Blog homeHow you heard of Microsoft Tag yet? (or other web barcode systems?)
If you haven’t youtube video (Via TechFlash) gives a great introduction:
You need to think of this service as a little like TinyUrl.com
You submit a URL to Microsoft and, in return, you are given an image. You can place this image anywhere – print it out, put on a wall at a physical location, add your your booking documentation – or even just display it on the screen. A user with a camera can take a photo of the image and be automatically redirected to the website at the URL that was initially configured.
One problem with coming up with ideas for potential uses is that Microsoft have not published a price for creating tags – so at this time it is not clear whether companies are going to be creating one or two, hundreds or thousands. What may work if they are 5 USD each may not work if they are 500 USD.
The second problem is that these seem to be “generic” URLs. For example you could send to a specific page – or a set of search results – but probably not a page that undertakes an action for an individual. Actions would have to be instigated by the user on the actual web page. Not a major problem in the grand scheme of things.
Here are some ideas I had that may work in the tourism sector:
Flights
- If there is a delay – I have previously been given a voucher for a free coffee (lucky me!). Perhaps add an image tag to the back of the voucher – which links to a page outlining flight status and any news for passengers on the delayed flight – coffee promotions – etc etc.
Hotels & hospitality
- Add a tag to your menu. Let customers see the source for your food (for example you could have a page that lists 4 farms and their tags). Get people navigating to these sites as part of their menu choice. Would work for wine menus (perhaps even better).
Destination wide challenge
- Create a challenge where you walk / cycle around a destination. Each image reveals a page on the website (shown on your mobile phone) and directions to your next place. Get the destination walk sponsored by the pub / bar / restaurant at the final stop.
Anyone got any other ideas? (or actual implementations)
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Alex
see http://itravelproject.wordpress.com/
Other competitor exist for the Microsoft technology. See database on ITB
This will only take off if they give it away for free. Otherwise a startup/Yahoo will copy it and quickly overtake it.
Penetration depends on how many mobile phones have the application & will they build an Iphone app.
Hi Toby
According to reports there is an iPhone app for this already
See CNET news
Here’s a link to a demo of the i-phone app. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxWvPG0XUg&feature=related
For travel companies that do direct marketing, a tag produced on a flyer/postcard with a travel offer could take you to that offer page. Only really useful however if the travel company has all the customer details stored so when you arrive on the offer page all you have to do is click to book now!
Am I right in thinking that this is only going to be really useful for print media because anything online can be sent to a phone at the click of a button anyway?
The iPhone client is up on the App Store for free should anyone want try it (serch “Microsoft Tag”), it works well and the physical tag protocol seems quite robust (as far as I know it’s available for most phones with a base requirement of J2ME and specific clients for iPhone, Blackberry etc http://bit.ly/121ju).
It wasn’t entirely clear how this solution was an improvement over existing 2D barcodes such as QR codes, the main difference however appears to be the fact that rather than encoding the data in the tag itself, the tag is merely an ID with the actual data stored on Microsofts servers and retrieved by the client over the web. This provides the benefit of placing large amounts of data behind a small tag at a resolution even the worst phone cameras can pick up but also the negative that a data connection is required to understand the tag. This is combined with a tightly specified set of data types that can be retrieved (currently: Web URL, V-Card, Text note, Dialler).
The V-Card (contact information) type tag seems the most useful of these I’ve seen, as anyone who has an iPhone knows it’s not so good for sharing / consuming contact information. The business card example from the video in original blog post works exactly as shown, I now have a photo on my iPhone of a tag I created containing my personal contact details, should anyone ask me for my number and have a Microsoft Tag client installed I can just display the photo on my phones screen for them to snap.
To put a travel slant on this example how about tags for important contact information for a tour such as the local embassy or emergency contacts, for self guided tours such as adventure walks or cycling there could be a tag containing a contact (address, website, email, phone, fax) for each of the stops on the tour – this would work particularly well on on modern phones (iPhone, WinMo, Android etc) which link contacts addresses to their mapping applications.
