Sock Puppet Made by Colleen Brady (@cbrady77586) of Sprouting Startups (@startupsprout).

Things got a bit crazy at South by Southwest, and we didn’t really have a chance to update you guys on our road trip, but we’re heading back to Boston now and have some awesome stuff to share. Our Twitter campaign to raise money for the National Literacy Trust went really well, so we’ve decided to extend it to March 19th. We even got Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Laura Fitton to join in.



How can you participate?

Step one: Follow us (@libboo) on Twitter.

Step two: Retweet any tweet that has a picture of a sock puppet and the #LibbooSXSW hashtag.

or

Make your own sock puppet at home and tweet a picture of yourself with it and the above hashtag.

No Twitter? No problem!

-You can also like us on Facebook and post your picture on our page.

For every tweet with a picture and the #LibbooSXSW hashtag we’ll donate $1 to the National Literacy Trust and an extra $1 for every retweet. We’ll also donate $1 if you post your picture on our Facebook page with the hashtag.

We want to make a massive donation to the National Literacy Trust, so help us out by sending in your best sock puppet pictures.

Silliness:

Days 3 and 4 on the road:

We won’t be filming the return trip to Boston since Po had to fly back early, but we will be posting a few more videos of our journey to Austin.

-Team Libboo

Yesterday, we drove from Pittsburgh to Louisville, Kentucky to visit super Libbooer Maureen Hovermale. On the way, Po started editing the footage from our first day on the road for your viewing pleasure, but we quickly learned that uploading videos to YouTube while on the road is a pain. When we first tried to upload the video, it said that it would take 2,144 minutes to upload so we compressed the video to almost half its original size. It’s only logical that a smaller file would upload faster, right? Guess not. Instead, the upload time jumped to over 6,000 minutes. We were ready to give up, but thankfully Maureen let us use her WiFi and the video is now up.

Apart from thanking her for letting us use her WiFi, we also have to thank Maureen for the absolutely delicious meal she cooked for us. It was amazing, particularly that “best ever” pecan pie that could give anyone a sugar shock (thanks for sharing the recipe!).

Best Pecan Pie. Ever.

Maureen graciously took us into her home, fed us wonderful food, let us stay the night in her driveway, and even let us turn her dinner table into a crafts station.

Sock Puppet Time!

Richard really enjoys making sock puppets.

And have we mentioned that Maureen got us a ridiculously cool present?

As promised, here’s a video from our first day on the road:

Want more on-the-road updates? Follow the #LibbooSXSW hashtag on Twitter.

-Team Libboo

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Ways to connect: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.

That’s right. We’ve packed up our things, rented an RV and are on the way to Austin for South by Southwest (SXSW).  Since we asked you to submit your best “Vacation and Holiday Mayhem” stories, we thought it was only fair that we share our road trip mayhem with you, so we’re documenting our journey. We will be posting videos and photos for you to see right here in our blog. And it seems like the mayhem has already begun: there are six of us in the RV and it has been winterized, meaning that we don’t have any running water and can’t use the bathroom, shower or sinks. It’s bad enough sharing a tiny bathroom with that many people, but now we’ll have to cope with not having a bathroom at all! However, we’re still super excited about this trip and we think it’s going to be absolutely awesome.

Richard got the first driving shift.

Apart from our videos from the road, we’ll also be posting a series of videos featuring the new Libboo sock puppets. Here are the first two videos:

For more road trip updates, follow us on Twitter and look for the #LibbooSXSW hashtag.

-Team Libboo

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We’ve got a brand spankin’ new Google+ page,  so now you can add us to your circles or give us a +1.  Of course, we’ve still got our Facebook page, if you’d rather follow us there.

It’s been a while since our last blog post (sorry about that!), but we’ve been super busy at Techstars. Although it’s taken over our lives, we’re loving every minute of it.

Of course, we have to take breaks occasionally and there’s nothing we enjoy more than messing with Fernando.

Like taping him to his desk.

Doesn't that doll look just like Fernando? They're even dressed alike.

That’s all we have time for today, but keep an eye on the blog because we’ll be announcing something really awesome for those of you in the Boston area.

-Team Libboo

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If you are visiting us for the first time, join our growing community of readers, writers, illustrators, editors etc. at http://www.libboo.com. Libboo is 100% free and fun! Be sure to “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Libboo started in 2009 as a simple pet-project by friends to allow their friends to create written content online together. 2011 however proved to Team Libboo that Libboo can be so much more.

