Is Microsoft’s Tagging technology another step towards Microsoft monopoly?
Microsoft Tagging is a way to tag your product with a unique barcode, and than using your mobile device, you just have to aim the device camera at the Tag and it instantly recognizes the product and you are directed directly to the linked content on the Internet.
What is the technology behind Microsoft Tagging?
As per Microsoft -
The sophisticated technology powering Microsoft Tag, High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), was invented by Microsoft Research. It was designed from the ground up for maximum performance with the limited cameras on most mobile phones. Advanced image-processing techniques decode even out-of-focus barcode images, which means Microsoft Tag works with the fixed-focus camera lenses common in most mobile devices.
Microsoft Tags don’t actually store the information. All it stores is a unique ID which it then sends to Microsoft’s servers. This way, you can include much more information and more variety of information, then if it was just on the tag itself. A nice side-effect of this is also the ability for publishers to gather reporting data on how many times it was seen.
To read these tags, Microsoft has made available a downloadable application to a handful of mobile platforms including Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. A camera and internet connection is obviously required. To get the application, point your phone’s browser to http://gettag.mobi.
The advanced computer imaging of HCCBs employs different symbol shapes in geometric patterns and multiple colors to provide more information in less space.
As Microsoft tag is just like an image, bar code can be incorporated within your companies branding. And printing the code in black and white works equally well as color. So no, you don’t have to print Microsoft’s tags in color to have them work.
Here are a few examples -
Here is a comparison between Microsoft tagging and other bar coding technologies like QRCode and Datamatrix Code.
Is this another addition to Microsoft’s monopolistic approach?
Yes we think so. This is not a free technology, it is about a profit stream for Microsoft. You see, all it stores is a unique ID for each barcode, which it then sends to Microsoft’s servers. So, Microsoft gets to track all accesses to all tags and traffic.
The barcode is a ‘protected’ design and the system requires that you use Microsoft’s servers, as a publisher you will have to pay for the usage.
Well, we really hope Microsoft can open up the technology or at least open up the API for small business users so they can manage there own tags and traffic on one of there own servers. Do you think this will happen though? Please leave your comments.