Just as important as the number of phones the platform is available for is a strong set of well thought out and clearly defined tag types and corresponding tight integration on the client devices. One other idea would be a Calendar (iCal?) type tag, taking a quick snap of a tag on my confirmation email / invoice / “customer login” page and having my phone download and install a complex calendar object containing a whole itinerary (e.g. self guided tour) would be nifty. The problem I see with this is it would require a lot of tags, depending on the eventual cost and ease of programatic maintenance of tags this might not be an issue, it is already possible to set a tag to expire after a trip had finished. It will be interested to see how the current selection of tag types is extended.
If the technology becomes popular it might work well for in resort sales of things like excursions or links to restaurants, large tour operators are already producing glossy “ticket books” containing “advertorial” type information – this could be supplemented by Tag data to drive sales and increase the value of the ad slots. Offset somewhat by the current high charges on data roaming I guess.
I think primarily to gain traction though initial uses of the technology will need to show real benefit to the end user, Microsoft doesn’t have a big enough share of the mobile phone market and will be relying on the services being compelling enough for those on other platforms to install the clents.
None of these are game changing travel e-commerce uses of the technology though, there must be some out there?
Thanks Paul. Great comment. Should set you up with your own blog!
Yes Paul – great comment. I agree with the iCal idea but again – what does this tag do that a link and some functionality cannot do online and then upload to your mobile?
Hi Tamara
The tag & link combo means you can have a complex URL – rather than a simple, easy to type, URL.
Means you could integrate tracking – or you could push a user to deep into a site etc.
In the Microsoft example, instead of sending a user to a bus timetable – you can, from an individual bus stop, send them to the page that lists exactly that bus stop’s information.
In situations where minimising errors is important – this could make all the difference.
The whole thing does strike me as technology looking for a solution – rather than a solution looking for technology to assist! But you could argue that this is an interesting idea, probably didn’t take too much to put into place – and its a great foundation for others to innovate on top of.
Hi Tamara.
I think the main problem with just providing a link is that ultimately the desired target location for the data is the phone’s standard native applications (dialler, contacts, maps, calendar, media player, **INSERT future standard phone app**) and you would be relying on the phone OS to know how to properly download and parse a standard file format (if a standard exists for that data type).
Also, I may not want to access my email whilst on holiday (as there may be work things in there I am trying to forget for a while).
Hence having a system that can send me a link – without going into my inbox – may actually be quite handy!
Thank you both
[...] El mecanismo es similar al de los códigos QR, pero enviando a Microsoft una URL y recibiendo de ellos una imagen que se puede colocar donde el usuario quiera ya sea en el mundo virtual o real. Después, desde un teléfono móvil con cámara se puede tomar una foto de la imagen y ser redirigido a la URL con la cual se configuró la imagen inicialmente. Como dice Alex Bainbridge, las posibles aplicaciones en el sector turístico son variadas… [...]
I agree with your comment about price. The current standard out there seems to be QR codes which can be freely created using Google Charts just by specifying the value in a URL. For example:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=150%78150&cht=qr&chl=Hello%20Alex
returns a nice image of a QR code.
Having said that, I’ve always had difficulty getting QR codes to work on my iPhone. I tried a Microsoft Tag from the companies website and they worked seamlessly, even with a small image.
The fact that Microsoft Tag appears to be so much better than QR codes may be sufficient for companies to pay for them over the free QR codes.
I can see a number of great ways to apply this tagging system. How about for tour companies that have this built into their t-shirts? If someone saw a tour and this was on the back of a guides shirt, they could take a quick snapshot and then go to the site.
For personal social networking, put this on a shirt when you go out, link it to facebook.
Just some thoughts.
Terry Divyak
Hi Alex,
Yup, I saw Microsoft’s tag. Glad you posted a link over here from [QR codes blog post] where I posted a number of tourism development ideas on QR codes.
QR codes, as opposed to Microsoft’s effort have been used in China for quite a while and we’ve seen them on many packaged goods already.
Will the winner be the first in the market place? or the one that comes to mind with consumers first. To that end, http://www.microsoft.com/tags is a brilliant name and I think consumers will get it.
The interesting thing for the industry is that any marketing or product development initiative could be tagged with two or more different tagging systems so that travelers could use the tools they are most comfortable with.
Too early to tell which system will be more buzz and use, but the content that should not stop the development of content and strategies that take advantage of location-based initiatives.
t.