I’m currently reading Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino’s excellent Creating a Culture of Innovation, which is simultaneously a survey, history, and playbook for how to invent the future from inside corporations.
(Cleverly, Alex is serialising the book as a series of free Friday lectures, starting later this month. Register for tickets here.)
There are many links in the footnotes, which is great. But I like reading on paper (it helps me focus) and it is tedious typing URLs into my phone browser letter by letter.
We had a similar problem with Mind Hacks, and our workaround then was to put all the links on a single web page. Functional but not great.
So I was very taken with Tom Critchlow’s recent experiments with printed QR codes (for his upcoming book on indie consultancy):
Is there an “in-line” QR code format? The print book <–> HTML connection is awful. Best standard seems to be footnote the link and then print the URL…
He shows a couple of elegant examples of what he’s looking for, such as
a tiny QR code in the margin
wonderfully, a word-sized QR code inline with the text.
QR codes are a neat solution because smartphone cameras natively resolve them to hyperlinks, without even taking a photo.
BUT
As this deep dive into printed QR codes shows, there are design challenges:
Web addresses are long, which makes QR codes bigger
The codes can’t be shrunk because they bump up against print resolution limits (and, I’ve found, because smartphone cameras can’t focus on anything too small and too close).
So, taking this route, you end up with large QR codes on the page. Not ideal. At worst, ugly.
Of course there are workarounds: one big QR code per chapter, perhaps, providing a menu of all the links in all the footnotes.
I’d love to see a solution like Critchlow’s original mockups. Inline, robot-readable links have an elegance that reminds me of Tufte’s sparklines. Though perhaps this route has reached a dead end.
What’s the limit on how small a QR code can be printed - and scanned reliably - and what’s the character limit for that? Could it contain a URL?
Is there an alternative QR code standard which is simultaneously much more compact, and also already supported by smartphone cameras?
If we need a whole new standard, we could think about sorting out the opaqueness problem of existing QR codes. What about a robot-readable glyph that was interpreted by the smartphone camera to simply mean: use OCR on the following string of characters and treat it as a web address (or a bank account number, or a Twitter username, or whatever). Basically a robot-readable protocol prefix, like “http:”. That would have the benefit of being robot-readable and human-readable simultaneously.
But new standards would take years. I’d prefer tiny QR codes in books that work today.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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I’m currently reading Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino’s excellent Creating a Culture of Innovation, which is simultaneously a survey, history, and playbook for how to invent the future from inside corporations.
(Cleverly, Alex is serialising the book as a series of free Friday lectures, starting later this month. Register for tickets here.)
There are many links in the footnotes, which is great. But I like reading on paper (it helps me focus) and it is tedious typing URLs into my phone browser letter by letter.
We had a similar problem with Mind Hacks, and our workaround then was to put all the links on a single web page. Functional but not great.
So I was very taken with Tom Critchlow’s recent experiments with printed QR codes (for his upcoming book on indie consultancy):
He shows a couple of elegant examples of what he’s looking for, such as
QR codes are a neat solution because smartphone cameras natively resolve them to hyperlinks, without even taking a photo.
BUT
As this deep dive into printed QR codes shows, there are design challenges:
So, taking this route, you end up with large QR codes on the page. Not ideal. At worst, ugly.
Of course there are workarounds: one big QR code per chapter, perhaps, providing a menu of all the links in all the footnotes.
I’d love to see a solution like Critchlow’s original mockups. Inline, robot-readable links have an elegance that reminds me of Tufte’s sparklines. Though perhaps this route has reached a dead end.
What’s the limit on how small a QR code can be printed - and scanned reliably - and what’s the character limit for that? Could it contain a URL?
Is there an alternative QR code standard which is simultaneously much more compact, and also already supported by smartphone cameras?
If we need a whole new standard, we could think about sorting out the opaqueness problem of existing QR codes. What about a robot-readable glyph that was interpreted by the smartphone camera to simply mean: use OCR on the following string of characters and treat it as a web address (or a bank account number, or a Twitter username, or whatever). Basically a robot-readable protocol prefix, like “http:”. That would have the benefit of being robot-readable and human-readable simultaneously.
But new standards would take years. I’d prefer tiny QR codes in books that work today.