At BlookUp, Our best seller is our facebook Book. While we admit that Facebook can be a great tool to share memories, nothing compares to reading a physical book.
Not Convinced? Here are three reasons why you should print your Facebook book
First, we would like to reassure you !
No, BlookUp is not late for the 21st century, no, we do not have just discovered these revolutionary things that are Wordpress and social networks.
Fortunately for us, it’s been a while already that we use them… and we love it!
It’s getting cold and it’s not really the time to talk about fresh water anymore.
But some of you may be waiting for one thing ! Summer, and its 36 ° C in the shade! So before talking about snow, christmas trees and winter wind, we’ll do one last little favor to summer fans by making you do a small tour of the Municipal Library of Cincinnati!
Contrary to what its name indicates, Cincinnati is not located in Italy (However, the name is Italian, in hommage to the Roman political figure Cincinnatus). But in the United States, in the state of Ohio.
There are many beautiful things to see in Cincinnati but today we will stop at this beautiful fountain, just in front of the Municipal Library !
Photo credit: Jean-François Schmitz
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Soberly named “Book Fountain”, this monument is actually a sculpture of books made of concrete covered with fired clay ! All stacked on each other, through which water flows as would a waterfall do. According to the artist-sculptor Michael Frasca, the flow of water through the books represents the free flow of ideas and information through writing and literature.
Very popular with tourists and students from frequently pose or sit near it. The fountain is also a memorial dedicated to Amelia Valerio Weinberg. She died in 1982 and who bequeathed money in order to build a fountain for the Municipal Library ! Her wish finally came true 8 years later, and in the best way possible!
Last year we had you discover Newmarket’s mobile library. But reading in town, even in a park, was still a little bit too… Déjà vu, right?
So, you like to read but you can’t stand the metro alarms, the screeching of the tramway rails or being shaked onthe bus?
Despite all the magic contained in your book, despite all the nice turns of phrase, you can’t get into it as you are forced to check for your next stop or detach your hand off the bar to which you were hanging in order to turn your page while you are suffocating, standing between two very close neighboors?
Forget the stress and constant distractions with this library of dreams! 
Designed by the americans of Studio Padron ! The “Hemmeling Rom” (or “Secret Chamber” in Norwegian) is a cabin of 200 squared meters entirely made of oak, furnished with a bed, a chair, a desk and a wood-burning stove. Everything you need to curl, warm, comfortable, with a good book in hand and plenty of others lining on the walls all around!
For those who love solitude and calm, the joy is complete as the library is completely isolated ! Lost somewhere in the woods of the state of New York, United States. It’s an essential travel stop for true books and new experiences lovers!
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Article source – photos credits : Jason Koxvold
Okay, we saw great books, that’s good. But when large books are not buildings themselves, we must put them in large libraries, right?
The National Library of France (“Bibliothèque Pierre Mendes France” or “BNF”), in Paris, seems to be the right place to house collections gathering nearly 14 million books and prints, and increasing approximately of 670,000 documents per year!
This staggering number is divided over two locations: The historic Richelieu library, on Vivienne Street, and the François Mitterrand library, near the Seine docks.
4 buildings like this, designed by architect Dominique Perrault, store millions of valuable documents on the east side of Paris.
photo credit: Inathèque
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These collections include several million periodicals, about 250,000 manuscripts, 2,500 vellum and 10,000 medieval manuscripts (making it the largest library in the world for this kind of documents), maps, prints, photographs, scores, coins, medals, audio, video, multimedia or digital (16.5 billion URLs), objects and artefacts, costumes, scenery …
The BNF is also increasingly known for its digital library, Gallica, which provides access to the reproduction of more than 3.4 million documents in texts, images or sounds in order to save documents that were too damaged to be consulted or which have to be saved in emergency because their data were about to be lost forever.
At the Tolbiac library, the reading rooms are located on the ground floor. When a reader wants a book, he must introduce his library card into an electronic reader, choose the book he wants and order it. The book is delivered about half an hour later, after the library staff working on the upper floors put the ordered books in automated guided vehicles and sent them to their future readers.
The reading rooms of the BNF: Left, the Oval Room of the Richelieu site; On the right, the Ground Garden Site Tolbiac.
photos credits: Vincent Desjardins
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We are sur all this makes you want to read! But to avoid dizziness, it’s best to start with your holiday memories turned into a blook!
Sometimes, travelling is not about physical adventures in the wild, or sunbathing on a tropical island, nor about high athletics achievements from city to city, on a bike or in a sport car.
