Publish your blog as a book

Headquartered in New York with R&D in Herzlia, Israel, SharedBook enables companies and consumers to dynamically produce personalized and customized books and documents with its patented publishing and annotation platform. SharedBook's browser-enabled technology is used by:



major publishers to create personalized editions of new and classic books
online content providers to deliver added value and new revenue by repurposing existing assets into books
consumers to save, edit, and publish works from blogs and documents
government and public policy groups to provide open review and debate on documents and to retain a subsequent permanent record of such discussion
Our core application was brought to market in late 2005. Due to the extraordinary flexibility of the core application, our business encompasses three related yet distinct product lines.



Publishing

SharedBook specializes in integrating and publishing data from a variety of sources through its own proprietary creation tools.

Personalized Books

Our trade publishing partners use SharedBook to provide consumers with the opportunity to make their favorite books even more special through the addition of personalized pages. These editions maintain the artistic and creative integrity of the original while creating a new version -- a one-of-a-kind treasure. The Golden Books classic Poky Little Puppy is a best-selling example, allowing users to include a personal dedication and photograph. SharedBook also retails its partners' personalized books under the Inscribe-it brand (http://www.inscribe-it.com/).

Customized Books

SharedBook's customization capabilities allow users to select from chunks of content to create their own books. SharedBook's Smart Button™ technology enables the assembly of a book in minutes by simply clicking a button on each Web page. Custom Publishing partners include Legacy Memorial Websites www.memorialwebsites.legacy.com, SOHO Publishing (www.vogueknitting.com) and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Online and Digital Content

SharedBook's Reverse Publishing capability allows users to select the Web content they would like to keep in permanent form; they can capture and assemble it in a book with just a few clicks. The book can be purchased as is, or additional photos and text can be added for further personalization. As an example, see Blog2Print, SharedBook's blog printing platform (www.blog2print.com).

Documents

Policy makers, nonprofits, educators, and special-interest communities can use SharedBook's platform to allow their members or constituents to engage in an online dialogue on bills, rules, research and other important documents. Starting with highlighted excerpts from the original content, a series of comments and replies can be posted and shared with any and all interested users to facilitate a pointed and detailed discussion. The source document is locked down and the community discussion is stored and presented back as footnotes at a granular level. When combined with our patented publishing process, a permanent record of the conversation can be preserved as a professionally printed book or PDF download. (See www.OurEnergyPolicy.org or www.gbs.sharedbook.com, as examples.)


Core to SharedBook's technology platform is the ability to integrate complex structured data from various Web and intranet sources into a shared space, where it can be published in various forms both online and offline. Customized and personalized books can be created and displayed as flipbooks on the Web, downloaded as PDFs, or professionally printed. When users desire this content in physical form, it is provided via our seamless integration with high-end, digital printers from Xerox, Kodak, and HP to provide a completely customizable final product

MY PUBLISHED BLOG SAMPLE

Publish Your Blog As A Book With Blurb

Blurb, the book company that lets you self-publish bookstore quality hardcover and paperback books, has finally added TypePad and WordPress.com support to their BookSmart book creation software.




BookSmart slurps the entries from your blog and autopopulates the pages (you also have the option of dragging and dropping entries to build your book). BookSmart doesn’t currently support importing from freestanding WordPress blogs, but you can easily open a free WordPress.com account and import your entries long enough for BookSmart to slurp them.
You can go freestyle, creating any kind of book from scratch, or let BookSmart jumpstart your cookbook, photo book, or blog book (poetry books are coming soon) using customizable templates. Readymade books (templates which already include some content; for example, a Groucho Marx quote in the This Dog’s Diary readymade: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”) are also available for your dog, cat, or baby book.

A 40-page book is $18.95 in paperback and $29.95 in hardcover, which includes a custom dust jacket. When your book is complete, you can offer it for sale in the Blurb bookstore. But if you’re interested in making money from book sales, you’ll need to buy in bulk for a discount (or check out CafePress or LuLu)




The BookSmart software is free and you can preview your finished book onscreen, which should have you salivating for the real thing. You can buy a copy of How to Make a Book (pictured above) for only $14.95, to get an idea of the quality. It includes a $10 coupon toward your next book. Or, download the PDF for free. It’s worth a look even if you don’t publish your book with Blurb.



BookSmart runs on Windows and Mac. Universal. Blurb



RobertRobert Ellis was the founder of Upstart Blogger. He now blogs (and continues to design themes) at Futurosity.

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources

Got a research paper or thesis to write for school Want to research using the Internet? Good luck. There's a lot of junk out there — outdated pages, broken links, and inaccurate information. Using Google or the Wikipedia may lead you to some results, but you can rarely be sure of accuracy. And what's more, you'll only be searching a fraction of all of the resources available to you.




Google, the largest search database on the planet, currently has around eight billion web pages indexed. That's a lot of information. But it's nothing compared to what else is out there. Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web. But the invisible web, or deep web, is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web. The invisible web comprises databases and results of specialty search engines that the popular search engines simply are not able to index.



Do you think your local or university librarian uses Google? Sure, but certainly not exclusively. In order to start researching like a librarian, you'll need to explore more authoritative resources, many of which are invisible. Note: Although some of the following resources are visible and indexed, they have all been included here because of their authoritative nature.