51¶¯Âþ

Small black smudges about a centimetre long and 2 millimetres high can take
you straight from a printed article to a page on the World Wide Web. The
smudges, devised by GoCode, a company from Charleston, South Carolina, contain a
pattern of dark and light areas that represent URLs and can be read by a
hand-held wand attached to a computer. The URL codes made their first appearance
last week in the pages of the Charleston Post and Courier, providing
links to Web pages containing more information on articles or giving details of
advertisers’ promotions. The wand will sell for about $100.