TouchPaper: making print interactive

Traditional printed materials such as photobooks and collages are static in that the information conveyed is unchanging and limited to what was printed. In this paper, we describe an online service for augmenting prints with rich media by using image recognition. A print can have multiple hotspots with each one linking to different content on the web (e.g. Facebook, Youtube video, animations, etc.). When a print is viewed through a mobile device, it is automatically recognized and the interactive hot regions are highlighted on the screen. The user can click regions of interest to link to relevant content on the web. This technology significantly enhances the potential for personalization and interaction and ultimately the end user experience and the value of the prints. As an example application, we leverage our Facebook auto-photobook application to automatically create interactive links for each photo in a page. The user can easily view additional content such as photo comments for each photo through the augmentation mechanism.