In fact, Sometimes, travelling means wandering around, just listening to the sounds and discussions around you, share thoughts and precious moments with the people you casually encounter, enjoying the colours and the forms of the Nature that surrounds you.
Sidhartha Satpathy is one of those travellers, and he made his blook out of his travel blog. Today, we offer you to explore with us his work and his thoughts about those experiences!
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“The beautiful Mythological demon lord Ravana, carrying the three worlds on his head. A beautiful stone carving on the walls of Halebidu in Karnataka, India. The carvings would give you a feeling of being so lively that they could come out and stand in front of you.”
“The beautiful St. Mary’s island on the western part of India. A shore filled with shells, making it very unique in the vast coastal belt of India.”
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I basically would call myself as a wonderer. Someone who loves to explore the many aspects of life. I started to travelling a little late in my life but today it an integral part of me. I love to travel through various modes of transport. My interest and passion apart from Travel is in Photography and writing. Writing is mostly about my travels but I also write stories. So far written four short stories. Hope to write more as they unfold for me. I love to be in the lap of nature and that has intrigued me always. So most of my projects are on Travel & nature. I am planning for doing a small work on the artisans at Odisha (Eastern state of India).
“Farmer taking his buffalos to the fields. A very common sight in the hinterlands of Odisha.”
“At the Cashew factory where, despite of the difficult working conditions, there is a smile and warmth that floats around with the women who work there. They chatted up and had fun in the short time that we were there.”
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I have done a few trips outside India (my motherland) but I love this country for its diversity. India is so diverse that most of the time we only get to know the parts of the country that is well shared and spoken about on the net. My website / blog (www.staryeyestravel.com) that I currently use is a travelogue. I travel to places that are of little known but carries a lot of history, architecture and geography. This blog is just a year old and I am in the process of putting in more as things unfold. I am also working on capturing my past travels.
I also have another blog page (www.ssidhi.blogspot.in). This I started eight years back with an objective to share what ever I feel or experience. Today it is focused more on stories, poetry, some of the happenings around me. Though I have currently linked it up with the main webpage but keep it separate and that gives me the space to compartmentalise and structure my thoughts.
“My little one was having a try at the manual nut opening process. Though the manual process is prevalent but these machines have started to speed up the process.”
“Me in the midst of a lusty farm land, the lands that feed the millions in our country”
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Off course, web is something that one would last for ever and will be accessible to a lot of people around the world. But a book gives it a personalised feeling. The photographs on my page are all mine and I had taken care in shooting and putting them up along with my free flow of thoughts. So getting it printed and seeing them come to life is amazing. It is a treasure of places which I can share it with my friends in a physical form. It is amazing to see the content in a form that I could hold it, read it, feel it.
Put simply I just treasure it.
Oh, that was on FB. I have been thinking about getting my content printed and BlookUp just happened. ☺
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“The wilderness in some of the backyards at Chantilly, France. They are breath taking and one could spend months just soaking it up all”
“The Eiffel Tower viewed from the Sacré Cœur. A delight for a traveller to watch the wonders from one part of the city to another while travelling.”
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Positives:
– It is simply beautiful. I love the concept and the way it has come up.
– It is very easy to use and the transfer of content is very easy.
– Additionally what I liked was that all my hyperlinks could also be printed up.
– The paper quality of the blook is amazing.
Some thing that I would love to have:
– Realised that other languages I cannot get it print. My poetry in Hindi language at the beginning of some of the blogs were just converted to webding (Square boxes) and that kills the crux of my blog. Could those just be picked up as image if not converted. (I knew what I was getting but I wanted the outcome. I may print and paste it for future usage)
– Somewhere the layout that I had in the page it just gets distorted. Though I would say to me it did not make much of an impact but it could be worth looking at.
– The hyperlinks could get numbered and the details shared at the end of the article.
– I can’t edit anything if I want to.
– The cover page designs, may need some looking through.They are dull.. need more creativity there.
– The website has french layover. There were times when I had to go to the google translator to get the meaning of words.
Having said so I must say, “You guys just stuck to the time of delivery and is very neat. Very prompt. I got the blook bang on time. Wow, and that having got it sent from France. No follow ups, nothing. Simply fantastic”.
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Col Saheb Island – “The beautiful water channels offers some pretty sights for one to enjoy and shoot around. With the dark clouds looming in the vicinity, it was a delight.”
Col Saheb Island again – “A shot of the water channels, it is really the Venice of India with all its local flavours.”
