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The matrix barcode known as QR (Quick Response) code that’s scanned by QR readers in smartphones to take users to websites for more information may be on its way out. Bizmology reports the change could be coming because Google has decided to support another technology.

Until recently, Google widely supported QR codes, using them in its Google Places service to allow people to use their smartphones to find business addresses, URLs, hours of operations, and more. Businesses listed on Places would often put Google-supplied decals printed with QR codes in their windows for customers to scan. Google quietly stopped using the code last month, however, in favor of a new and dynamic technology known as Near Field Communication (NFC). If the technology takes off as Google predicts, NFC may quickly supplant QR codes as advertisement vehicles and send them to the technology graveyard just as fast as they hit US shores.

So what exactly is NFC? It’s is a new type of chip that can be embedded in 2-D items like posters or cards. Similar to QR codes, NFC chips can contain product information and other data. The chips can take the form of tags, stickers, or cards. A person with a NFC-enabled smartphone could wave their phone near a poster with a NFC tag to upload the information embedded in the tag.

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This is an interesting development, especially in light of the recent research that US consumers like QR codes.

What will this mean for publishers who have begun using QR codes in marketing material as well as individual products?

At age 28, Elon Musk co-founded popular e-payment company Paypal. He went on to start SpaceX, the first private company to launch a rocket into space, and Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars. CNN's Amar Bakshi talked to Musk about inventions he thinks will change the world. His predictions are

1. A fully reusable orbital rocket
2. Rapid, low-cost, perfect DNA sequencing
3. Viable fusion

How big are you thinking? What’s your outrageous idea that will change the world of publishing? What are you doing today to make it happen?

Does “the cloud” pose another opportunity for book publishers? The chart above indicates that demand for wireless access to the Web is only going to grow in the coming years, as will the diversity of devices used for that function.

Book publishers, organizations, agents, and authors should be thinking now, not only how to profitably publish content for ereader consumption of complete downloaded books, but also ways of monetizing content that resides dynamically and virtually in the Internet cloud. One idea: paid subscriptions, taking a cue from the new paywall business model announced by The New York Times (by the way, here’s an analysis of the announcement by Bloomberg Businessweek and broad coverage links by paidContent).

The New York Times is banking on the strength of its brand, even though people may be able to get the (relatively) same news free elsewhere (see 10 Ways To Get Around Online News Subscriptions And Paywalls). But it may work better with book publishers, since each publishers’ content is (relatively) unique from others.

What do you think?

CNN reports on the National Geographic special series "7 Billion" that, among the entire population of the world, the average person is a 28-year-old Han Chinese male. And the most common person in the world is right handed, has an annual income under $12,000, and owns a cellphone, but does not have a bank account. What are the implications of this study in the world of publishing?

Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) compares current tablet ownership with the world population. Two extremes, granted, but not so far-fetched when you compare with mobile subscribers.

The potential for growth in the tablet market for Apple, Google, RIM, and others is still massive. Only 0.3% of the Earth's inhabitants owned a tablet at the end of 2010, RBC analyst Mike Abramsky notes today in a detailed, 88-page report about the future of the tablet market. That means 99.7% of the people on Earth still haven't bought a tablet yet!

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What do you think the implications are for publishers, agents, ministries, organizations, and authors as you go about creating content?

Kevin Kelly at Technium plots out the sliding price of the Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and suggests we could see free Kindles by November. Could Amazon conceivably package the Kindle in its Prime service? How about if a buyer promises to buy, say, 20 books then he or she can get a free Kindle?

How should publishers prepare for this possibility?

Read more at Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday).

Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) displays the optimistic 5-year predictions by Morgan Stanley on the tablet market. Keep in mind that ALL the devices tracked in the forecast are able to be used to read and/or listen to books. The market is growing.

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TIME magazine (@TIME) features futurist Raymond Kurzweil’s (see his website) “radical vision for humanity’s immortal future.” It has seismic implications for those of us in book publishing. Book formats morphing into digital entities may not be the only sea change occurring in this century. Here are a few excerpts:

Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It’s an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don’t have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer ... is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Kurzweil (@KurzweilAINews) believes we're approaching [the Singularity,] a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

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Newsweek (@Newsweek) polled a few literary leaders on their thoughts about where the future of reading is headed, given that the format of books is “evolving at warp speed” thanks to daily digital advances in publishing. Here’s a quote from James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress:

The new immigrants don’t shoot the old inhabitants when they come in. One technology tends to supplement rather than supplant. How you read is not as important as: will you read? And will you read something that's a book — the sustained train of thought of one person speaking to another? Search techniques are embedded in ebooks that invite people to dabble rather than follow a full train of thought. This is part of a general cultural problem.

Read other quotes here.

On The Nervous Breakdown (@TNBtweets), J.E. Fishman (@JEFISHMAN) scans the bookstore trade and hazards to forecast its fate in this world of digital publishing:

1. Superstores will shrink in number.

2. Non-book merchandise will consume half the bookstore.

3. More independents will die.

4. Google eBooks will not save independents.

5. Independents will succeed by going into the experience business.

6. Booksellers will charge admission and split the fee with visiting authors.

7. Booksellers will go forth, projecting their expertise into the community.

8. Publishers will open “bookstores” again.

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