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Friday, January 09, 2009

Microsoft Tag Released


It is unfair to compare this to the CueCat, since that fabled failed project attempted to include a unitasking piece of hardware, while this application works with popular existing smartphones. Critically also, phones that the consumer are getting used to downloading applications for. Worth looking at.

From ReadWriteWweb

Microsoft today released Microsoft Tag, its own barcode technology for mobile phones. For this, Microsoft developed its own High Capacity Color Barcodes which can store a lot more information than the QRCode or Datamatrix barcodes we have become familiar with. Microsoft is specifically targeting mobile users with these tags and has released scanning applications for most types of mobile phones, including the iPhone, as well as Windows Mobile phones, Blackberries, and Symbian S6phones ... "
A topic covered here a number of times.
We tested this concept in several formats, and I wrote about that here. This embodies the notion of 'extended packaging', as written about by the standards group GS1. And as I have mentioned many times, this is all about standards. The MS codes, samples above, are appealing, unique in that they are based on colored triangles, but are they standard? The broad variety of phones this works on is a plus. Testing this now and will write about the results.

Update: I downloaded the application to an IPhone and tried it on a few sample codes. Worked first time, was fairly quick, took only a few seconds to respond.

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