Physical hyperlinks

From Cooltown to CueCat, the physical hyperlink has been a recurring theme in ubiquitous computing. As the name suggests, this is about the interactions involved in getting information from the physical world into a mobile device. There are a number of recent projects including Yellow Arrow , Semapedia , Thinglink and Microsoft Aura that offer some form of linking or tagging of physical things with web-like content.

Why is there such interest in these applications? Mobile devices are getting more complex and capable, but significantly they are aslo getting smaller. Everyday web-applications are generally difficult to use using small screens and limited text input, so we need ways of easily grabbing information, downloading applications and participating in these services. If we are to get out of the ‘walled gardens’ of operators menus, and towards a more open mobile internet, there must be simple ‘service discovery’ that will allow us to easily discover and use new things.

Outside of Japan – where QR Codes are widely used and RFID-enabled phones are mass market – most trials have failed. Does this technology hold the key to integrating web applications with mobile phones and the physical world, or is it a fundamentally flawed interaction?

We give an overview of the history of these interaction types and the different technologies involved. We have experimented with a number of prototypes in this area that we can demonstrate using RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC) to connect web-applications and services to mobile phones. By moving beyond the ‘hyperlink’ metaphor we are able to see new sets of applications that allow new ways of using mobile devices.