I saw a beta of this at BEA and it was very cool. I’ll do a post on it after I play with the release version, but here’s the press release.
Skyhook, the world leader in location information, context and intelligence, and Chiisai App Solutions LLC, today announced the integration of Skyhook’s Local Faves into Book Crawler to deliver the best location and social features to book lovers around the world. The app is the highest rated and most powerful bookshelf app available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
“We are very excited to introduce the very first location-based book app integrated with Skyhook’s Local Faves,” said Jaime Stokes, the creator of Book Crawler. “Book lovers have a natural tendency toward sharing and discussion as evidenced by the many book clubs around the world and online. What Book Crawler and Skyhook are doing is using location to make discovery and sharing much more engaging to the reader.”
Book lovers are always looking for new ways to discover their next great read. Often those suggestions come from friends in their social networks, or their local book clubs. The Book Crawler app’s community feature brings location to the forefront, making those recommendations much more relevant. For instance, if the most popular book on a college campus is The Help, users may chose to read that next volume in order to get in on the discussion. Or if a reader is headed to Martha’s Vineyard this summer, they may find that Caleb’s Crossing happens to be the most popular read on The Vineyard, and chose that as their beach book because it is about a young Wompanoag from the island who becomes the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. With the integration of popular social networks like Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, users can comment on what they are reading, check-in from their local Starbucks where they are reading, or share their favorite author, without ever leaving the app.
More and more people are depending on their social networks for sharing recommendations and looking for apps that will allow them to broadcast their activities whether it’s dining, watching sports, listening to music or reading a great book. Local Faves allows developers to add those capabilities to their existing apps very quickly and easily.
“Local Faves provides a customizable way of integrating location and various social networks important to book lovers,” said Ronda Billings Morra, director of marketing for Skyhook. “Book Crawler users will now have a more dynamic environment to share what and where they are reading.”
App developers can add Local Faves to their apps for free by downloading the SDK here:http://skyhookwireless.com/localfaves/