Throughout the last 12 months, Libboo has won various innovation competitions, gained the exposure of the world’s leading press, created works with bestselling authors, and established itself as a forerunner in the new digital publishing age. However these next 12 months are going to be truly exciting and we can finally reveal what all our hard work has been for:

I am proud and honored to announce the launch of Libboo Team Publishing.

Team Publishing by Libboo is a world-first. We have dabbled and experimented these last few months to create a mechanism which will take the best out of the traditional publishing model and combine that with the efficiency of the self-publishing model. It is clear self-publishing is here to stay and the access it brings to authors is unquestionable. However self-publishing lacks the ability to find talent, gain exposure – and once you have self-published – managing royalties and copyright between many storefronts and your team members can be a nightmare. These were the benefits of the traditional model – and these are the benefits we have introduced into Team Publishing. Now you can create content in teams, market it in teams, and sell your work via the major online storefronts at the click of a button. Libboo does all the dirty work letting you and your team focus on creating awesome writing, and then sharing it once it’s complete.

We hope you find our new approach engaging, and I personally am incredible grateful of our team here at Team Libboo – Richard, Fernando, Katherine, Po, Dan, and Joey – for guiding Libboo to what it is now becoming.

Yours sincerely and a happy new year,

Chris Howard
Libboo.com

Last Saturday was the Boston Book Festival and Libboo rocked it! We had just under 200 new members sign up, with an average of one signup every 90 seconds. The Libbooth was constantly busy – we even had 17 people waiting in line to sign up at one point! As promised we gave away tons of prizes (a total of 170), which included copies of PARADOX, snazzy Libboo t-shirts and several nooks donated by Barnes & Noble.

One of the lucky nook winners

We also had a gorilla walking around the festival, luring people to the Libbooth and handing out stickers.

The Libboo Gorilla

We had the chance to meet and interact with some very interesting people, so all in all it was an awesome day for Team Libboo. And for those of you who recently joined the Libboo community: Welcome and Happy Libbooing! We’re looking forward to reading your submissions to this month’s bounty, “Zombies, Vampires & Werewolves.”

Be sure to follow us on twitter and “like” us on facebook for more news and updates!

-Team Libboo

The other day, I was looking at photos from my trip to the San Diego zoo.  Just as I was flipping through my collection of monkeys and gorillas; I received an e-mail from a friend – attached was a news article from the BBC with the title ‘Virtual Monkeys Write Shakespeare‘. Naturally, I was intrigued..! Perhaps we’ve all heard this joke – What do you get when you give a thousand monkey a thousand typewriters? Well, according to this BBC article – Shakespeare.

Ok, it’s not that simple…. We are talking about great works of literature here! The experiment in question, carried out by a US programmer Jesse Anderson, simulates one million virtual monkeys pounding away on virtual typewriters on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing system. So, no cages to clean, no bananas and no real monkeys. Can an infinite number of monkeys randomly pushing keys produce the literary works of Shakespeare by accident? Not in our lifetime!

Mr. Anderson’s monkeys are individual computer programs that produce a sequence of random text. Add some constraints, a bit of programming magic and the power of Amazon’s cluster and we get – Shakespeare’s poem ‘A Lover’s Complaint’.

Now let’s not get carried away here and rush to our local zoo or tropical forest. We are talking about virtual monkeys, with some mathematical constraints etc.  In 2003, Paington Zoo, tried putting a keyboard in with 6 macaques and after 6 months they ended up with fives pages with the ‘S’ and a broken keyboard, WOOOOO!

Check out the BBC article to learn more.

Team Libboo will be at the Boston Book Festival BBF – on Saturday October 15th at Copley Square. We invite everyone, our New England members and BBF attendees to visit our booth at Copley Square and meet the team and learn more about Libboo.com. We will be exhibiting Libboo’s new features, promoting and selling PARADOX – The Great Libboo Experiment and giving away prizes! Check it out here.

Thanks to a donation from Barnes & Noble – Visitors who join Libboo can win a Nook.

You can find the ‘Libbooth’ at Copley Square – which is accesible by the MBTA green line.

And the fun doesn’t stop after the Festival. Team Libboo will make a special announcement – Calling ALL writers!

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Be sure to follow us Live at the BBF 2011! Visit us on www.facebook.com/libboo and on www.twitter.com/libboo. Be sure to follow the live conversation on the #BBF2011 and #Libboo-PARADOX hashtags.

