By Edward Nawotka
It’s a little difficult to envision how this would be useful, but it is quirky and kind of wonderful: Wonder-Tonic.com has converted a dozen classic novels, from Moby Dick to Ulysses, into QR barcodes. You can print out a page with the codes on them for each book — several hundred — and take it with you. Stuck in line, use your cell phone camera to scan the code and a browser will open with an 800 passage of the book.
They explain the project on their site this way:
Books2Barcodes is an ongoing effort to convert all the world’s great books to QR codes (2D barcodes). Each work featured here is the entire text of a piece of classic literature translated into several thousand barcodes. With a mobile device equipped with a camera and a barcode-scanning app, you can experience the joy of a great book as read through 800-character fragments on your cellphone.
You’ll need a mobile device with a barcode-scanning app. You can use Google Goggles, RedLaser, Zxing, or just about anything else. Just click one of the links on the left, then scan each barcode to get a piece of the book!
Longer books can take a while to download fully. Use a modern browser like Firefox or Chrome for the fastest experience.
We are a team of archivists, engineers, and library scientists working tirelessly to try to make the classics of yesterday accessible to today’s technology. Although the task of converting books to barcodes is difficult, time-consuming, and impossible to automate, we believe this cultural contribution is necessary, regardless of the logistical difficulties.
Question: Do you ever use QR codes?
6 Comments
Um, hate to break it to you Ed but this is quite clearly a wind-up: http://mikelacher.com/about.php
A probably quite a good example of how e-book analysis is getting far too abstracted.
I think that was the point of the post.
I work at the literature development organisation Litfest in Northwest England, and to go with the launch of Flax026 Flash Mob, a free new writing publication, we’ve used just this technique: the flyers we’ve used to advertise the collection have QR codes on them, each of which links to one story, which are hosted online on our website: http://www.litfest.org/publications/flash-mob-flax026/
@Erin
Sorry. You’re quite right.
The post’s seemingly dry observations – such as “It’s a little difficult to envision how this would be useful” and “Do you ever use QR codes?” – are, of course, the work of a great satirical mind. Mixing ridicule, irony and exaggeration to great effect.
@Tom, no you’re right. I didn’t get the joke…
No worries Ed – merely trying (in the face of an avalanche of industry developments) to help contribute to the filtering of things that matter. Something your site is very good at.
I should also add, for what it’s worth, I don’t think Publishing Perspectives falls into the trap – often seen elsewhere – of over-intellectualizing e-book discussion.
I really admire your global coverage of digital publishing, especially as e-book development is much more segmented than often reported (both territorially and across genres).