Mashedge: Guide to Swine Flu

We have made a book to help readers find the best information online on the swine flu. Check it out at Guide to Swine Flu.

Mashedge: The Story of Twitter: From Its Blogs

We have made a web book called The Story of Twitter: From its Blogs. This book displays the power of Mashedge in making a meaningful web book from content scattered in the blogs.

This is how we made the book:

1. First, we created a private web book with a skeletal outline of its table of contents.
2. We browsed through the blog archives from day 1 and picked articles that were significant and added them to the appropriate chapter.
3. We created new chapters on the fly as and when we needed them.
4. We rearranged the chapters into a meaningful order.
5. We added chapter summary based on the content we added to each chapter.
6. Finally, we made the book public and made it read-only.

The whole exercise took 3-4 hours and the main overhead was in selecting the articles from the archives. Going forward, maintaining the web book is easy. Whenever you come across new information, simply link it in to the book and you are done.

The reason we made it read-only to the public is to guard the integrity of the web book. We intend to transfer the ownership of the web book to Twitter so that they can maintain it going forward.

Any company, or a blogger out there can do the same thing with their content and make it easy for their users/customers to find information about their products.

Mashedge on Twitter

We are now on Twitter! You can follow us on Twitter and get the latest updates on Mashedge wherever you are- instantaneously.

Mashedge: Tracking India's Elections in 2009

We have made an interesting web book shelf about the upcoming elections in India. Instead of covering the major political parties, this web book shelf is all about the unconventional and bits and pieces of interesting election information, including independent candidates, fringe parties, voter movements etc. Check it out and feel free to add more information.

The book shelf is called India: General Elections 2009 and the Unconventional.

Step-by-Step Example: Mashedge for Tutors

Are you a tutor who uses the internet a lot and would like to provide personalized attention to your students? If so, Mashedge can help you.

Mashedge enables users to string together gems of knowledge scattered on the internet into viable web books.

As a tutor, you can use this technology in 2 ways:

1. You can build web books for your own use as you research the web for information. You probably use a search engine to find information. You continue to the same except that when you find a good web page, you save it into your web book.
2. You can build a custom web book knowing the specific requirements of your student. For example, if the student needs additional help on algebra but not on bar charts, then you can create a web book that contains the chapter on "algebra" and add links you find into the web book. We are quite sure your student would be mighty pleased with your service.

Here's a step-by-step example on how a tutor can build a personalized web book using Mashedge:

1. If you have not already signed up, please do sign up since it is required to create web books.
   
2. Click on "Create a Web Book". Enter title of the book - "Math Book for John J". Enter the subject and level for the book.
3. Choose "private" option for the web book. This would enable only you to see the book. Later you can add John's email so that he can view the book.
4. Disable "Community Edit" so that only you can add links to the web book.
5. Add a title for Chapter 1, let's say 'Algebra'.
6. If you need to add more chapters, click on 'Add More Chapters?' and you will get space to add another chapter.
7. When you done entering this basic information, click on "Create". The shell of a web book is now created for you and you are led to the main page of the web book. Observe that the table of contents is displayed.
   
8. Pick any chapter to begin adding content to the chapter. Simply add a URL and click on 'Add Web Page" and the URL is saved in the chapter.
   
9. While you are at it, you can also add chapter summary that can help John.

Now, to enable John to view the book, go the main page of the web book. You will find a link to "Manage Private Book Users". Click on this and enter John's email address. You can decide if you want to allow to add content to the book or not. That's it.

When John logs in to his account using the email address you entered (and he needs to sign up too), he will be able to see the book you made for him in his "My favorites". He can browse the links you added for him.

With personalization to a web page level, Mashedge can help the tutor provide personalized teaching to the student and improve her value.

You can also see the white paper on Mashedge for Tutors for more information.