Sunday, June 03, 2012

Microsoft Tags

Recently I had a meeting with a former CIO, now VP of sales with a large regional VAR. As we exchanged business cards I noticed that he had a symbol on his. It looked like a QR code but somewhat stylized, i.e. triangles instead of squares.

I immediately pulled out my Captivate and fired up Barcode Scanner and waited and waited. Barcode Scanner couldn't read it. The VP was confounded as to why nobody else in the room could read it.

Turns out it wasn't a QR code but a Microsoft Tag.

I was going to write a long blog post about QR codes and Microsoft Tags and the difference but who cares?

Suffice it to say that Microsoft took something that was simple and universal and added complexity and took away interoperability for a modest gain in functionality that won't matter because nobody will use it.

If you insist on reading more on Microsoft Tags, here's a good blog post.

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