Balloon book adds multimedia with integrated NFC tags

Readers of “Catch the Sun: Ballooning Across the Globe” will be able to use their NFC phone and the tags embedded throughout the book to access movie clips, download music, share to social media and even add their own content.

Catch the Sun: Ballooning Across the Globe
CATCH THE SUN: Readers can access music and video via NFC

Elektor International Media has published a book which includes “fully integrated” NFC technology — believed to be a world first — with eight tags embedded inside each copy to allow access to multimedia content designed to complement the book.

Catch the Sun: Ballooning Across the Globe will be published in October and launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the world’s largest ballooning festival.

“The full integration of NFC chips in the book is a unique innovation which has never been used before by authors nor book publishers,” says the publisher. “If a smartphone or tablet with NFC inside is held against a page with an NFC tag, movie clips are automatically started, readers can connect to social media, free music can be downloaded and background information on NFC can be accessed. The title song of the book, Catch the Sun by Tim Akkerman, is incorporated in the cover of the book.”

The US$57.50 book also comes with two NFC tags that have not been programmed yet. “Readers can program these tags themselves with the help of their NFC enabled smartphone and an NFC writer app, and thus add web links and content to the book,” says Elektor.

“NFC technology adds interaction, infotainment, personalisation and social media engagement to the reading experience of Catch the Sun,” Wisse Hettinga, the publisher’s chief editor explains. “NFC has the potential to unleash exciting new media innovations once more publishers start using the technology to integrate books with movie clips, games or social communities.”

Author Han Nabben is a licensed balloon pilot and, by day, a senior marketer at NFC chip maker NXP. The tags used in the project were supplied by NXP and Identive, and a set of QR codes is printed at the back of the book for readers who don’t have an NFC phone.

In October 2011 Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books put NFC tags on the front covers of 1,000 copies of a book on mobile marketing to “engage the consumer and start a permission-based two-way relationship that may lead to the sale of this book or further sales in this category of interest.”

A video provides a step-by-step guide to personalising and adding content to the book with an NFC phone:

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