If you're an old time Star Trek fanboy there's an amazing article at Scientific American on the reality of making a Transporter:
Beam Me Up Scotty? A Q&A about Quantum Teleportation with H. Jeff Kimble
Why the effect is nothing like Star Trek
"What's the biggest misconception about teleportation? That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another."