The Creative Review highlight this amazing book produced purely out of QR codes. The concept is that it forms a living text, the actual writing itself mutating at will, the fixity of paper and ink no longer a fixity.

For me this is an excellent example of how QR codes can interact with old media, how they are making the web physical. Actively reading the book would probably not really work. But as a concept it's intriguing.

Also interesting to note that it's from Brazil. There seems to be a Spanish/Latin American twist to QR codes, something you wouldn't necessairily expect. In saying that I may have offended everyone in Spain and Brazil by lumping you together...and you don't even speak the same language. Sorry.

Interestingly HarperCollins US are putting QR codes on the back of books. This press release came via 2d-code. As someone involved with books in my other (non-barcode) life I like the initiative. Publishers are desperate to bring cool web stuff into books, but obviously an experiment like that of Editoras Online is not going to work. HC seem to have taken the time to choose the right titles and use QR in the right way: complementing the book, the age group, adding extra content and bringing the flexibility, fuidity and greater data scale of the web to print objects. Ultimately while Editoras will grab the headlines, HC is setting the precedent for use of barcodes in books.

Here is my one beef: in the press release it has the QR codes are "powered" by Australian QR generator and company qm codes. Am I the only one thinking this is slightly spurious? Powered in the sense that they created the QR codes? Not too hard in and of itself. Credit to them for getting in on the good partnership, but given that HC are creating the websites I am assuming qm codes role is actually in generating the codes. Not that hard.