The Open Road Blog

The Newbery Award—the highest literary honor given for children's books—has been bestowed to distinguished authors since 1922. That's ninety classic and important books to get through. (Newbery winners and honors on our list include winner Julie of the Wolves, honoree Philip Hall Likes Me. I Reckon Maybe., winner M.C. Higgins, the Great, and honoree The Planet of Junior Brown.) But, in case you don't have time to read all ninety, this weekend, you can catch the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, a celebration of those prestigious Newbery Award–winning books in homespun video format. The contest, ...

This is a special year for me. After years of coming up with one pretext after another for why I couldn’t attend the RWA conference, I told myself that this year was THE YEAR! No excuses, no apologies.

The decision that this was THE YEAR wasn’t ...

It's always exciting when a someone whose work you've been following for years begins a new project, especially when that new project includes new talents that speak to your interests! Such is the case with the new site Grantland. Bill Simmons (columnist for ESPN, New York Times No. 1 bestselling author, and podcaster-extrodinar) has just launched his new site this week, dedicated to the same unique blend of sports and pop culture that Simmons has been excelling at for years! With a rotation that includes authors like Chuck Klosterman and Malcom Gladwell, columnists like Dan Fierman (GQ) and Chris Jones (Esquire), and some interestingly "fresh" voices, this site ...

Via Tech Crunch: "Twitter has just rolled out a nifty little feature. Now on anyone’s profile, when you click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to see exactly how they see Twitter. In other words, you can see the same timeline of tweets that they see when they’re looking at their main feed." Frankly, not sure how much I like this!—Libby

It's always an exciting moment to stumble across a book that makes you cry, makes you think, or makes you fall over with laughter. I lucked out this week and found a humor book that made me do all three! ...

Sean Power had his laptop stolen last night. He had a bit of software on it (Project Prey) that can be activated to record what's going on on your laptop including taking webcam pics of whoever is using it. Through this, and Twitter, he tracked down the thief's name and the location of the laptop, and called the cops. Twitter friends in the area showed up to keep an eye on the thief until the police arrived. Here's the full twitter stream.—Pablo

Next Friday, five hundred lucky folks will get an overnight stay at one of the most ...

Fizz, Cartagram and Planetary are neat tools by Bloom, a company that is pairing visualization tools with elements of game design. Fizz lets you see your Facebook or Twitter feed develop via big or small bubbles, indicating people and updates, and swarming hives. Cartagram displays instagram photos in a map layout. While Bloom's cool projects are news from earlier in 2011, the update is that Planetary, which looks the neatest, will be available on Monday. It is described as "an all-new, stunningly beautiful way to explore your music collection." They have some examples with Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, ...