By: Jim Rosenberg Technology: Adding Bar Codes to Newsprint
Just when it seemed that the dot-com-driven boost in run-of-paper
advertising was about to crest, the information age may soon put just
the slightest bit more ink onto newspaper pages. It may even make the
newspaper the preferred vehicle for a new kind of product sampling that
moves the often-manual inserting process from the mail-room floor to
the digital desktop. The larger significance, however, would seem to
lie in the beginnings of the digital convergence of multiple media.
So forget disks or downloads. Newspaper and insert printers can now
produce scannable codes that in one case take readers to Web sites and
in another supply the content directly. Both applications offer
possibilities for enriching editorial and advertising content within
minimal page space. On the ad side, the beauty of software is that
sample content can be provided in scannable printed form, essentially
converting cumbersome product sampling into ROP advertising. And the
machine-insertable free-standing insert, through use of proposed peel-
off cards and a card reader, may soon also benefit from similar
encoding technology.
Japan Leads the Way
Working with Fujitsu Ltd., Atlanta-based Intacta Technologies Inc. provided
software to Yomiuri
Shimbun, the world's biggest daily. Licensed by Intacta,
Fujitsu developed a way to print machine-readable code in ink on the
newsprint, right along with the news, sports scores, and pictures.
Based on data-transmission security technology developed for the
Israeli military by Intacta Labs Ltd., Beer Sheva, the code appears in
a box as printed spots that can be scanned into a computer 'using any
scanner' able to distinguish at least 300 dots per inch, according to
Intacta. The data represented by the spots can be of any sort - text,
music, color graphics, or an executable computer application - and
remains in native format, according to Sales Development Director Todd
Dombrowski.
The company says its Intacta.Code's 'high degree of error correction'
permits accurate delivery of code on substrates that allow relatively
low resolutions and that are easily rumpled or damaged.
Complete, accurate reading 'even after random damage affecting up to a
quarter of the ... surface,' is possible because 'we randomly make the
data redundant,' explained Altaf Nazerali, Intacta's president. That
amount of redundancy can be increased or decreased. On a computer,
Intacta's viewer software (which translates the dots) recognizes
incomplete data and reconstitutes it from the redundant content.
On April 19, Fujitsu began distributing the Windows-only software free
to Japanese customers via Yomiuri Shimbun's Web site. The three-
year license awards ongoing fees to Intacta, which seeks partnerships
in other countries. An unnamed European daily soon will print the code.
Nazerali said Intacta probably would give the software to papers for a
single, limited-time, editorial-use fee and for a per-use fee in
advertising.
The paper introduced the code to readers with snippets of song (42
seconds' worth from a 3/8-by-3-inch strip of code) and animation, and
is awarding prizes for successful scans. Yomiuri Shimbun is
using the code to augment its printed stories and photos.
In New York last week to explore business opportunities with U.S.
newspaper publishers during their annual convention, Dombrowski said
Yomiuri Shimbun's Web-site offer had more than 300,000 takers in
the first 36 hours, with another 10,000-plus asking for distribution
via CD. Within two days, papers elsewhere in East Asia were inquiring
about Intacta.Code.
Working With Intacta Code
Intacta.Code can be transmitted as a bitmap graphic, attached to an e-
mail message, faxed, or hand delivered as a printout. To give some idea
of the ratio of file size to printed area, Nazerali said code covering
an 81/2-by-11-inch piece of paper corresponds to 100-120 KB of data.
'In specialized applications, we can increase that,' he said. Data
volume varies with pattern density.
Intacta.Code is now printed only in black, but process-color patches
are under study, said Dombrowski, who added that, if scannable,
multicolor patches could boost data density within a given print area.
A page of code in Business Week could carry AT&T's entire annual
report, according to Nazerali. Given the ratio, however, he conceded
that it is unlikely to be suitable for an applications program,
although a stripped-down demo file or certain small Palm and CE
applications may be possible.
Dombrowski suggested that an online site or service that advertises a
temporary generic user name and password in newspaper-printed code
could further benefit by asking that similarly encoded subscriber
information on the delivery label also be scanned.
Code boxes can bring extra information to printed ads (and updated
information to printed catalogs) or take readers to Web sites in a
fashion similar to small scannable bar codes that other firms have
developed. Nazerali said Japanese readers already use the code to
connect to baseball teams' Web sites.
Nazerali credited Intacta.Code with packing 'significantly more data in
the same amount of space' as a bar code. It is also, he noted, more
accurate than optical-character-recognition software (and works with
any language or alphabet).
On-screen but offline, the editorial possibilities are tantalizing. The
same attribute - similarity to certain types of random print screening
- that allows the code to be used as a concealed form of document
authentication also allows different information to occupy the same
space on a page. For example, used as background in a graphic or
instead of solid black in a big headline, the code could be used to
call up additional information, the full text of a speech, a
translation, or a sound (speech) file for the blind or visually
impaired.
The company also is investigating use of the same encoding,
compression, and error-correction technology to overcome transmission-
quality and speed/bandwidth problems in strictly electronic media.
