Rick Smolan, the photographer who organized all those Day in the Life coffee table books, is at it again, recruiting hundreds of professional and amateur shutterbugs to provide material for America at Home, which aims to document "the distinctive rituals, the intimate moments, and all the ways in which we work, play, and interact with friends and family members." When you buy the book online, you'll be able to create a dust jacket using your own family photos (the digitized ones, anyway) as a template. Or you can just order the cover for $7.99 and... stick it on some other book, I suppose.

The project is a joint venture between Smolan's Against All Odds Productions and IKEA, with additional support from Google, Snapfish, and Babycenter (along with several other technology companies). It''s not like this is all that radical: Companies like Blurb.com have been enabling users to create entire books from their picture collections for a while now. But it's worth noting that an established figure like Smolan is embracing customization technology as a viable means of trying to make his books stand out from the rest of the pack.