Mobile Tagging: A Mobile Solution that Turns Color Codes to Useful Information
Do you know you can get a digital business card by using the camera on your mobile phone to read a color symbol? Or, find more information on a product and service by visiting a company's web site from your mobile phone without typing the url address? All that is made possible by Microsoft Tag, which is in beta and free to use.
Interested to try it on your mobile phone? Follow the steps below.
1. Download and install the Microsoft Tag Reader to your mobile phone from the web site, https://www.gettag.mobi The Microsoft Tag Reader is available for most smartphones and many feature phones. It is available on Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. Of course, your phone needs a camera and it must have Internet-access. More info at https://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/faq/
2. Create a tag from your tag account at https://tag.microsoft.com. If you have a Windows Live ID, you can log in with your Live ID. If not, you can create one and then log in. There are 4 types of tags you can create: free text, url, business card (vcard), and phone number (dialer). Once you have created a tag, you can render it to a pdf file, a xps file or a wmf (image) file. See the attached sample to the blog.
3. Run the Tag Reader on your mobile phone, aim it at the rendered code (or symbol) on your computer or printout, and see what you get.
What's amazing is that if you print out the color code from a laser printer (color, or black and white), the Microsoft Tag Reader can read the printout.
