Syndicate is actually make available the content of your site to other sites, personal pages and more, where the information is displayed from the source that you actually control; in other words any change or update you do to your site will be reflected in all the places that are syndicated the content from you. This is a relatively easy concept to understand on the online world, but the interesting question here is… can i syndicate contents that are not online? it is that possible? well… we may have to say that technically is impossible but there are ways around it.
Scanbuy is a New York web based company founded in 2000 and is a leader on the development of mobile applications that connect the brick and mortar world with the online world; not long ago they developed this interesting application that allows companies to syndicate content through physical media other that electronic media. We are talking about mobile information, you just receive the information if you want it and when you want it… but what is this cool idea and how it works?
ScanLife Workflow
RSS For Printed Media
RSS feeds are usually recognized because they have a little orange icon next to the content that can be syndicated. Once the user click on that icon he/she can “subscribe” permanently to that content and display that information in his/her own website, email client, or feed reader such igoogle or many more. On the offline world this can be a little but more challenging, there not such a small orange icons in newspapers or magazines that allow me to subscribe to those contents and receive them in other devices of my preference… well… this is exactly what the guys at Scanbuy solved with this curious product called Scanlife.
How The Information Is Syndicated With Scanlife?
Similar to the online world they use an icon so people can identify when a content can be syndicated or not; this icon can be printed on a newspaper or a magazine and looks more than a bar code that an icon; this bar code can be “scan” or to be more precise “photograph” using an application that can be installed on virtually any mobile smart phone; once the picture is taken with the mobile device, Scanlife process the image and return the extended content of what the person is currently seeing, it could be an article on a magazine or an Ad on a billboard.
For those who are still not getting the idea this is an explanation with a real life sample: Let’s say you are reading an interesting article on a magazine, suddenly at the end you detect the small “bar code” that is telling you that you can syndicate this content to your phone. It is time to get your phone, open Scanlife [that you should previously have installed], and take a picture to this small code; once you are done with it, your phone will automatically open the browser and display the extended content of the article directly in your phone.
Benefits of Syndicate Contents Using Printed Media
The benefit of this technology is that you can extend your message on mobile devices to people that really are interested in what you are saying. You can use small spaces to delivery a message and not sacrificing what you have to say for those who really want to find more about it. Off course the inconvenience of the system is that you have to have a smart phone, with camera and the application installed. I did a test using Website Magazine that uses this technology and an iphone and the results were extremely satisfactory, even in poor light conditions the code was interpreted well and the extended information were delivered to me quick and accurate. Checkout here some samples of this technology in action.
This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano