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Show HN: Manuzoid – Database of More Than 1M Manuals
- austinjp 5y agoYour privacy policy mentions fixlib.com which appears to be up for sale. Curious: how did you get hold of all the manuals, and hope did you process them all?
- bitgur 5y agoThank you. We'll fix this problem asap. Fixlib was the temporary name. But we decided not to buy this domain.
- mdoms 5y agoThis is very cool and useful, will be bookmarking for sure. Some of the websites you come across when googling manuals are... less than reputable. My first suggestion after browsing around for a while is that you need a better embedded PDF viewer. Some manuals are not readable at all[0], it would be cool if we could zoom in. It's especially disappointing because of the huge amount of wasted space in the main pane - why is there a huge light-blue border around the content I want to see? [0] https://imgur.com/a/3fTVyc0 https://imgur.com/a/3fTVyc0
- bitgur 5y agoHi! Thank you. Great suggestion! We'll add zoom features next week.
- michaelmior 5y agoLooks very cool! A couple things however that I noticed. There seem to be a lot of duplicates which clutter the search results. Also, the first thing I looked for was available, but the correct result didn't appear until the second page.
- bitgur 5y agoThank you. We have just launched our website. We will try to make the search better ...
- marshmallow_12 5y agoi'll remember this website. Until now, i'm finding ifixit is a fantastic resource, but i'm always eager to expand my list.
- shadowfaxRodeo 5y agoAmazing, bookmarked. Where did you get all of them from, and is there a way of contributing manuals?
- bitgur 5y agoHi! Thank you. We have been collecting this library for a long time. And we'll be adding the ability to upload manuals soon.
- system2 5y agoLike any other comment, I will ask the same. How did you get 1 million manuals? Show HN is for small projects usually. Can you tell us or tell us a range you paid for the 1 million manuals?
- tyingq 5y agoI would guess scraping other sites and trying to do a credible job of cleaning up mis-labeled files, fixing meta-data, sorting them in a reasonable taxonomy, etc. There's a lot of terrible sites like this that either have bad data, bad navigation/taxonomy, overladen with ads, or try to force their viewer versus allowing a pdf download, etc. This site, after a quick once-over, seems pretty nice on all those counts.
- system2 5y agoWell however he did, I do not see his responses after posting it here. Is it even legal to scrape all these manuals from other sites?
- tyingq 5y agoIt wouldn't be the most famous site full of copyrighted material.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoIt should be illegal to withhold a repair manual from a owner of the device. We already have a situation where in theory you can make a backup copy of any movie your bought, but in practice DRM prevents you from doing so. Thats when DRM is not installed as spyware. They are riding rough over us, abusing laws invented in previous millennium to protect poetry and novels. We need to fight for our rights.
- atat7024 5y agoAsking this is inevitable, but in wildly poor taste.
- bitgur 5y ago
- macintux 5y agoSuggestion: allow a list as an alternative to (or maybe even instead of) a gallery. Too many titles start with the same text, and the gallery doesn't allow the user to see the full title except with a (slow or non-existent, depending on the platform) mouseover. Update: I see that the dedicated brand pages are more useful than general search results, but it's very hard to navigate the list of brands (although obviously you can go directly to a brand by typing your own URL).
- hedora 5y agoThis is less spammy than most of these databases, but please remove the captcha on “download pdf”. Also, the first (and only) manual I tried gave a 404 after I solved the captcha. :-(
- bitgur 5y agoOMG. Indeed, the download module was broken. We've fixed that. Many thanks.
- dennyabrain 5y agoThis is very cool :) would love to read a blog on the making this project :) good luck!
- weitzj 5y agoThere was/is a German startup called “manualOne” which offered manuals as well, and I think the idea was to establish a connection between the customer and seller of devices (like a fridge or whatever), where the customer buys the fridge in an electronics store. Normally the seller would be “blind” as it does not know its customers. And offering manuals and whatnot would help to establish the b2c relationship.
- de6u99er 5y agoData seems to be quite old, since it does not include e.g. OLED TVs. https://manuzoid.com/brand/LG https://manuzoid.com/brand/LG
- bootcat 5y ago1) I had very similar idea, How are you planning to monetize it ? 2) 10 years back I made a similar site using manuals online.com, 3) did you look at react-pdf ?
- bitgur 5y ago1. We'll add some adsense ads. But all features will be always free. 3. I'll look. Thank you.
- bootcat 5y agois it possible for us to talk ? @bitgur ? I have done very similar things and i am not sure if its really worth the effort. make sure u use nextjs ( static rendering ) and cloud-flare to at-least make things, fast and useable. Also, go mobile first on day 1, as google is moving to mobile 1st to rank web users,
- armstrong 5y agoHello, it looks nice but have a look https://manualsbrain.com/en/ https://manualsbrain.com/en/ it's bigger and grows
- jfk13 5y agoAnd is overrun with spammy ads. Yuck.
- sulmahabd 5y agothis is very cool good luck
- adav 5y agoIs there anything more satisfying than reviving some random old appliance with a pdf service manual found on the internet?
- shanecleveland 5y agoThe best. With very little electronic I revived some vintage stereo equipment using the original circuit board schematic diagram. I had a lot of help from YouTube and online forums, but the level of detail in the service manuals is incredible.