't have on the list yet, please ask them to get in touch so we can get their books included too.
An additional reminder: check out the Application Changes thread of the discussion boards to stay on top of little changes I make to the system in between these blast announcements.
Oh, and we're getting close to our 1,000,000th pulled comic. I wonder who the lucky collector will be?
In an effort to make it easier to know what your friends are up to with their comic books, I've put in a new home page which will collect all your friends stories for you in one place. The old home page is still available too.
Are they reading something you're not? Do they like a book you hate? Are they talking smack about your latest favourite? Now you'll know.
Along with this change I've re-done how I generate the weekly emails (which should come Tuesday night EST now btw) so I'm crossing my fingers I didn't botch anything up with that too. With this change you should see what your friends have pulled each week more easily.
Speaking of weekly emails -- don't forget it's Free Comic Book Day this coming Saturday (May 3rd) so you may get some of the FCBD titles in your weekly email which won't actually be available until Saturday (cough depending on store cough).
Oh, and have you seen the new Top 10 Page yet?
Please let me know what you think of these changes in a comment here, or via the Discussion Boards -- thanks!
As many of you have seen via the new "New Pull" notifications, a bunch of new solicitations for July 2008 have been added to the system recently.
Feel free to browse around to see if anything new strikes your fancy in addition to that which is already on your list.
Oh, and I don't think I ever messaged to tell off the comic books solicited to ship June 2008 either, whoops.
In addition to all those new books, today we imported 9 months worth of comic books from Avatar Press too, so if you're a big Warren Ellis fan and you haven't edited your pull list to add him as an automatic pull yet, check those out.
Please send your suggestions or complaints via the Discussion Boards and also follow Application Changes thread to know of all the little improvements that get made to the application (such as the new 'Editions with the most...' boxes).
Do you blog about comics? Post about them anywhere?
Well, now you can have some cool tooltips showing off the cover and description info etc. See this old post of mine as an example, heck check out most all the posts in my comics category. Notice when you hover over the links to the comics up comes the tooltip?
It just takes one line to link in some javascript in the header of your website and then any links to here will be magic. Check out some docs (ok, very limited docs) at the embed page.
Something else you might have noticed on that embed page -- the weekly shipping list. If you have a site where you'd like to include the entire weekly list, this might be of use for you.... again it's just one line of javascript -- see the details on that page -- it could be called the Weekly Shipping List Widget or somesuch.
I look forward to your feedback. Maybe I'll finish some of the other pieces I started like the search... (feel free to leave some encouragement as to what features you'd like to see next).
Free Comic Book Day is a single day when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world are giving away comic books absolutely free to anyone who comes into their stores.
Browse the Free Comics due May 3rd, 2008 and add them to your lists.
Thanks to Michael Hoskin for adding all the books into the system.
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