Just two weeks after Yomiuri Shimbun unveiled Intacta.Code, and
closer to home, a second Southern software developer partnered with its
local daily on another printed programming project.
Post and Courier Uses GoCode
On May 1, following an extensive, illustrated report on the technology
in its Sunday business section, The Post and Courier,
Charleston, S.C., began printing bar codes that take readers equipped
with computer-linked hand-held scanners to specific Web sites -
initially, only to areas on the paper's own charleston.net. The codes
represent the uniform resource locators (URLs) that are the Web
addresses. Thin as a dime and only half as wide, they fit easily into
classified liner ads - an anticipated future use.
Because the codes guide browsers directly to even the longest Web
addresses, they can carry readers to specific pages, such as those
containing an advertiser's product information, demo, or customer list.
Supplied by Charleston-based GoCode
Inc., the bar codes are a printed version of the colored or
underlined links that jump to Web sites from other sites or e-mail
messages.
Unlike the larger, cruder UPC codes familiar from product packaging,
GoCodes present alphanumeric information in two dimensions, but grow in
size only along the horizontal dimension so as to 'fit within the lines
of printed text,' said Prioleau Alexander, GoCode marketing vice
president and president of Charleston's Advertising Service Agency.
Alexander said the agate-type size limit was the 'first thing that had
to be developed.' Credit for the small strip of complex code, he said,
goes to 'bar code genius' Don Chandler, developer of the 'maxicode' on
all United Parcel Service packages.
Post and Courier Internet Operations Director Alan Seim explained that
the bar codes originate from a desktop application: the staffer
responsible types in the desired URL and the software creates a TIFF
that is then converted to an EPS file that can later be called up on a
pagination workstation. 'It's treated just as another graphic element,'
said Seim, who is trying to build correct GoCodes in page formats to
make the process easier. Like other bar codes, they can be made a font
choice that can simply be clicked when a typed URL is highlighted.
The paper has added more codes every day this month. Seim expected his
paper to run up to 100 different URL codes for online information by
mid-May. Codes for advertisers are expected to follow.
'It's got literally hundred of uses, and newspaper is our first logical
strategic partner,' said Alexander.
Listening to Readers and Advertisers
The first week, General Manager Lucy C. Talley had no advertiser
feedback. But even though 'we have not rolled it out to a large group
of advertisers,' she said, inquiries started coming in from some
national and local advertisers who had heard about it. 'It's creating
the excitement that we hoped it would,' said Talley, who until this
month had served as her paper's ad sales director.
Approximately 100 readers are testing the scanners, which measure about
an inch wide and almost eight inches long, with an aperture for the
scanning beam at one end and a cable at the other that plugs into a
computer's keyboard port. The user presses a button and aims the red
beam. The device beeps when the beam reads the code. GoCode has built
in error correction.
Alexander said users are given a CD that prompts them through a 'very
easy' set-up that 'a complete computer beginner could install and begin
using in less than five minutes' - little more than three button clicks
and typing in a user's name and some information about the equipment in
use.
The cost of the scanners may eventually be borne by advertisers who
would provide the devices free to readers, according to GoCode Chairman
Tom Pickens, son of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens. In addition to
reading printed codes, the scanners would have five buttons programmed
to take users directly to the sites of paying advertisers.
Many of the first hundred or so scanner users are GoCode supporters or
investors, according to Seim. Alexander said all are computer users
known to GoCode, and he expects as many as 2,000 will be aiming their
scanners at pages by summer. For those additional users, Alexander said
GoCode and the paper will run house ads to find 'cross-overs,'
subscribers who use both the P&C's printed and online products.
The choice of 'cross-over' readers makes sense, given the fact that the
scanner is tethered to the computer. In other words, the system only
works for those who read their papers while sitting at their computers.
Seim sees that as a real-time reading advantage over what may have been
the first such web-press-to-Web-site bar-code application a few years
ago. In that model, URLs are stored by a wireless handscanner. Later, a
user downloads the stored URLs to a computer.
It all may soon be moot. 'Later this year,' Alexander said, the cabled
scanner will be joined by a wireless wand able to store what it scans.
But besides ready availability and relatively modest $100 cost,
Alexander said, the current scanner makes sense to start with because
market research showed tethering is desirable at multiuser sites such
as schools, libraries, and newsrooms.
In any event, Alexander said focus groups and other research found that
print media are the primary sources of Web addresses, and readers carry
a publication to their computers, or tear out or write down the URL
they need.
The paper's parent, Evening Post Publishing Co., Alexander said, 'made
a significant investment' in privately held GoCodes Inc., where the
idea grew out of Pickens' frustration in typing in long URLs that
accompanied printed stories. Three-quarters of the 3-year-old company's
36 employees work at its Logan, Utah, R&D facilities.
The Post and Courier reported that a South Carolina-based
grocery chain will put GoCodes on advertising inserts. Users will be
able to scan items they wish to buy, upload the list and have their
purchases bagged and waiting when they get to the store. GoCode also is
looking at pending application of its technology in the banking,
hospitality, and tourism industries.
