{"id":229,"date":"2009-01-12T19:49:34","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T19:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/?p=229"},"modified":"2009-01-12T19:55:16","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T19:55:16","slug":"graphical-links-2d-barcodes-and-microsoft-tag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/01\/12\/graphical-links-2d-barcodes-and-microsoft-tag\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphical links, 2D Barcodes and Microsoft Tag"},"content":{"rendered":"

With CES happening last week there\u2019s been plenty of new technology to play with \u2013 not least a full beta or Windows 7<\/a>.\u00a0 One thing that caught my eye though was Microsoft Tag<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Tag<\/a><\/p>\n

The idea of encoding data in a graphical form has been around for years, in its most basic form the simple barcode.\u00a0 Normal barcodes can\u2019t contain much data though, so aren\u2019t that useful in the internet world.\u00a0 2D barcodes however can contain quite a bit \u2013 certainly enough to contain a URL.<\/p>\n

Traditional 2D barcodes like QR Codes<\/a> do just that, provide a way of encoding a URL.\u00a0 The idea being that you point a camera phone or webcam at the QR code and some client software sends the the URL to a browser to open.<\/p>\n

\"3-codes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a few things that make the solution from MS a little different.\u00a0 For one thing the codes are a different format, they\u2019re smaller and use coloured triangles rather than mono-chrome blocks.\u00a0 This technology High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs)<\/a> allows they tags to be much smaller.<\/p>\n

The other big difference is that the codes don\u2019t contain a URL, but instead contain a reference.\u00a0 The client software decodes the reference than polls a backend service for the details of the code, whether that be a URL, a vCard for contact information, free text or interestingly a phone number that a phone client can dial.<\/p>\n

\"TagPhoneNumber\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the benefits of using a reference and backend service is that you can easily perform some analytics on your tags and their use.\u00a0 The MS Tag generator site does just that with a range of reports available.<\/p>\n

So what could you use tags for?\u00a0 When there are a few obvious uses such as adverts and posters \u2013 snapping a picture of the tag on a movie poster might take you to local cinema times (you can opt to send location data with tags).<\/p>\n

So far there are clients for Windows Mobile, J2EE, iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian S60 phones.\u00a0 The tag generator is web based using Silverlight and as you might have spotted from my screenshot work on a Mac too.\u00a0 You can get the client here: http:\/\/gettag.mobi\/<\/a> or from the iStore on iPhone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With CES happening last week there\u2019s been plenty of new technology to play with \u2013 not least a full beta or Windows 7. One thing that caught my eye though was Microsoft Tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[203,13,201,204,202],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-2d-barcodes","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-tag","tag-qr-codes","tag-tag","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}