BukuTip is now Open Source!

Get the source code at GitHub. The main reason for open sourcing GitHub is the fact that screen scraping is used to gather book prices.

• Bookstore webmasters can see how their sites are accessed and scraped exactly.
• Other web developers can help in updating the scraping code if the bookstore website HTML has changed.

The code is released under the GNU AGPL License.

New features, more coming soon

BukuTip is a brand new web app, expect new features and fixes to roll in every now and then. And of course, if you're using BukuTip your, feedback and suggestions are welcomed. Use the feedback page or tweet me at @zaim (or just comment on this blog, whatever you fancy)

Multiple Mudah.my search results

BukuTip now searches Mudah.my for books based on its title and author, and displays the top search results found. Click on the book's price to go to the item's page on Mudah.my for details on how to buy the book.

Direct book ISBN URLs

If you already know an ISBN for a book you'd like, you can go directly to the book's price comparison page by going to the URL:

http://bukutip.appspot.com/[ISBN].

Replace [ISBN] with the book's ISBN. For example, if the book's ISBN is 9780060557812, just point your browser to: bukutip.appspot.com/9780060557812

Coming soon

Here are some other features under development:

• Mobile-friendly website - so you can use BukuTip on your phone while browsing Borders. (soon)
• Full iPhone/Android application - with barcode scanner so you don't have to key in long ISBNs. (not so soon)
• What else? - send me feedback, tell me what you think

Welcome to BukuTip

Hello, I'm Zaim, a broke freelance web developer who love cheap books. Welcome to the official weblog for BukuTip, a web app that I built that can search and compare book prices in Malaysia. As the first post, I'd like to introduce BukuTip.

First, a preamble - why I built BukuTip. The reason is simple: I like books and I am broke. Whenever I browse a bookstore and see a book I'm interested in, one question comes to mind: "can I get this book cheaper, somewhere else?" Hence, BukuTip was built.

It currently searches for the book price from MPH, Kinokuniya and Times Bookstores. It also searches BookXcess and Mudah.my which have cheaper prices (most probably) but with lesser book titles to search from.

The best way to look for a book in BukuTip is to use it's ISBN (also known as EAN-13) number, you can find this number at the back of the book at the top of it's barcode. It is the 13-digit number that usually starts with 978, the "bookland" code. (Search Google Images for some samples)

You can also search using the book's title, author or keywords. When you do this however, the result might include editions of the book published outside of Malaysia and therefore the prices might not be available in local bookstores.

BukuTip is still in beta mode, and you are most welcomed to try it out. Go to http://bukutip.appspot.com/ or use just the search form at the sidebar on the right.

Feedback, suggestions, questions and anything else are most welcomed, just contact me at@zaim on Twitter, or use the BukuTip feedback form.