SharedBook: On Demand

With Appreciation

It is hard to believe that Friday is almost here again -- this has been another very busy week around SharedBook! We're in the process of introducing the CarePages Keepsake Book and the SharedBook Open API Challenge, our first developer contest. We also relaunched SharedBook.com which produced some late nights and strained eyes for Andrew, Gokce and Tracey, as well as several others. Check it out if you get the chance. The new features include an enhanced developer section for anyone that is interested in working with our API.

Before the week gets away from us, we would like to acknowledge a few individuals that have mentioned SharedBook recently. Kristen Nicole of Mashable, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks and John Musser of Programmable Web have posted information regarding the SharedBook Open API Challenge. Blog2Print was featured on the BizIII podcast by Les Bain and Mike Hughes and Taeho Lim mentioned the widget on Databazaar's PrinTips blog. Thank you for noticing how much Blog2Print simplifies the book making process -- that is the basis for everything SharedBook offers! Thank you to all.

SharedBook Open API Challenge Starts Today

We're in the process of launching our first developer contest today, the SharedBook Open API Challenge. The 40-day contest will award the best extensions from third party applications to SharedBook in three categories: social networking, photo sharing and desktop applications or collaborative online communities. It is open to all programming languages.

Dion Almaer of Ajaxian.com and Benny Schlesinger, CTO of Jacada, will join a panel of SharedBook representatives (Ze'ev Bubis, Peter Budd and John Paul Lorenti) to evaluate the entries based on their business utility, originality and technical elegance. The winners in each of the three categories will receive their choice of an OpenMoko Neo 1973 mobile phone, a 4GB iPhone™ or $500.

We were inspired to offer a quick contest after it only took our developers a few days to show us a working example of the Blog2Print widget. Entries will be accepted through Sept. 30. For more information, please go to www.sharedbook.com/apichallenge. 

Enhanced Blog2Print Widget Available Today

We introduced an enhanced version of our Blog2Print blog printing widget today that includes several updates based on feedback from the user community. Most importantly, photos now flow into blog book format along with the appropriate text, similar to the way the information appears online. Complete details are included in the press release. As you may recall, we built Blog2Print in a matter of weeks using our open API, which is available for anyone to use, and one of Google's for the Blogger platform. If you would like to see how your favorite Blogger content flows into the platform, you can go to Blog2Print.com or you can check out A Photo or Two or 46er Family, two examples of content-rich sites that illustrate how the Blog2Print widget appears and functions. Kristen Nicole's early report on Mashable.com can be read here. One note: the updates are automatic. There is no need to re-install the widget if you already added it to your site. Thank you to everyone for their input. We hope you'll continue to let us know what you think as the public beta program continues.

New API Wrappers and Examples

As you may be aware, we published a suite of API methods earlier this year to give anyone the ability to integrate data into SharedBook’s Reverse Publishing Platform for on-demand output. We recently posted several wrappers – PHP, Java and Python – to the developers’ portion of our site, which should make the process even easier. Examples are also posted here.

More Thank Yous

OK, I promise this is my last Blog2Print update for a while (unless we introduce new features, add compatibility or decide to name a few sites where you can find the widget, which I reserve the right to do at any time!).

The Blog2Print beta program is progressing nicely. Thank you to everyone who has added the widget to their site(s), and for your feedback, which is invaluable. There are a few more people that we would like to thank for their early interest. Caroline and I spent some time with Allen Stern of CenterNetworks last week. You can read his notes here, which go beyond Blog2Print to PeoplesAnnotated.com and our custom data integration project with Legacy.com.

Kimberly Maul of The Book Standard was one of the first to report on Blog2Print, and Cheryl Hagedorn of Blooking Central seemed to like what she saw even though she stumbled into a beta issue, which has been corrected.

If you're new to Blog2Print, you can catch up via the press release here, and blog postings here and here. Remember, the first 100 to add the widget to their site(s) are entitled to a complimentary 20-page book.

Blog2Print Widget on Painting the Landscape with Fire

When we needed some early alpha testers for Blog2Print, Adam Latham in our New York office volunteered his dad. How cool is that? Adam's dad has a great blog about a fire-maintained ecosystem called Painting the Landscape with Fire. Rumor has it the content may become a published book some day.

Today's Blog2Print News

Blog2Print fever continues around here today! We issued a press release this morning to spread the word that the first 100 bloggers to add the Blog2Print widget to their site (Google's Blogger platform for now) will receive a complimentary 20-page hard cover book. You can access the release here or here if you're interested. More information regarding our open API can be found here.

