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Horseless Carriage Department: A p-book with links built in
June 29, 2007 | 2:50 pm
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By David Rothman
What if paper books could contain links that, when followed, let you find out definitions of words or other extras? You’d have a “networked book in print,” as Ben Vershbow of if:book has called the new invention.
Despite the interesting ergonomics of the blueBook developed by Manolis Kelaidis in the U.K., I agree with Ben’s skepticism.
“By the time e-paper is a practical reality,” he asks, “will attachment to print have definitively ebbed?”
Update, 4:26 p.m.: While skeptical, Ben has just added, in a post to a mailing list, that “I couldn’t agree more that Manolis’ work is beautiful, and more generally, that the future of books is not monolithic but rather a multiplicity of directions. I sincerely hope Manolis’ work is a part of it.”
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Comments:
There is a strong impetus to attempt to interconnect paper books, magazines and newspapers with the web. One previous idea involved a scanner called CueCat that was mass-mailed for free to Wired magazine subscribers and several other groups. According to Wikipedia:
I received a CueCat and thought that the idea was interesting. The scanner codes appeared in advertisements in Wired magazine and apparently in some other major magazines like Parade and Forbes.
This scanner-based technological effort to link paper and the web collapsed and the system is now non-functional. But the technique proposed by Manolis Kelaidis above is different and has distinct strengths and weaknesses. Users simply touch a page instead of having to locate a wand and drag it across a page but the book must be specially designed.