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Microsoft Tag, Smartphone-Scannable Barcodes
dhavleak writes "Microsoft Research has come up with Microsoft Tag: '...just aim your camera phone at a Tag and instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps, social networks, promotions, and more. Nothing to type, no browsers to launch!' Device support is fairly extensive (iPhone, WinMo, BlackBerry and more), and tag scanning appears to work quickly and reliably from different distances and angles. Long Zheng has an overview on his site. The Tag is similar to a barcode, but has obvious visual differences — colored vs. black and white, and triangles vs. squares or lines. The technology looks interesting, but will it get the adoption necessary to be successful? What applications do you see for such technology?"
Nokia have had something similar for ages, but the adoption hasn't been all that quick: http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/ However Microsoft do seem to be making it more obvious to the observer that you need a phone to decode these mysterious images.
sounds like QR Code which is widely used in Japan (it's what the CueCat couldn't do in the states).
Microsoft...always trying to re-invent the wheel and try to pass it on as a new invention.
Hmmm...adverts/spam would be the main application I'd imagine. Also a way to get someone to a URL that they cannot check before hand as the symbol is only machine readable. This looks like a great way to get people to exploit pages.
Tempting!
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
As so many digital-age inventions, this has been done in Finland ages ago. :) There's even a company whose business is built around it: http://www.upc.fi/en/upcode/
As a general tip, it is unwise to strip powered cables using one's teeth.
QR codes have been doing exactly the same thing for a while now.
And to be honest, I really can't see either catching on... The general public are constantly getting more familiar with the web, and getting more comfortable with finding their own favourite 'trusted' sources of information. Even if Microsoft does somehow convince enough manufacturers to start adding codes to their packaging, are people really going to jump at the chance to instantly look up a load of information on that particular television/cosmetic/breakfast cereal on some arbitrary MS website? Because that's all this really amounts to... a link. More info here.
I mean, imagine - blip that server in the corner there, and in my hand I now have everything I need to know about it - configuration, downtime constraints, owners, where it's plugged into, etc.
Also, supermarkets - being able to do 'extended show info' on a product, based on personal preferences. Allergy information is the most useful one, but even things like recipe suggestions (look, yummy strawberries - have you considered how they might go with cream, or dipped in chocolate?) or ... well, just simple things like collating 'standard information' about stuff in your shopping, like storage life and nutritional value and pricing.
The thing I like about payload-in-code formats, like QRCode, is that the information is actually out there in the world with you, albeit in a machine-readable format. The URL actually, you know, is sharing your space.
With a payload-on-server code, the thing in the code isn't meaningful, even in to a machine, unless the WHOLE chain is working -- internet connection, server, the whole nine yards.
QRcode just seems, I dunno, more "honest."
I've always wanted to turn my phone into a cue-cat!(R)
Is it just me, or do MS tags look like 50 positions of 4 colors, i.e. 100 bits, which, minus error correction, probably boils down to 64-80. It's obvious you need a server-based resolver to convert these few bytes into an URL. Now guess who manages the server and how much do they want to charge for each entry.
CueCat, QT, it's just a fancy barcode. Except that Microsoft can charge everyone who uses or implements their version of the barcode. Reinventing the wheel IS profitable. This is ODF vs OOXML all over again except that this time there is no open format available as an alternative. Hackers should get right on making an open fancy-barcode standard, and where oh where is RMS on this issue?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
QR code has the data embedded in the tag. This thing seems to be just a pointer to a record in a MS database. So MS gets a copy of all your data, AND you need to be online to read it. Thanks but no thanks.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Not a new idea in any case, and the color one looks like shit, even though they can store more bits.
Now that I think about it, wouldn't QR Code have a HUGE advantage in some print advertising because it's black and white vs. color? I mean, I know that Tag appears to fit into a 4 color process, but it just seems like a 1 color process would be more advantageous... or am I completely off base here?
OK, where's the submarine patent?
Oh, they're playing silly games even before we get that far...
Let's see... the second link has a nice deceptive picture of the two technologies not to scale, but printed against each other so it looks like the color coded one is smaller. Then there's an actual scale comparison, but the Microsoft one is only an encoded link, so it contains less data than the tags it's compared with. There's no reason you can't swipe your iPhone over a UPC and look it up online (I've done that with my cue-cat).
And of course "A nice side-effect of this is also the ability for publishers to gather reporting data on how many times it was seen." Nice. Right. Plus, Microsoft gets that data as well. And of course it's got all the downsides of any cloud technology... if the server's down or you're not online you're stuck.
Tail wagging the dog? Very unlikely.
QR code is an open standard. They can be used freely, in other words.
The popularity of QR codes in Japan is at least partly due to their ability to store Japanese text which is very difficult to type in on mobile handsets.
U1NCaVpYUWdlVzkxSUhkcGMyZ2dlVzkx SUdoaFpHNG5kQ0JpYjNSb1pYSmxaQT09
Visually I think the garish colors of these microsoft codes are going to be hard to incorporate in many graphics designs. QR codes may look busy but given their longtime adoption in Japan they have become iconic and accepted in many contexts. At least QR codes are monochrome - goes with pretty near everything.
It is true that huge binary QR payloads makes for big tags, but that's also a rare application. QR codes are more often used for simply encoding URLs and email addresses, which is fine - achieves what these microsoft tags do, in roughly the same space, while remaining independent on any sole service provider acting as gate keeper for delivering the rereferenced payload, and the tag can be printed in monochrome on darn near everything.
When QR encoded URLs reference server-hosted payloads, the user has the power to choose how and on which terms the client technology parses and retrieves the referenced payload. The QR parser can for example decode a human-readable URL which can be manually transcribed to any web browser.
Aside from these observations, I think Microsoft tags would be almost acceptable if part of the encoded tag data was a URL for the payload decoding service, so as to permit non-microsoft entities to occupy the gatekeeper position. But overall, the net impression is that the Microsoft Tag is too proprietary, not robust enough, and of too little use to be considered a reasonable alternative to QR codes or other forms of payload-in-the-code tags.
QR Codes are used extensively here in Japan, and have been for many years. I also have no trouble at all reading them. Takes less than a second, and I don't need internet access to read them. I've also been amazed at the kind of data: coupons, ads, Business card, small maps, flight information, restaurant food nutritional information, and that's just scratching the surface of what they're used for here.
Frankly, the thing I see killing this one that it relies on a central server. Man-in-the-middle anyone?
On the other hand, if I go to Delta's website to see my flight information, only Delta really knows I did so - and may not know it's me specifically if I'm not required to log in. In this case, though, Microsoft (or other service provider) knows I 'went to Delta's website' - or whatever else the tag-shortcut did for me.
On the whole, I think that the ability to have real-world hyperlinks (because, face it, that's what they are) is really valuable. On the other hand, I don't think that it needs to be a monetized service. I can't think of a reason that a protocol couldn't be developed that scanning apps would implement; for that matter, given text recognition software, how hard is it to program a phone to read in a url and tell it's onboard browser to go to it? Or any of the other diverse possible applications?
Essentially; what is Microsoft's role in this? Is it a critical role (you *need* the centralized server for some reason), or are they creating a false market segment?
[Ego]out