Thank you to Jim Lyons of Jim Lyons Observations, Pete Cashmore and Kristen Nicole of Mashable and Pete Prestipino of Website Magazine for helping us get the news out yesterday.

Some have inquired as to why we started with the Blogger platform, since professional bloggers are usually associated with other platforms. The answer is simple. We used one of Google's APIs in conjunction with our own to build the Blog2Print widget.  We also believe there are a variety of bloggers on the Blogger platform who may want to print their own blogs and will be interested in giving their readers the opportunity.

Blog2Print is being released in beta form to learn from the user community and apply that knowledge to developing an even more robust blog printing solution.  We look forward to hearing what you think, and hope you'll stay tuned ...

New Blog2Print Widget Turns Blogs into Books

Mor is really the one that should be posting today. She and her team have pulled something together in a matter of weeks that I suspect could take other companies months to build. Now, of course, I am admittedly biased and pay day is just around the corner, but as of today, you can see for yourself.

If you’ve been keeping up with SharedBook, you may recall that we published a suite of API methods back in April. Mor talked about our API here and actually alluded to what we’re announcing today. We introduced the open API to give anyone the ability to flow content into our Reverse Publishing Platform for on-demand output. However, since it takes some programming skills to work with an API, we decided to take it one step further. So we used our API and worked with one of Google’s to build Blog2Print, a blog printing widget that is currently compatible with the Blogger platform. The widget is our first step toward giving individuals easier ways to capture the online content they care the most about in a structured book product. Additional compatibility is coming soon.

Beginning today, writers on the Blogger platform and their readers can now turn their favorite posts into books with a single click. In addition, bloggers can sign up to receive a 20 percent share of any books made by other users of their content. You can read the full announcement here, or go to Blog2Print.com to learn more about the widget.

Just one more thing that I’m sure Mor would want me to include -- we’re introducing Blog2Print in beta form today. The environment is fairly stable, but we’re still learning why the content in some blogs doesn’t seem to cooperate as well as in others. We need your help. If you run into any hiccups, please let us know. We hope to learn a lot from this project as we add compatibility and develop new features in the months to come. We'd also like to hear what else you'd like to see.

Don't Give Up on Ideas!

How many times have you had an idea that you just couldn’t find the time to bring to reality? How many great ideas are being discarded, way before they ever get a chance to evolve and become a feature or a product?

I hate giving up on good ideas … which is why I like the concept of proof of concept (POC). Taking your idea, and implementing it quick and dirty, partially, just to see if it works, and to demonstrate the power behind your idea.

In SharedBook we encourage developers to go wild with their ideas. When someone approaches me with an interesting idea, my instant reply is: OK, let’s see a POC. With SharedBook’s open API, we can have those POCs up and running very quickly (most POCs take between 40 minutes to half a day, and generate the WOW effect). POCs also complement our lean development philosophy. Most specifically, the empowering the team aspect of it. What better way is there to empower people, than taking their ideas, and helping them become a reality?

And we use POCs way beyond proving or marketing an idea. Every new feature that is about to be developed starts with a POC. So by the time we get to the design document, we have a pretty good idea of what's ahead.

Why did I decide to write on this today? Because I just received a first glance of another idea that one of our key developers had. When he first came to me with the idea, I was somewhat skeptical, but I kept my skepticism to myself, and gave him the go ahead for the proof of concept. After seeing the result, I must admit, it is one of the coolest applications of our open API!

Stay tuned, pretty soon it will be ready for everyone to see.

In the Center of the Hurricane, or the Hurricane Itself?

After working with SharedBook for nearly five years, I can tell you this is one of the most interesting and exciting, as well as challenging times we have experienced. As the person who is in charge of the basic implementation of our open API, it feels like being in the middle of the storm, where the strong winds keep pushing, squeezing and turning you while changing their directions. Clients want to use the API, new features need to be supported, demos become top priorities, etc.

To me, this looks like the beginning of a new era in SharedBook. The API exposes the functionality of our application, letting users create their own books, with their own articles and photos; something we were just dreaming of a few months ago.

Just tasting the possibilities of it, our programmers have wonderful ideas on how to use and extend these possibilities. POCs are being developed, wrappers in different languages are being written, and ideas keep flying back and forth. As we like to say: lots of action is going on!!!