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Members of our staff built ReadersNdex.com
. It was home to over one hundred big and small book publishing
companies. It was the first web site to integrate short descriptions,
long descriptions, bibliographic information, author comments, subject
categories, and cross referencing between different publishing companies.
Using PERL, we built code that produced
all the pages automatically so they all could be indexed by search
engines around the globe. This award winning site provided users
with automatic, custom built newsletters based on their "opt
in" choices whenever something new became available.
On the back end, the system provided publishers
with a client interface that allowed them to load new information
and update existing information automatically. This site may have
been one of the first real examples of an "extranet" even
before the name was coined. Everything was automated.
The site provided searching, browsing,
and one of the first commercial applications of customer tracking
between web sites (before cookies). This site was able to be managed
operationally by two people. It provided correct information for
tens of thousands of titles and thousands of authors. Prior to the
dot com meltdown, it managed custom newsletters for 32,000+ "opt
in" book lovers.
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