NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

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Microsoft Tag mobile barcode iPhone application reviewed
by: Bena Roberts Saturday, January 10th, 2009


http://www.gomonews.com/microsoft-tag-mobile-barcode-iphone-application-reviewed/

Yesterday I received a lovely email from Gavin Jancke Head of Engineering for Microsoft Tag. He asked Cian and myself why we couldn’t download the Microsoft Tag scanner. I sent back a response saying that the insert mobile phone number simply didn’t work and I tried on the N95 but it said “security error”.

I was impressed with the passion in Gavin’s voice when he responded with advice on how to resolve the issue and nothing other than complete pride in the S60 application. My date on my N95 was wrong and that might have been the issue. The insert your mobile number is for the US only and he fixed that issue immediately by putting US only in bold on the download page.

So, today I downloaded Microsoft Tag on my iPhone with no problem.
The picture above is the picture of the code - please feel free to test it!
Then I took half pictures of the code to see if they would work (see below)… they didn’t.





This is expected from a Beta product but I find the instructions in the reader of how to take a picture, “must not be blurred” a bit taxing. Already more advance readers can still render sites from slightly off or blurry images.

The next thing I say is going to say incredibly female -but I find the colour combination for the colour code - vile. The clash of colours really does little for me and there should be an option to choose the colour of your code. I would match mine to the GoMo News colours. As they are now - I don’t really want to promote the code as it is. When I stare at it for a bit the colour makes me feel queasy it reminds me of a cave for some very strange reason.

I have to also say - I find the use of the world TAG unfortunate. It is a Mobile Barcode and differentiation in names from codes, barcodes, 2D codes and tags is stupid. We need the consumer to adopt so lets make it simple.

Then with my new reader in toe, I started looking for Microsoft colour tags to take a picture of. I did a Google image search and found nothing. Hmmmm. Even though I now know the reader works my elation is weakened by the fact that I can’t find any codes to scan. Indeed it is early days -but still - universal readers are still my favourite.

Saying this, I decided today the best thing that could happen is for Microsoft to buy NeoMedia for its universal reader/ scanner and to integrate the Microsoft Tagin the reader. This would make Microsoft a leader in the barcode space over night and it will do justice to existing tags in the space.

But anyway - I did guess that Microsoft would buy Abaxia about a year ago and I was completely wrong - but I do think that Microsoft should be pushing a Universal Reader. Microsoft has the weight behind it to champion in this area. Rumours are ripe about Nokia buying either NeoMedia or UpCode -but mobile barcodes are nearing tipping point and …. I am talking out loud - let me put my thoughts together and come back to this…

I did think that the Minvite (see below)- invite a friend to joing was a novel viral way of gaining traction -but with the current lack of codes I am not going to send it to anyone.

More when we can fix the N95 problem.