Microsoft Tag & Nokia Mobile Codes

Today I tried using the Microsoft Tag Beta with a Dopod smartphone. For those who don’t know, a Microsoft Tag is like a barcode that you can capture with your mobile phone’s camera and have the Tag Reader software on your phone decode. A Microsoft Tag supports different types of content such as URLs, vCards, Phone Numbers and Text.

The image above is an example of a tag. Click on it to view the the full-size image and then try capturing the image on your mobile with the Tag Reader installed. I had to try it a couple of times as the image needs to be in the centre of the view finder, but otherwise it worked seamlessly.

Anyone with a Windows Live ID can sign-in and create tags. The process is simple and done online. You can then render your tag in a variety of formats.

A Microsoft Tag is a similar to Nokia’s Mobile Code (seen to the left). I haven’t tried installing a Mobile Code Reader for my smartphone yet, but there are several available.

The benefits of using the Microsoft Tags include:

• The ability to categorise different tags;
• Define Start and End dates for your tags and;
• Online reporting on how often each tag has been scanned.

These features will undoubtedly be of interest to businesses that need to analyse the effectiveness of marketing campaigns that make use of Microsoft Tags.