MS Tag tags

While trying to find the iPhone Bing app that is getting great reviews (e.g. PCMag, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357334,00.asp) I have bumped into the MS Tag technology almost by accident since I have found a MS Tag iPhone app in the AppStore in the process.

MS Tag seems to be an interesting idea. I have known some similar technologies (3D bar codes) so I still don't get the real advantages of this one since 3D tags can be produced and read for free a long time ago. Maybe it is the integration with each mobile phone browser that MS will be providing for free.

MS tag allows people linking easily to web contents only by scanning (on phones) the image displayed on catalogs, wall advertisements, etc. This will avoid you having to take note of a link or having to type it later on in your browser. Typing by hand a link is cumbersome. Even short ones.

You login into the site (MSN credentials will work) and you can start creating your tags by providing a sentence and an URL to what you want to link to. After that the tag is listed on a grid. On the render grid column you can create several versions of the tag to embed in your site, publishing magazines, etc.

Tip: The first time you try to render, a different popup appears that forces you to read the publishing guidelines. After doing this for the first time, the next time you press render a popup menu with options to render the currently selected tag line apears: PDF, png, tiff, jpg, etc. are some options available.

MS tagging publisher guidelines can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/why/guidelines.aspx

For now the main thing in the publisher guidelines is that every user is required to provide instructions on how to get the reader software for the phones. The publisher guidelines state: "You must provide information on how to get the Tag Reader application (Go to gettag.mobi on your mobile browser)". I've tried it in the iPhone browser and... it works, detecting th mobile phone and directing you to the right place in the AppStore for downloading the app!

The bad news is that you'll have to pay for each generated coloured tag when the service goes off Beta.

Also, I've tried the above logo with the iPhone. Open the MS Tag app, photographed the logo on my laptop LCD, chose "Use" action and there you go: A browser page with this blog on the iPhone browser appeared. Nice and sweet and with no sweat!