How Microsoft mobile tags are killing QR codes
blog.getsharesquare.com
blog.getsharesquare.com
Microsoft Tag vs. Other 2D Codes
Linking real-world objects to deeper experiences on mobile phones started in Japan with QR Codes. Microsoft Tag provides a next-generation solution that offers many useful improvements. Tag is an end-to-end system that provides many capabilities beyond simply opening a URL, and is built upon a highly scalable and flexible architecture.
The Tag system uses a cloud-based back-end that provides access to data that just isn’t possible with earlier QR codes, such as reporting on how frequently and where your Tags are being scanned. In addition, Tags allow you to dynamically change your data source – unlike other 2D codes that are associated with a single, permanent URL, Tags can be updated as frequently as you like to point to new websites, allowing you to reuse campaign materials.
Tags can be created in a much smaller size and can be read faster and under a wider range of lighting conditions. Tags can also be customized to your brand’s specific look and feel, creating visually exciting codes that enhance your message and brand. Learn more about creating Custom Tags.
The Tag Reader application runs on all major phone platforms, and unlike older formats, every Microsoft Tag can be read by every Tag Reader, so there is no consumer confusion from incompatible solutions. Tags just work.
Hah, yes, much like every ActiveX-enhanced website could have been viewed by every IE6 browser. There certainly won't be any consumer confusion, what with none of the top barcode scanning apps supporting MS Tag and all.
On both platforms, you have to open the Tag Reader app. However, on iPhone, when you open the app, it puts you in the camera viewfinder. All you have to do is hold a Tag in front of the screen and the camera will detect and scan it in realtime and take you to the destination URL.
On WP7, opening Tag Reader takes you to an instruction screen with a big Scan button. Pressing Scan takes you to the camera viewfinder, where you have to snap a picture of the tag. After you snap, it processes for a second or two and then tells you if it was successful scanning the tag. If not, it opens the viewfinder again. On top of this, every time the viewfinder opens anew, the autoflash is turned on.
Put google analytics on the page being retrieved by the tag, and you've got frequency and macro-location.
'Dynamically changing data-source?', I assume they are suggesting that the content retrieved is dynamic. Yet if the code is static, than the variables for the dynamic content aren't coming from the tag. So, again, this can be accomplished with any webpage.
The 'customized look' of the microsoft tag is probably its greatest weakness. If you look at the examples they provide, they aren't instantly recognizable as scannable tags, and they look horrible.
Translation: spyware.
A QR code already encodes a URL. It can already be decoded and opened on your client with no other help or services.
The Tag equivalent sounds like a URL shortener in that it looks up a code in a central database and converts one to another, but the Tag is not shorter. It is not done for the end user's benefit, it adds nothing for the end user, in fact it adds a slow WAN lookup and all the reliability issues that go with it. It adds a third party into your data exchange for someone elses benefit.
It's more like a MITM attack on your transaction than a URL shortener.
These statements range anywhere from lie to falsehood to sly twisting of the truth. In reality, a QR Code-based system can do all of this as well. What they're trying to confuse with is the distinction between the printed code format and a supplementary service backend that can do, well, whatever one wants it to do, with the data scanned. Microsoft has obviously arranged for one particular service to be created, presumeably to monetize in some way.
I happen to have done some personal R&D in this area in recent months. One of the things that stuck out the most about QR Codes is that they are effectively an open format, not necessarily tied to one app or vendor. Well, more of a format framework for whatever app-specific format and processing system you choose to devise. Think bar codes raised to the power of two.
Or maybe they're just lying through their teeth to try and sell a crappy proprietary product that will harm the entire mobile tag ecosystem for their own profit, or will fail like so many other attempts to control a market that they don't really understand just like PlaysForSure did, but probably causing some confusion and harm in the meantime.
In Japan it's as common as putting your website on an ad or business card.
This allows someone to grab their mobile phone, scan the QR code and save the information to their address book. Now if they lose the card they still have my information on their smartphone.
I handed out many such cards at Black Hat and DefCon and they were a huge success with people.
I'm real fucking glad those people were ignored. I hope you are too.
I see HP's WebOS tablet is going to have a "touch your WebOS phone to your tablet to transfer information between them, such as your currently open web page".
Well, you can do that right now - add this bookmarklet to your browser: http://code.google.com/p/qrbookmarklet/ and click it to get a QR code popping up encoding the URL of the page you are on. Scan it on your phone and you can quickly take the page you are on to your mobile in a cross platform way, without needing to dropbox or email the URL to yourself.
Just like HP is advertising with their WebOS tablet and WebOS phones, only without being WebOS only.
(The bookmarklet works in mobile safari so you could go the other way, if you could find a desktop reader).
I'd also really like it if there was a way to walk up to a bus stop, point my phone at it and have my phone know which precise bus stop I am at and then check on the net and say which busses are due next. Also trains.
Also, anything with a phone number such as a taxi or pizza place flyer could have a useful QR code with a vcard contact on it.
QR codes are not just a "learn more" marketing scam for URLs on adverts, it's a no-typing way of getting information into mobile devices.
1. Go to the Microsoft tag website: http://tag.microsoft.com/ 2. Click the tag manager 3. Log in with your live id 4. Consent to a bunch of terms 5. Click create 6. Follow the steps to create 7. Click render 8. Accept more stuff: http://tag.microsoft.com/resources/implementationguide.aspx 9. Get a PDF of your new tag
The URL for managing your tags is called "ManageAds.aspx".
Then looking at the implementation guide we find this little gem:
"Because the idea of scanning bar codes with a mobile phone camera is fairly new to most people, Microsoft requires you to provide basic instructions near each Tag that explain to users how to download and use the Microsoft Tag Reader application. [...]"
Instead with QR codes I go to http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ generate a tag, and place it where ever I want. None of my visitors first get redirected through a Microsoft website/URL which looks like this:
http://rs.tag.microsoft.com/U5SS544JBBGQWZDY5SO3SJJIX346OUSE.aspx?Level=1&VID=5%2B0%2B0&afid=0&TH=_exokqW8DE19hOgWheA%24&CS=U8&PL=qqEVoS0iWnsgtvRRahUwDpOP3lT4xjm1ZQhbA1v%2B33Y_XTYDgevcIqCcZPkuEjELB_S2dmR7FAfr_dAU7ZpsqHgSe3FE77BcYAwWfau1zELNpxfdJk1Vein5v3cjXUd7%2BOHZPti%2BEtwgRV8TLufSDUotLWae4rA4wq5i1EErTH1B89lyMg%24%24
The death of QR is being greatly exagerated.
If I had an Android phone, I'd do it myself.
Please try to phrase your headlines a little less sensationally, instead capturing the essence of the article.
Mobile tags/QR codes/whatever will have more potential when people stop thinking of them as a way to take users to a webpage or show them something and start using them as a way to help users accomplish things. Show me a tag that adds a movie to my Netflix queue, adds a friend on Facebook or to a contact list, or puts a memo on my calendar.
By the way, we use Code 128-A with base32 encoding for our convention registration system as to simplify the situation when code cannot be read by reader and has to be typed in manually (on the basis that it is less error prone to type two five character blocks of base32 than significantly longer decimal number).
The two pictures shown on the right appear to be datamatrix barcodes....
It's the exact same basis that almost every corporation operates on: control what people are using so that you can monetize them (either by charging them directly, or charging other corporation who want to reach them, or both).
Can you imagine an internet with hyperlinks that only work on Windows computers?
those tags are like the AOL keywords of yesterday. No matter how much they advertise it on TNT, it's dead.