Microsoft Tag: Hyperlinks in the Real World
Microsoft Research has developed an excellent system for creating mobile readable tags which encode URL’s. Called Microsoft Tag, it can function as an interesting alternative to short codes. The technology and its applications are explained in this video.
Microsoft Tag has recently become publicly available at http://tag.microsoft.com/. Visit http://gettag.mobi/ to obtain a reader for most camera equipped smart phones. Potential applications for media distribution, promotion, and advertising are vast. For example, a band could enhance their show flyers with tags linking to online ticket offers and guest lists. A couple of years ago I experimented with Semacode, a similar technology, to develop demos showing how tags could be used to distribute music videos and film trailers.
[…] This trend was encouraged by services like Foursquare, SCVNGR, and the use of QR Codes, Microsoft Tag, and other visual barcode systems. As smartphone ownership continues to increase in 2011, […]