With stored name, postal and e-mail addresses, phone number, and credit
card information, a GoCode system will automatically fill out e-
commerce forms for making online transactions.
NeoMedia Serves Up PaperClick
Possibly the first to promote printed hyperlinks, publicly traded NeoMedia
Technologies Inc., Fort Myers, Fla., uses reader software and bar codes that
are about three times the size of GoCode's - still small compared with most
UPCs. Its approach is distinguished by class-128 codes that are readable by a
standard bar code scanner, including some very small untethered devices.
NeoMedia has researched the market since last spring, when it teamed
with a major metro daily that it would not publicly identify. Its
technology is in beta tests at several media outlets, according to
spokeswoman Virginia Small.
'To date,' said Product Development Director Hugh Meyers, the PaperClick PC
software links to peripherals has meant that interfacing through standard [Web]
browsers 'has been implemented only for the Windows OS family.' But the company
plans to extend support to other computing platforms, he added.
Choices of capture device include the watch-fob-size Incascan PennyScanner,
a scanner-equipped hand-held Palm Pilot with special NeoMedia software,
and the A.T. Cross Co. NetPen. All must eventually connect to a computer.
At $50-$60, the PennyScanner's infrared beam allows users to merely aim
and click at a computer's IR sensor. The $125 Cross NetPen looks like
what it is. At one end is a ball point; on the other, a scanner lens.
Up to 150 stored URLs are uploaded via an 'inkwell' dock connected to a
computer.
NeoMedia's PaperClick.com Web site enables small to midsize publishers
to create URL bar codes at no cost. For larger papers requiring an
unlimited number of codes, NeoMedia charges for its Enterprise version,
which can report user demographics and can create links tailored to
individuals.
Belo, wsj.com Also Have Plans
Beyond bar codes, Dallas-based Belo is bringing broadcast into the
media mix. Its Belo
Interactive subsidiary made a substantial investment in DigitalConvergence.Com,
also in Dallas, from which it licensed software products that create
automatic links from print and television to the Internet.
Plugging a small 'Cue Cat' instead of a mouse into a PC's keyboard, one
product is a very small handscanner that reads URL bar codes printed in
the paper and directs the browser to the corresponding Web site.
C.R.Q. software links TV content to related Web sites. Kathy Creany,
senior vice president of Belo's broadcast division and heading the new
project's launch, explained that users will see the DigitalConvergence
logo, accompanied by an audio alert on their TVs, 'that kicks you to
whatever page of whatever Web site we want to send you to.' The link is
accomplished via hardwired TV-to-PC connection (cable and software),
which Belo will give away, or a wireless transmitter that connects to
the back of a TV set and is sold 'for a really small fee at Radio
Shack' stores, said Creany. (The retailer is owned by Fort Worth-based
Tandy Corp. - a DigitalConvergence investor, like Belo and ad agency
Young & Rubicam.)
Codes in ads and cues in commercials take users to specific pages of a
seller's site for information and e-commerce, while the same links
embedded in editorial content deliver more detail or related
information.
'We're going to launch in the early fall - the date has not yet been
determined,' said Creany, adding that the technology will roll out to
all Belo TV stations, a couple of its cable news stations, and all its
large dailies. The group's smaller papers may follow. At The Dallas
Morning News, the Providence (R.I.) Journal, and
The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif., she continued, 'We're
already well on our way in the planning process' and have had launch
meetings at about a third of the TV stations.
Belo owns a TV station in Dallas that can work with the Morning
News. 'Where we do not have that combination,' said Creany, 'we are
trying to work with a launch partner in the other medium.' For example,
Belo is working in Providence with an NBC-owned and -operated station
that has licensed the same technology. Belo is discussing similar
arrangements with the Houston Chronicle and The Seattle
Times.
'The long-range plan is for all 30-plus Web sites of Belo Interactive
to use that technology in all the newspapers,' said John Cranfil,
Morning News online editor. On the paper's production side, Vice
President and Operations Director Paul Webb said he is 'enthused about'
prospects of using the 'hybrid technology' to add value to the printed
product.
When the deal with DigitalConvergence was struck early this year, Belo
Interactive President James M. Moroney said it gave Belo papers and
stations a 'unique sales tool to offer advertisers,' who could extend
'their broadcast and print ... messages to potential buyers online,'
while consumers gain easier access to information.
Yet another print-to-Web application has been devised by PlanetPortal, which
created the Internet equivalent of a TV remote, with programmable buttons for
favorite Web sites and a WebCode reader. The Wall Street Journal Interactive
Edition and Thomson Financial Interactive were among the original
WebRemote/WebCard sponsors.
When swiped through its WebCode reader, the Durham, N.C., firm's
WebCards take users to targeted information, promotional offers, etc.,
on sponsors' Web sites. A PlanetPortal spokeswoman said peel-off
WebCards may be printed onto advertising inserts. The first keyboards
that incorporate WebCode readers are expected to ship next month.
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