SharedBook Offers Recipes For Tactile Communication

“Create-A-Cookbook” hardcover examples from Allrecipes.com using SharedBook’ reverse publishing platform. SharedBook Inc. is a technology company that specializes in integrating and publishing data from various sources into a structured book product that can sit as a flipbook on the Internet or be professionally printed. Image Credit: Compilation Of Images From SharedBook Inc. - ecj

SharedBook Offers Recipes For Tactile Communication

At Symblogogy, we are always on the lookout for tools that automate our lives, both personally and professionally.

New Media participants have always had a problem in trying to translate captured digital data to the tactile world. How does one create something that is truly tangible in a digital, bits and bytes universe?

Business and social enterprises, like Resorts, Funeral Homes, Alumni Associations, Weblogs, and etc., that cater to Audience-Of-One strategies for the capture and presentation of this digital information now have an ally in the ability to preserve and deliver published evidence of one's digital experience.

Two-page screenshot of a display showing an actual blog post from MAXINE for October 30, 2007 (click image for full size)- Content owners on Google's Blogger platform and their readers can now use the Blog2Print widget to turn posts into a printed book with a single click. Additional compatibility with other platforms and edit/format capabilities will become available throughout this next year. Image Credit: SharedBook inc. - ecj

Blog2Print allows any weblog activity to be turned into a book to be shared with others for any purpose. These books can be published in either hardcover or soft-cover and in any quantity desired. The purpose is the purpose one chooses.

For example, let’s say that one is a creative, New Media-savvy Real Estate Agent and the Agent augments the sales activity for each property with a weblog highlighting unique characteristics of the property that is being marketed. In addition to being able to direct prospective buyers to information specifically about the property, the Agent can have the weblog converted to a hardcover book for use as a reference at the house when showing potential buyers. Once the property enters into escrow, the Agent can hand the new owner a book that they can refer to while waiting for escrow to close.

On a purely personal level, first time parents are turning to the web to help them cope with the demands of disseminating information on the new Charge. Digital is nice, in that one can instantly grab a photo, and post a story, whereby the whole family can share in the developments of the growth experiences of the baby.

So, how does the Baby Boomer generation grandparent share the excitement of the new addition to others in their life’s circle? Carry around 8.5”X11” sheets of paper with inkjet streaks caused because it might have been raining the last time the photos were pulled out to show others?

Blog2Print widget - once Blog2Print has been added to your blog (link on widget), you'll make money each time a book of your blog is purchased! You'll receive 20% of the sales of the books sold from your blog. Caption & Image Credit: SharedBook Inc.

Solution - just press the SharedBook Blog2Print widget placed at the Charge’s weblog to create and order a hard or soft cover bound publication of what had been posted that month. No more worries on what to do and how to go about the difficult task of moving back to the tactile “analog” world from our shared digital experience.

Just in time for this holiday season … and beyond, SharedBook and Allrecipes.com join forces to cook up and deliver digital documentation of recipes back to a useful, tactile and shared medium – The Book.

SharedBook Logo – Image Credit: SharedBook Inc.

This excerpted from a press release issued by SharedBook Inc. –

SHAREDBOOK AND ALLRECIPES.COM PARTNER TO OFFER SELF-PUBLISHED COOKBOOKS FROM ONLINE CONTENT

Just in Time for the Holidays: Home Cooks Can Now Automatically Publish Collections of their Favorite Recipes in Professionally-Printed Cookbooks

NEW YORK – November 5, 2007 – SharedBook Inc., the Reverse Publishing Platform provider, and Allrecipes.com, the world’s largest online community food site, today introduced Create-A-Cookbook – a Web application allowing home cooks to self-publish professionally-printed hard- or softcover cookbooks from their favorite online and personal recipes. Beginning today, Allrecipes.com members can choose from more than 40,000 recipes to include in their personalized cookbooks, and then add their own recipes, notes, stories, and photographs.
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Create-A-Cookbook is an easy, one-click way to compile recipes in a book format that can be used and moved anywhere for easy access. With Create-A-Cookbook, users can also preserve treasured family recipes in the self-published on-demand cookbook, as well as share their favorite recipes with family and friends. Themed cookbooks can also be created for events such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and for single subjects like soups or Italian food.

“For many of us, recipes and special foods are closely connected with cherished family memories, especially during the holiday season,” said Lisa Sharples, President, Allrecipes.com. “Create-A-Cookbook is a unique way for our members to preserve their favorite recipes along with the stories and photographs that make them special.”

