Identify Yourself with Microsoft Tag

Since the beginning of online computing, there have been many ways individuals and businesses have digitally identified themselves, information, and products to friends and clients. Email addresses and signatures, website addresses, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn profiles are just some of the popular ways to be noticed in the increasingly digital world. With so many personal attributes and a variety of information available, the issue of ease of accessibility in recording information comes into play. Information could certainly be written down, linked to, or copied and pasted; however, an easier way would be convenient. Barcode scanning is the latest method information access, and the newly released Microsoft Tag is ready to do the job.

There are few varieties of barcode scanning in existence, and In short, what the technology accomplishes is information retrieval by scanning an image. The image, also known as the bar code, is scanned in order to acquire a variety of information contained within. The information could be anything such as detailed contact information, product information, a vcard, notes, and more.

QRCode, and Datamatrix code have been popular for some time. These two black and white technologies use a square image containing black and white square pixels, and storing 1 byte of information (8 bits), requires the use of 8 symbols. Microsoft Tag differs as the image in a Tag barcode is a square 4 color image that is composed of small triangles. With Microsoft Tag, more data can be stored as 1 byte (8 bits) only uses 4 symbols - not 8.

Microsoft Tag was recently released to the general public as a final product, as for the past year or it had been in open beta. To scan a barcode, free software for camera enabled phones running iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Android operating systems can be downloaded at the Microsoft Tag website. After the software is installed, acquiring information is as easy as simply pointing the mobile phone's camera at a barcode tag.

Designing Microsoft Tag barcode tags is a free process as well. Creating a profile at the official website allows for the creation of multiple tags which could be used on screen, printed as stickers, printed on business cards, placed on products, and more. Microsoft Tag also allows for the creation of custom tags by that can actually be created by using an appropriately sized image.

More information, including free software for mobile devices, and the ability to create your won tags is available at tag.microsoft.com.