My Eyes!

According to the announcement at CES 2009 this is apparantly a colorful leap forward in mobile barcode technology. The sophisticated technology powering Microsoft Tag, High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), invented by Microsoft Research -

Now you can make anything interactive. Link real life with the digital world, by adding a Tag to your product package, print-based media, signage, outdoor advertisement, business card, storefront, exhibit, video or just about anything else.

Designed from the ground up aiming for maximum performance with the limited cameras on most mobile phones. Those familiar with QRCodes and Datamatrix codes will know how this works! Basically to create a tag head over to tag.microsoft.com and sign in, this will take you to the Manage Tag page. Here you can create a tag or edit, render or run reports on existing tags, printing and placement is available under the publisher guidelines.

Here is a Microsoft Tag that I created by entering details into the form -



Microsoft is making available a downloadable application to a handful of mobile platforms including Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. I'm using the iPhone application (the second iPhone application from Microsoft) and I have found the whole process works really well. Currently this is a free service, in beta so sign up and give it a try!

I'm discussing this over on Friendfeed where I have submitted the tag I have created, join in and let me know what you think?

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