Books: The Last Physical Media Product That Makes Sense

That's how Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and creator of The Long Tail concept, put it during his keynote at the inaugural O'Reilly Media Tools of Change for Publishing Conference taking place this week in San Jose.

The goals of the conference are:

-To raise "the level of technology knowledge and discourse in the publishing industry"
-To provide "a meeting ground for everyone involved in the future of publishing"

It's a big week and I suspect a much more relevant one these days than the recently held BookExpo.

As comforted as I was by Anderson's acknowledgment of the staying power of the book I was as dazzled by Manolis Kelaidis’ little creation called blueBook.

In the books he produces "the digital and physical co-exist in a product that would offer the benefits of both."

How it works:

The book has a processor embedded into the cover. When you click on a hyperlink in the book the processor connects to your computer via bluetooth to trigger the required action.

Some possibilities:
-a children’s book on animals might activate sounds and videos on a screen when the printed picture of the animal is touched.
-Reference books may contain inline glossaries linked to Wikipedia or Google.
-Keywords in novels trigger incidental music.
-Buttons on academic papers connect to discussion forums or send feedback to the author.
- Textual advertising

Though it doesn't offer much more technologically than an e-book it does preserve the form of the book and might just be a more palatable use of technology for us book people.

Thanks to BookTwo.org for his post on bookBlue.

Here is Neil Edde's take from the conference floor.