Someone dared to point out that the emperor has no cloths! But, before we explore such blaspheme, here is a crash course on barcodes. Barcodes originated in the automotive manufacturing industries to help track and inventory products. The first instance of barcoding was the traditional vertical line style that you see on your grocery store items. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that the two-dimensional (2D) barcode model appeared. This new cube shaped version of a barcode was pretty cool, because it could be coded to represent a lot more data. In fact, someone realized that you could even code it to represent a complete URL. This was the turning point for a movement that has become known as physical world hyperlinking. This movement was what took the 2D barcode outside the traditional commercial confines and associated it with cell phones and physical linking.

Physical world hyperlinking, hardlinking, is the act of pulling information from a physical object. The 2D barcode role in all this is as a Internet link initiator. If you happened to have a camera phone with a unique proprietary software program loaded on it, you could get your phones camera to work as a scanner. This allowed you to photograph (scan) the 2D barcode and then your phones web browser would be launched and redirected automatically to the web site that was coded in. When the concept and technology first surfaced some 5 years ago, it was pure coolness that propelled it – never mind that only Nokia phones could use it. The blimp was lunched, the marching bands were sent to the streets and the fireworks were set off, but wait. Someone, somewhere, in all the fan-fair, pointed something out (the emperor’s no cloths problem). That something was: “If I want to create my own physical link, I have to print out my own unique barcode and adhere it to the object. Assuming I would even go to that trouble, why do I even need the barcode?” To that the crowd responded, ‘shut up we’re partying’.

This observation must have been the equivalent of someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard. Take another look at what this person was pointing out. If, for example, you wanted to create a physical link for your cat, you could glue the 2D barcode on the cats fur but wouldn’t it be simpler to just use the cats collar ID tag number that already existed? Or, for that matter, just create a link called MyCat.

There is a database gateway at hardlink.mobi that will allow you to use this rather simple approach. Remember, we are talking about a cell phone accessible gateway, not for your desktop PC. It’s not real flashy, but it flawlessly resolves to the associated database file. All files that are resolved through this hardlink.mobi gateway originate in one of several supporting build sites, such as buildhardlink.com. I like this particular one because it allows you to place an advertisement in your link if you choose, all free of charge.