Now, with just a few clicks using SharedBook’s Reverse Publishing Platform, Allrecipes.com members can automatically flow recipes and photographs from their online Recipe Boxes into a structured cookbook that can be published in hard or softcover format. They can then choose to preview and purchase the cookbook immediately or to personalize it further. Members can edit the content, upload additional information and photographs for the covers and the inside pages, and order as many or as few cookbooks as they want.

Allrecipes.com members can also invite family and friends into their personal cookbook publishing space to contribute their comments and photos.
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For anyone hesitant to share closely-guarded recipes online, the personal cookbook publishing space provides a secure environment where home cooks can display their recipes only to those they invite.
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For more information, please go to www.allrecipes.com.

About SharedBook

SharedBook Inc. is a technology company that specializes in integrating and publishing data from various sources into a structured book product that can sit as a flipbook on the Internet or be professionally printed. The company’s collaborative on-demand Reverse Publishing Platform allows users to extract data and content from multiple sources, manipulate it, and then distribute their unique creation in digital or hard copy format. SharedBook partners include AYSO® Soccer, Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Canyons Resort, CarePages, Inc. (a division of Revolution Health Group), Cruise West Cruise Lines, Exposures, 4-H, JumpTV Sports, Legacy.com, Little League International®, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Sportography, Inc., Steamboat Ski Resort, 30 Minute Photos Etc., USA Football, YAVarsity.com, and Yosemite. For more information, please go to www.sharedbook.com or http://blog.sharedbook.com.

About Allrecipes.com

Allrecipes.com, the world’s largest independent food site, is an online cooking community where home cooks from around the world share, rate and download recipes and meal ideas. With more than 5.5 million unique visitors a month and a membership base more than a million strong, Allrecipes.com is the world’s largest test kitchen, offering a nightly glimpse into the kitchens and habits of home cooks everywhere, and providing an indispensable resource for anyone seeking trusted recipes, everyday and holiday meal ideas, practical cooking tips and food advice. The site features more than 40,000 of America’s best-loved recipes. For additional information regarding Allrecipes.com, please visit www.allrecipes.com.
Reference Here>>


Drop by and see SharedBook and its publishing solutions for the digital age in Las Vegas at the BlogWorld & New Media EXPO - Booth #201 at the Las Vegas Convention Center - November 8-9, 2007.

When A “xerox” Is Not … An Exact Copy

Redacted Copy Example Image: Redaction simply means to edit, which is what you are doing to the document; however, in the context of government or legal documents, the term has come to be associated with the removal of sensitive/private information. The problem we’ve always had in Acrobat is that blocking out text with tools like the comment tools didn’t really redact a document. Users could still drag the Select tool through a body of text and copy the blocked out text beneath the comment markups, then paste the data into a word processor or text editor and see all the text that was blocked out. (caption from a chat journal on an acrobat users website) Image Credit: acrobatusers.com

When A “xerox” Is Not … An Exact Copy

We all are familiar with the slang term … xerox, as in, “let’s xerox this page.”, or, I’ll be xeroxing these for the meeting.

This slang term is an ode to the effectiveness and convenience of equipment manufactured by the company that invented the dry writing process formally known as photo-copying (not xeroxing) – XEROX!

XEROX, in an effort to bring more (or should we say less) to the process of photo-copying has come up with a document reproduction process that will create documents that are automatically “Redacted”. That’s right, a xerographic copy with the sensitive, or secure information has been masked out for general distribution outside of a secure “eyes only” environment.

So, when is a “xerox” not and exact copy? … when it has been scanned in and processed via “Intelligent Redaction” software and output on a XEROX Corporation manufactured photocopier, printer, scanner, document handling device.

This excerpted/edited from Network World –

Xerox document security blocks access to sensitive data
Submitted by Layer 8 on Mon, 10/15/2007 - 10:30am

Xerox today touted software it says can scan documents, understand their meaning and block access to those sensitive or secure areas so that prying eyes cannot read, copy or forward the information.

Xerox and researchers from its Palo Alto Research Center debuted "Intelligent Redaction," new software that automates the process of removing confidential information from any document. The software includes a detection tool that uses content analysis and an intelligent user interface to protect sensitive information. It can encrypt only the sensitive sections or paragraphs of a document, a capability previously not available, Xerox said. The software also creates an audit trail for tracking access.

After information has been classified, that same information will be automatically redacted if it appears in other documents. the "intelligence" ensures a consistent level of security, saves time and increases redaction accuracy, Xerox said.

Redaction is the ability to control what someone sees. For example, redaction traditionally has been used in legal documents to limit access to information protected by client-attorney privilege. The result is a document that has been censored; certain information within the document is blocked out, Xerox said in a statement.

