I can’t speak for my Recombu colleagues, but I personally am a big fan of the printed word. You can keep your new fangled e-Readers and whathaveyou, give me a good old fashioned book any day of the week.
But I do also love phones; so to discover there’s a way to marry the two that doesn’t involve me ruining my eyesight by reading a book on my phone is happy news indeed. Through the magic of QR codes, Ubimark has published an edition of Jules Verne’s Around The World in 80 Days which allows you to ‘click through’ to more information using your phone. When you take a picture of the code using your handset and an iPhone app, it will take you to a relevant web page. The process holds great possibilities for classic texts which could see user discussions, historical information and relevant sidenotes hosted online.
The possibilities are pretty endless for authors too. Books could soon be written with additional media in mind; video content, sound effects, background information, the reams of research that are no doubt laid by when writing a book could now see the light of day. I’d like to see someone write an epic ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ story – imagine the sound effects you could use, and videos of the grizzly end you meet when you choosing the wrong path… It could turn a quiet read into a full-on interactive extravaganza. All this, and you wouldn’t need to shell out £500 for an iPad.
The concept behind Ubimark’s work isn’t a new one – Hendrik Hoppe, a German student, posited the same idea for his Bachelor’s degree albeit intended for guide books or research reports. But with the new edition of Jules Verne’s classic now actually available to buy, Ubimark has taken it one step further. You can order the book from CreateSpace for around £21 including shipping – and, while you’re waiting, check out the video demo below for a preview. [via SwissMiss]
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