Little-known fact about August: it is a thief!  The months used to alternate between 30 and 31 days all through the calendar, but when the Romans decided to give Caesar Augustus a month, they didn’t want to annoy him (= they did not want to be beheaded) by giving him a shorter month than Julius Caesar’s month that fell before his.  So, poor February shuffled up and sacrificed a day to prevent an Imperial Tantrum.   And September had a day wrested away from her too, so there would not be four “long” months in a row.    The Romans were all about symmetry.  And um, not getting beheaded.
In modern times, August is the Dog Days of Summer, the last gasp before Back-to-School.  It boasts National Wiggle-Your-Toes Day and National Blame-Someone-Else Day and National Book Lovers’ Day!  Not to mention Sneak-Some-Zucchini-Onto-Your-Neighbor’s-Porch Night, which is always a rollicking good time.

At PaperBackSwap, we like the dictionary definition of August: inspiring awe and admiration; majestic. In keeping with that, we are happy to roll out some interface changes, some brand new features, and some upgrades to existing features on the site.  We think they’re pretty awe-inspiring, and we hope you like them too.  We also did a lot of “behind-the-scenes” work on the site to make it work better and faster and be more pleasing to the eye.  Check out the Book Details page (for any book) for one example of the interface changes–no more scrolling to get to the book description! You can expect the features described below to “go live” this week.
Have a great month, everyone, and don’t trip over the zucchini!
Best,
Richard and
The PaperBackSwap Team

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.