Traditional redaction has two big drawbacks. It requires a labor-intensive manual process to identify sections to censor, and management of different versions of the same document is cumbersome and difficult, Xerox said. Current software encrypts whole documents, while Intelligent redaction understands document context so it can perform partial encryption. Only sensitive sections or paragraphs are encrypted, while the rest of the document is not.

Researcher see a ton of applications for the software. For example, in a hospital where security of medical record transfer needs to be ensured. Financial services and government dat transfers also depend heavily on secure documents.

Researchers said the software was still in development and did not release the cost of the package.
Reference Here>>

We, at Symblogogy, suspect that the price list had been "Intelligently Redacted" from the press release materials!

Consumer Automation Made Easy At Smart Communications

Decode is a tool that simplifies the act of entering complex codes on a mobile phone. The system allows cameraphones to scan specially printed codes, called mobile codes or mcodes. These codes can represent web URLs, phone numbers or instructions that include keywords and an access number. All you need to do is scan and send! No more typing. Caption & Image Credit: Smart Communications

Last week, the Smart Communications mobile phone carrying person in the Philippines just became automated through the announcement of “Decode”.

With the download of Decode software, a camera cellphone user on the Smart Communications network will be able to turn their phone into an Auto ID/Physical World Connection powerhouse.

Highlight from advertisement for Smart Decode. Image Credit: Advertising Image – Smart Communications

Based on the simplified 2D format mCode symbology, the average consumer on the Smart Communications network with Decode on their phone will be able to access information, look at their phone account, share contact information, and connect via code to a whole new world of automated services.

Excerpts from a weblog description at CHETTE.COM -

Smart Decode -- Not quite ready, but seems alright
Written by chette (blog) - Sunday, 11 February 2007

Smart Communications launched Smart Decode yesterday. Although it's probably going to be used for a bunch useless promotions (Ringbacks? Seriously?), I just realized that this is actually The Solution to all the senseless typing of VAS ("value added services") commands.

Let me give you an idea:

"Type DUMMYKEYWORD space REGISTER space your FIRST NAME space YOUR LAST NAME space asterisk space YOUR ADDRESS space asterisk YOUR LANDLINE space asterisk, and send this to 999."

Sounds familiar, no?
Of course it does. This is the language that we Earthlings have learned from Pluto. Coincidentally, this is the same language that content partners decided to use in order to confuse, er, help users in using their SMS-based mobile services.

Need to download a wallpaper?
Type DUMMYWALLPAPER space PHONE MODEL space WALLPAPER NAME, shake it to the left, jump ten times, and send to 999.

With Smart Decode, this insanity will pretty much be eradicated. The content partner will simply generate a code (which can be printed in their posters, fliers, and print ads).

When you, The User, see this code, all you have to do is take its picture using your phone's camera. Almost instantaneously you will be presented with a nice interface where you can fill in forms, download your operator logo, etc. -- all in human readable form.

The code is called an mcode ("mobile code"). It’s a 2D barcode which stores information in a bunch of dots.


Examples - PWC/PWH "mCode" access codes from Decode. Image Credit: Advertising Image – Smart Communications

But ooh-la-la, mcode is not just for those boring content partners who can't seem to make a decent mobile application. We regular users, The Much Cooler Ones, can have a little fun of our own:

Contact information.
Definitely a lot more hip than sending a vcard thru bluetooth. Make your friends take a picture of your mcode (which you conveniently printed out & kept in your wallet). Voila! Your contact info will automatically be saved in their address books.

SMS message.
You can have an mcode to generate a specific SMS message. You can also have it sent to a predefined number.

URLs. Your mcode can contain the URL of your website.
When your friends scan it, they will be shown a link (which they can click to launch your website in their phone's browser).

Phone numbers.
You can scan an mcode to automatically dial a specified phone number.
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In order to scan an mcode, you need to download & install Smart Decode (don't worry, you won't get charged for the download). Using your phone's browser, go to decode.smart.com.ph. Click on the link on the website to install the software automatically (no need to mess around with those jar and sis files).

Take note that you need to use your Smart cellphone to download Decode. You cannot download the application using a Globe or Sun SIM, or even your good ol' DSL connection.

Some observations on Smart's credit (give two points for Smart over here!):

The application loads real fast even on a crappy Nokia 6600. It takes an average of 2 seconds for the software to "decode" the mcode. You can actually scan the mcode even if its tilted (it will just take a little longer to scan it).

There's something missing in the equation, though (gimme back those points, dear): The ability for users to create their own codes.

C'mon, Smart, share the love. Help us look cool with those mcodes in our pockets.
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