Publishing with sBooks

“the best thing since sliced paper”

sBooks provide a digital reading experience which can be better than analog reading. The web-based version of sBooks is available under an open-source license and also licensed free of charge for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons license.

Enhance your content. The sBooks web platform uses Javascript and stylesheets to create a richer reading experience for any HTML document. To make your web document into an sBook, simply add javascript and stylesheet references to your document's HTML header:

  <LINK REL='stylesheet' TYPE='text/css' 
        HREF='http://static.beingmeta.com/sbooks/bundle.css'/>
  <SCRIPT language='javascript' 
          SRC='http://static.beingmeta.com/sbooks/bundle.js'>
  </SCRIPT>
  <SCRIPT language='javascript' 
          SRC='http://echoes.sbooks.net/echoes/echoes.js'>
  </SCRIPT>

That's it. The web platform uses a document's existing structural markup (mostly header tags) to help navigate the document through an ambient heads up display (HUD). But adding more information enables richer interaction.

being meta. For best results, unique XML IDs can be assigned to headers, paragraphs, and other content. This makes it easy to create metadocs overlaying comments, explication, references, or tags onto your content. When logged in through Facebook, these IDs also allow your readers to selectively share comments, references, or tags with their friends and communities.
search smarter. You can use TAGS attributes to enable concept-based search in your document. Concept-based search takes advantage of synonyms, taxonomic relations, and other kinds of connections to find content based on knowledge but regardless of variations in wording. Concept-based search uses knowlets to add information about terms, their usage, and interrelations. This information can be specified either inline or as explicit or included scripts.

For best results, use well-formed "best practices" HTML and provide stable element identifiers (HTML ID attributes) at a fine grained level (paragraph or smaller) within your document. We are currently testing an automatic online tool to help you convert your documents into optimal sBooks. Drop us a note if you'd like to know when this tool is publicly available.

But wait, there's more. The sBooks platform is designed to interact with the WebEchoes social browsing platform, which leverages platforms like FaceBook to allow your readers to share thoughts, opinions, observations, or critiques with their friends or colleagues. When WebEchoes launches its public beta (early in the summer), readers will be able to share their thoughts and experiences with one another from the context of your document.