Some people I know, are always reading, especially students. As a result of having many books on the go, you often run out of bookmarks, or in my sister's case, yellow post-its... (You know the ones im talking about...)

I've had a brief look around the internet but have been unable to find a product compact enough, or economic enough to suit the needs of students or readers universally. So what I propose is this, a small plastic box about the size of an average 'pager' could feasibly contain a microchip and scanner. The scanner would be sensitive to barcodes, and whenever you have a new book, you could scan the barcode into the micrchip so that the book is entered into the chip's log. When you decide to take a break from reading, you would enter the page number into the 'pager'. This way whenever you pick up that book again, all you would have to do is scan the barcode and the 'pager' would give you the page number. This way, you would not have to 'fold the end of the page' and you would not have to have dozens of bookmarks. It is also more neat and tidy than post-it stickers.

Furthermore, the 'pager' would be universaly sold, so say if you went abroad, you would not have to take your books with you, instead, you could just go to a foreign library/bookshop/coffee shop with books and just pick up from where you left off! Ideal for student coffeeshops and student unions!

In addition, the 'pager' would be able to store the information of lots of books, so you would be able to just carry the 'pager' and refer to different books without bookmarks.

One final point is that there is the potential for WAP connection as well. In that you would be able to download book summaries, which would summarise the book up to where you had left off meaning you would not have to 'read back' a few pages...

Like i said, I've had a brief look on the internet, and as of yet, have been unable to find anything extensive or already created regarding this idea...

Until next time chums,

The Bloody Thesps
-- bloody_thesps, Mar 01 2003

If it's a different edition http://www.halfbake...er_20page_20numbers
A way to cover [Aristotle]'s concern of varying page numbers [lurch, Oct 04 2004]

I'd buy it (+) It may even encourage kids to read more.
-- Helium, Mar 01 2003


Nothing... just inconvenient and space consuming. Not to mention easy to misplace and lose...
-- bloody_thesps, Mar 02 2003


I have a bad habit of not finishing books. It would be nice to walk into a library with my WAP enabled bookmark and have it communicate with the library's card catalog. It will then tell me if there are any of my unfinished books checked in.
-- lurch, Mar 02 2003


One things that could throw this is that different edition of the same book have different page numbers. The American editions of the Harry Potter books, for example, have both text changes and the additions of more frequent pictures when compared the English editions. Another more common difference is between hardback and softback copies of the same book.

However if these differing editions are generally distinguishable by different barcodes then prehaps you could come up with rules to approximately map pages from one edition to another.
-- Aristotle, Mar 02 2003


Synergy in half-baked form. [Aristotle], see link.
-- lurch, Mar 02 2003


Ah... problem solved, many thanks. I know not related to this topic, but aristotle's past half-baked ideas reminded me... 'So Long And Thanks For All The Fish; Tribute to Douglas Adams' on BBC Radio7 at 9 o'clock for all those Brits out there on our side of the pond.
-- bloody_thesps, Mar 02 2003


Doesn’t apply to this excellent idea of a portable bookmark, but I’ve always been a fan of the dog-ear. You don’t have to buy them, they don’t fall out, and they are always at hand. I’ve standardized on the top of the page dog-ear for place keeping, and the bottom of the page dog-ear for an interesting page that I might want to refer to later.
-- pluterday, Mar 02 2003


I like to use the Major System. 0 - S / Z 1 - d, t 2 - n 3 - m etc etc...

So page 21 could be n and t => Nit. Or have a phrase with each number a new word, 21 => Noah's Tart. Link that with an image in your mind of something relevant to the book, and it's a suprisingly useful memory system...
-- liamdelahunty, Mar 02 2003


This would be excellent for referencing essays and reports. No more accusations of plagarism for me! Perhaps there could be a way of storing book data aswell such as author, title, publisher, year and place.
-- ImBack, Mar 02 2003


Yeah, I like to use whatever's handy, too - tickets, receipts and the like. Later, if I pick up the same book to look something up, I'll get a little reminder of what I was doing while I was reading the book.
-- snarfyguy, Mar 04 2003


I especially like the idea of picking up a book in a library and carrying on where you left off at home, or indeed last time you were there... (+) for you rather mental people.
-- Seaneeboy, Apr 08 2003


Why have so many people said good things, but I am the only one who voted.
-- dbmag9, Aug 15 2005


Speaking as a consumer and cheapass, I'd save the $10 dollars and just fold down the tip of the page, as cool as this thing sounds.
-- notmarkflynn, Dec 20 2005



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