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Son of CueCat? Purdue Professor Embeds Hyperlinks
rbook writes "Remember :CueCat, the "free" (as in beer) bar code scanner that was supposed to change everything by allowing advertisers (or whoever) to put hyperlinks in printed material? Well, the idea is back, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education: 'People who prefer print books over e-books may still want extra digital material to go with them. That's the idea behind Sorin Matei's project, Ubimark, which embeds books with two-dimensional codes that work as hyperlinks when photographed.' Photographing an image and uploading it sounds like more trouble than scanning a bar code to follow a URL, but they figure you can take the photograph with your smartphone and view the web page automatically on the mobile device." It looks like standard QR codes are embedded; what Ubimark is pushing is "a publishing environment which combines print books, ubilinks, a centralized Internet based interactive information repository and computer displays."
...if you (like myself and my fiancee) are one of the few people out there that still appreciate dead-tree books, you are also likely one of those people that won't give a fuck about something like this.
Living With a Nerd
>> CueCat, the "free" (as in beer)
More like, "free" (as in Gonorrhea)
Brilliant! All they need to do is force you to register when you want to view the digital content with your photo of the relevant page and include a unique part to the code in the book (so it can't be registered again by a different person) and they've stamped out resales of printed text books too.
*yawn* Guy takes standard QR codes, markets them against his specific web properties and/or mobile apps. Even the most steadfast of print publishers have cottoned on to the web by now. I have trouble imagining (and the ubimark site doesn't help) why a publisher would use this "platform" instead of just dropping in QR codes with URLs for the usual publisher-presented online offerings?
... or something like the BarCode Scanner application for Android which uses the camera to read 1d and 2d barcodes and takes you to the web page/ download/ web search/etc. This is really easy to use. Just point it at the barcode and it figures out what to do.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Little bit of faulty logic there. What's the point of printing out a big barcode so that people can decode it with their computers?
I was thinking more along the lines of something which can be scanned by cellphone or other portable computer. Every piece of machinery that I come in contact with can have it's own MAN page. How do you solve this rubick's cube? Scan its 2d barcode. How do you properly sharpen this knife? Scan its 2d barcode. What's the proper PSI for this automobile tire? Scan the 2d barcode and read all about its proper maintenance. What should I know about this pack of condoms? Scan the 2d barcode for some tips & tricks.
It'd be very cyberpunk, and wouldn't require an active internet connection. A quick scan of a densely packed barcode and you can have all the information about something that you want. We would just need it to be on the order of kilobytes as opposed to bytes.
If you've been watching the content business for a while, you get used to these things. Someone at the content-provider end of the business comes up with something that would be very beneficial to them while offering negligible benefits to the consumer, and then they spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to convince consumers that it's a good idea despite consumers' plainly seeing that it would be a pain in the ass with little or no reward. The :CueCat is, of course, the canonical example, but there are many more links in the chains of the Ghost of Stupid Business Plans Past.
The best thing about this plan is that it's plainly aimed at traditionalists who don't care for the web, but what it offers them is an awkward way to get the web content they don't actually want on a tiny screen they probably don't even have, probably while bombarding them with advertising and collecting data about their reading and browsing habits. What's not to like?
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Great comments everyone, even if you are skeptical. A couple of comments. You can join Ubimark by simply commenting on our site. Comments will appear on the chapter web pages and will be available to anyone who scans the upper left corner codes. 2D codes are generated on the fly by the site. Users need not worry about this. 2d codes are a convenient, mature, existing tool that works well with the cell phones we carry in our pockets right now. OCR on the fly or other more sophisticated approaches would need to wait for the next generation of cell phones. Cuecats died because they required dedicated hardware. No need to buy anything here. Simply enjoy your book. Paper is better for reading books. For now, at least. Finally, my grandfather, a farmer with a knack for storytelling and making great plum brandy left me as family heirloom this story. There was a time when people had no knowledge of hangers. Clothes would get dumped on the ground. One day, a fellow drove a nail into a wall and hung his coat from it. The entire village came to see the 8th wonder of the world. After much discussion and debate the village blacksmith came to our fellow and told him: "Lad, to tell you honest, I could have made a better nail than yours, one with a hook! You know what, though? I never thought of it!" This is a conceptual project before anything else, so feel free to comment and interact with us either here or at http://ubimark.com/ . You can also follow us on twitter @ithinkblog
No, the fail here is morons still trying to use barcodes, QR codes, etc. when a simple hyperlink will suffice, look less retarded, take less space, be human-readable, etc.