Add Exbiblio to the list of companies that connect the physical world to the Net using a mobile phone.
From the Puget Sound Biz Journal:
A Seattle startup is working on a novel device that could capture a few words from a book or printed article and quickly find the full text on the web.
The company, Exbiblio , expects to have a prototype ready in the fall that could span the growing divide between the internet and the world of printed material.
The device Exbiblio is developing will house a small optical reader, which connects via a cable to a computer. Users can scan a snippet of printed text — as few as six words at a time — and use that “identifying barcode” to find the corresponding full text on the web, King said.
A person reading a printed newspaper, for example, could instantly get an online version of an article and e-mail it to friends or colleagues. Such a technology could take the advantages of the web — the interactivity and ability to directly measure traffic — and apply that to the printed word.
They are planning to introduce the first version of their product as a limited-distribution Beta release later this year.