-Team Libboo

The weather is getting chilly and October is just around the corner, marking the return of the Boston Book Festival on October 15th. This year, the festival celebrates its third anniversary, and will include tons of awesome writers, events and workshops. Most of the events will be free, including the keynote, which will be delivered by Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient. Fans of the HBO series The Wire will also be able to attend “The Art of The Wire: A Discussion with Cast and Creators” on October 14th, with tickets ranging from $20 to $100.

Other events include Writer Idol, in which attendees will submit a page of their unpublished manuscripts to be performed by an actor in front of a panel of judges, and the Flash Fiction Open Mic, where people will be able to read one of their short stories (no longer than 3 minutes). The Flash Fiction Open Mic will be recorded by The Drum, an audio literary magazine, and the best stories will be chosen for publication. The Boston Book Festival will have something for everyone, from history to children’s books to steampunk.

Julia Álvarez (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies), Sandra Beasley (Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life), Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog) and Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles) are just a few of the authors that will be in attendance.

Team Libboo will be exhibiting at the festival. So, mark your calendar and visit the ‘Libbooth’ in Copley Square for surprises and lots of cool stuff!

Be sure to follow us on twitter and on facebook for news and updates about the Libboo exhibition at the BBF.

-Team Libboo

We were quite excited to find out that Libboo was written up in an article from The Next Web. TNW is one of the top 10 most influential blogs out there – with 24 editors and writers across the globe and 3.7 million visitors a month.  TNW is the place to visit for news about what happening on the web.

Team Libboo has had an amazing summer since we won as a finalist in the MassChallenge competition. So, what is the MassChallenge? It’s the world’s largest and most prestigious start up accelerator program. Based in Boston, MA,  The MassChallenge – a non profit organization- takes 125 of the best and most innovative start up ventures in the world and moves them into the 14th floor of One Marina Park Dr.  For 3 months the finalists receive an amazing array of resources, mentoring, training – you name it!

On Tuesday, September 27, starting at 6pm – MassChallenge will host ‘The Start Up Showcase’. It’s a chance for the finalists to show off, present their concept to investors, business execs, the general public and the media. Team Libboo will be there!

Be sure to follow our blog for updates and news and as always, we enjoy brining you content that is helpful to you, our community of readers and writers.

-Team Libboo

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You can follow us on http://www.facebook.com/libboo and on http://www.twitter.com/libboo

Imagine a relaxing evening, after a nice meal – perhaps a glass of wine or two… You’ve settle in for an evening of ‘quiet time’.  Now, comfortable in your favorite reading spot, you pick up your E-reader and turn to your latest E-book. And just as you digitally turn onto page one – a sound begins to fill the room!  That sound you are hearing is coming from your E-book. As you turn the pages, you are treated to more effects – like the sound of a fog horn and the crashing waves of the coast or the sounds from a busy New York City. So, my question is – how would you feel? Would you dump you E-book and pick up a paper copy instead or would you find yourself further ‘sucked’ into your new digital story?

E-books with soundtracks, not sci-fi… I read an article about a new technology that puts digitally recorded music and sound effects into an E-book. The report found in paidContent.org describes the new E-book soundtrack technology created by a company called Booktrack. This technology has received a lot of interest from publishers, while at the same time, criticism by book lovers and authors alike.

Reading allows you to plunge yourself into a world that you’ve created in your mind; where the characters and story take you on an adventure. Do you really need sound and digital effects? I can see the arguments for both… We live in a digital society. Books have not evolved much. Our society does not read enough, etc etc….  And it’s this last statement that really got me thinking!

An article I found on CBSNews presents a study from the National Endowment for the arts; bluntly stating that Americans are reading far less. Most adults are reading less that one book a year and spending at least 2 -4 hours in front of a TV. And the statistics for children are even more depressing!  People are not making time to read and prefer the digital entertainment – you know, explosions, CGI, 3D etc etc…

So if cheesy sound effects and music gets more people into reading – then hell yea, that is a good thing! Thankfully, there is always that mute button on the E-reader for the rest of us…. And don’t forget – you can always read at Libboo.com!

-Team Libboo

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Be sure to visit our Friday community blog. And follow us on www.facebook.com/libboo and on www.twitter.com/libboo for the latest news and content relavent to readers and writers all over the world!