I have long yearned for BookJetty to support the rating and review features, and finally last night, I managed to roll it out, and here are some highlights of BookJetty new features:

AJAX-based 5-star rating

I was considering between digg-style rating, 4-star rating and 5-star rating. But after weighing the pros and cons; for book reviews, I think the best is still the 5-star rating.

AJAX star rating system was used to speed up the rating process, and to allow users to rate with minimum effort. Mouse over to show the selected star, and click to rate. And I’m quite happy with the result, I rated 71 books in my shelves in no time.

Book Review

To review a book , you need to first add a book to your bookshelf, the book review form will appear below the book description. Latest reviews from everyone will be shown in the homepage.

Comment on Review

A review is like a blog post, other users will be able to comment on it If someone comments on your review, depending on your email notification settings, you can be notified through email.

Bookshelves Side Panel

User profile page has also gotten a face lift, other than some reorganisation of the account maintenance menus, we can now view a user’s tags cloud, with a summary of wanted, reading and read books.

Email Notification

An additional section under you account maintenance, to configure your email notification preferences.

Recent Shouts Layout Re-design

Recent shouts layout was quite cluttered previously, they are now organised and grouped by each category, with each category showing a maximum of 4 recent shouts. It is definitely much easier to view and trace now.

What’s Next for BookJetty?

I will be looking into ways to integrate with other libraries around the world using Z39.50 protocols, which should allow retrieval of library call no, but without the holding information.

If you are a library representative, and would love to explore a closer integration with BookJetty similar with what I did for Singapore National Library Board, do drop me an email.

Other than that, some users have suggested me to look into building BookJetty-Facebook application. I’ll start reading Facebook Platform when I am freed up. And other features like the importing feature, add friends and groups, create discussion threads, and others will also be coming.

Hope you will love this batch of new features, so start rating and reviewing your books! Your feedbacks and comments will be much appreciated. :)