Microsoft Tag, funny idea, will it take off?
Microsoft came up with a simple but funny and possibly really effective idea: Microsoft Tag. You can create a nice visual tag consisting of colorful triangles, and when you scan this tag with the camera of your Internet enabled cell phone you get connected to a web page, vcard, a text note or a dialar (audio) advertisement. I just tried it out, I created a tag to this web log:
- I logged in into http://www.microsoft.com/tag with my live ID account
- Created a new tag to my weblog:
- This results in my first tag on my personal tags site:
- I rendered the tag to a PDF by clicking on the Tag icon:
- I downloaded the Tag Reader application for my iPhone from the AppStire (the link http://gettag.mobi just says that, it provides no download link)
- I snapped a photo from the on screen PDF file, allowing the iPhone to access my location information (smart), and..... nothing. I got an error.
- I was a bit disappointed so i fired up the introductory movie on http://www.microsoft.com/tag, snapped a really bad photo from a tag in this movie and guess what! It worked! It brought me to a Vista advertisement.
I think the idea is good. This can be used very well for print on posters, advertisement, the price and information cards next to a TV in a shop etc. etc. The introductory movie gives some good examples like an advertisement for a concert with a Tag that brings you to the booking page, or at a bus station where the Tag brings you to an online schedule of the bus. Wondering if this will take of.
On the site you can get a report on snaps of your Tags:
And hey, I got three hits!! So the Tag was recognized, just the linking failed!
The Tag picture above should point to my weblog, maybe it will start working in a while. Try it all out, and I will let you know about the results in a later blog post.
It would be really interesting if the report would also use the location information that can be provided by the Tag Reader application (the iPhone version does if you allow this), so you know where your Tag was snapped.
Time to print a T-Shirt with my personal Tag...