Jason Hook's shiny new blog......

It's been a long time since I've written anything here, there's lots on the go but so little discretionary time but I stumbled across 'Microsoft Tag' by accident today whilst looking at an XPS blog and thought it was worth a mention

MS have created a propietary 2D barcode-like thing called a Tag that encapsulates text, vcard information, a url or a telephone dialer that can be read by a camera enabled mobile phone. There's a simple web application which allows you to create and manage and render tags (create the 'barcode'), and a mobile app that can read the tags.

If you are a producer of digital content you can publish a 'tag' in a print advert or online that a user can consume using the Tag Reader application for his or her device. This tag could link to a web site (offering a promotion, more information or sign up to a mailing list), add an entry to your address book, dial a number or display some text. If you are a consumer you can get access to the producers digital content in fewer clicks (if you assign the app to a hotkey then you can read a barcode in two clicks).

Let's say I wanted to create a Tag that links to the BBC News Website. I sign into the Manage Tag application at microsoft.com/tag using my live id and fill out a simple form:

As you can see I was originally going to link to the ready.mobi site but apparently this is a Microsoft blacklisted site. I can't think why honestly. See:

The application lets you render your tag in a variety of sizes or formats. My final tag to the BBC site looks like this:

To download the application for your phone point your mobile browser here and try reading the tag for yourself.

I remember talking to Bill Buchan last year or the year before about publishing barcodes to mobile devices that could be 'read' at a pub and exchanged for drinks. I'm not sure if it was a terribly original idea even at that time but more fun that visiting the Beeb

Crickey it's nearly 1:30am time for bed, hope I made sense!