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I am thrilled with the outcome. A book as such as a collection and coffee table is a wow. Friends and family members are trilled by the outcome. I have been taking it around and sharing it with others.
Oh yes. I certainly would be using it often for some of my future creations.
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Contrasts and colors of Sidhartha’s trips: At the top, incense sticks burning at one of the Col Saheb Island’s temples; At the bottom, a beautiful Chateau against a setting sun in Paris.
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Thank you Sidhartha for answering our questions and making us travel through your captions and stunning photos! We hope that the new features coming in the future for our tool will satisfy you when you have more travel stories to tell!
Want to share you blog and BlookUp stories too? Contact us at contact@blookup.com!
Here you are! We were waiting for you, come in, take a seat!
Accurate representation of the BlookUp Team while publishing this article.
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It’s been 5 years since BlookUp embarked on the great adventure of printing books out of blogs. 5 years of research and development concentrated on our import tool which is always improving despite technical and time constraints, 5 years of strong relationship with our blookers who share our concept without failing, 5 years of digital contents imported from all over the world and returning to it delivered in the form of real paper books.
The excitement we feel at the sight of all the progress made through all theses years is so strong we can’t name it. All the BlookUp Team can (and wants to) do is thanking you for making us grow, for making every new day and every new feature possible.
It’s time to wish for a bright and long future!
During several months, and thanks to numerous WordPress users eager to put our concept to the test. We established a list of recurring bugs due to compatibility issues between our tool import and WordPress.com applications.
Although aware of the magnitude of the problem, the BlookUp Team also had to face during this summer a serie of difficulties and unforeseen events?
Thisdelayed the release of a viable solution for Wordpress.com blogs and bloggers.
In addition, to daily corrections brought to current bugs on all blogging platforms. Our technical team is also working hard to improve our import tool and our global technical resouces.
It is a long and essential process to go through, and sometimes difficult to estimate in terms of time.
But now, after several months of development, our tool is finally ready to go!
Among other things, changes have been brought to the galleries’ management
Many things are still awaiting for more improvement, but we are happy ton announce that you can try today a new import of your WordPress blog by visiting this link and logging in to your account!
If you come accross other difficulties after the import, don’t hesitate to contact our customer service at sav@blookup.com ! Inorder for us to help, guide you and bring you the best experience possible.
This update only concerns blogs hosted by Wordpess.com; An other update for WordPress.org blogs will see the light of day later and we will announce it when it is ready!
Don’t know if you’re hosted by Wordpress.com or WordPress.org ? See this article to know everything about those 2 versions!
All the BlookUp Team is looking forward to see the book of your WordPress!
Imagine having your hands around your blook, the book your blog… Imagine yourself browsing the pages of a real book, YOUR book, unique in the world! Touch the paper, feel the smell of ink… What a pleasant sensation it is to calmly read alone or share your articles and relive your memories with your friends!
Your blog becomes digital reality. With BlookUp, your articles, your blog posts are automatically imported and formatted, but you can still choose the size and color of your titles, the size of your photos, the appearance of your cover and back cover… Within a few clicks, you customize your book and see it take shape before your eyes.
Everything seems in place? Good! The only thing left to do is to order! And there it is, the book of your blog is printed and a few days later, you receive it at home. It’s now up to you to devour it selfishly or share it with your loved ones!
Are you an avid mountain hiker or a more casual one? Either way, you cross on foot or bike the most beautiful reliefs and you want to keep an original souvenir of your prowess?
Turning your best hikes into a 3D map is what the Spanish startup Nice Trails offers you. And we share the discovery with you this week!
This startup offers a revolutionnary solution to print a 3D model of a moutain excursion that you have done. All accompanied with nice reliefs that show you the altitude you have climbed as well as the achievements you have accomplished!
The idea came from the founder who thought that the path shown on a paper map does not convey well the remarkable character of physical prowess and exertion.
This is much better than a Michelin map!
You send the GPS coordinates of your hike to the web platform, preview the 3D object representing your path – drawned in a bright red line along the relief you walked. Then you confirm your order to send it to a 3D printer.
The object arrives at home only a few days later. It’s now up to you to use it as a paperweight, to frame it and hang it on a wall, or leave it on the living room coffee table like a trophy!
Nice Trails features 3 diferent print sizes and price ranges from 99 to 249€ (around $111,48 to $280,40). A good way to immortalize the hikes of your life, just like BlookUp allows you to re-materialize your digital content in a real paper book. It’s so amazing to see how the concrete objects that you can hold in your hands still have a bright future ahead of them!
