Gizmodo reports that Ubimark has published a special edition of Around the World in 80 Days that includes QR codes that work with a free iPhone app to serve as links to a website for on-line footnotes and discussion. Just point the iPhone at the code, and the link opens on your phone.
Print books with e-footnotes is an interesting idea with a lot of potential. We all know that printed books aren’t going away—but something like this could serve to provide them with the easy-linking advantage of e-books.
Of course, it’s a little funny that the first book to have these is 137 years old—but then, that also highlights the value of being able to reuse public domain material.
They couldn’t just have.. you know.. printed the foot notes instead? Unless there’s some kind of dynamic content provided, this is a bad example of using technology for technology’s sake. QR codes have lots of good and inventive uses, but this isn’t one of them sounds like.
If you’ve already got an iPhone, you potentially could have just gotten an e-book version with actual links to the content. This sounds stupid.
On the other hand, if you’ve got an iPhone you can’t be looking at both the e-book and the footnote style content at the same time.