With Microsoft Tag technology exchanging information just got way easier.

The purpose of LunaTagGEN for Mobile is two-fold. The first, is to render a Microsoft Tag to the screen of your Windows Mobile device; while the second is to demonstrate how the functionality of tags can be extended. In its initial beta release, the application will provide for two types of tags; a contact from your Pocket Outlook contacts list and a password protected text message we refer to as a Secret Message.

Contacts

This feature allows you to select a contact from Pocket Outlook and then display a Microsoft Tag directly on your device’s screen. While you could pass someone a business card, or email them your information, by displaying a tag, anyone with the Microsoft Tag reader can receive the information simply by snapping the tag. Plus, you can generate a tag for your own information or select any contact on your phone.

Trading contacts by email is just more work and you have to type in the receiver’s address. For business cards, the receiver ends up having to type the information in or use a business card scanner. On the other hand, exchanging contact information with tag requires only couple of clicks and a snap.

Secret Message

At first, displaying a Secret Message on the phone first appears more of a novelty. If you are close enough to the other person that they can snap a tag then any secret can probably be whispered. On the other hand, if you wanted to send a secret message to someone and be absolutely sure that it could not be decoded by anyone who could intercept it in route, this is a novel way.

Unlike any existing text or message format transport used on the internet, intercepting and interpreting an image is a whole new issue. Of course, whoever does intercept the image can use the Microsoft Tag reader to try to read it but without the passord the message will never be retrieved and every attempt requires sending a test password to Microsoft’s Tag servers.

Since tags have a defined lifespan, they can be set to expire at a predetermined point in time and the shorter the period the tag exists the harder it becomes for others to decode an intercepted message. Right now the shortest time period available is 1 day but in the future it could be hours or minutes. Hence, we introduce the concept of the disposable tag.

This is an important advantage that Microsoft Tag has over QR Codes. QR Codes are always text and while that text can be interpreted to do a lot of things, at the end of the day, QR Code readers first decode the image into text and that image and text lasts forever. So even though you can encrypt a QR Code with a password, anyone who intercepts the message has forever to decode it. Whereas Tags are disposable and destroyable.

Disposability and Extensibility

The concept for trading contact information was originally conceived for use in our Mobile QRender, which was our first demonstration of a disposable code. Both applications perform the action of displaying an image on the screen, which by itself, without consideration for saving the image, is a completely disposable event. You create and present a Contact Tag to a colleague, they read it off your phone, you close the application and the image is gone (from the perspective of you and your phone).

The lifespan of a tag is also important from a cost standpoint. While tags are currently free, at some point in the future you can expect they will be monetized and the cost difference between a tag that exists forever and one that lasts minutes could be significant. Since there are no ongoing costs to creating a QR Code, from a competitive standpoint, disposability is a necessity.

For a moment, forget about the technology that makes this happen and consider what is happening. On the surface, two people are simply exchanging information but it is the amount of information that is the key. The contact tag you pass at a meeting may only have a name and telephone number but it could just as easily have every field filled in.

If you give someone a paper business card, even if they take the time to type your name, phone number and email address into their contact list, that is probably all they will do. If they want more, they will send you a request via email but again that is more work. So the barrier represented by the amount of information is eliminated by snapping a tag; effectively letting you exchange any contact as an object in its entirety. What this demonstrates is an increase in utility for the mobile device and more importantly alludes to real opportunity when you take the concept beyond your contact list.

Many other things on your phone are already designed with transfers and distribution in mind. Email has attachments. Text messages can carry a URL. Audio and video files you receive will open and play. When you receive a contact, your phone will offer to save to your list and you can use our Snapp technology to download and install an application. All of these happen automatically because the program has been designed to recognize the type of file and initiate the proper action. So then the limit on extensibility comes down to the number of recognizable types.

The point we are making is that transferring information by displaying a tag opens the door to a host of possibilities and not just for things you have on your phone. You could just as easily access a service on the internet that rendered its information as a tag that you could present to someone else to complete a transaction. Huh?

Say you want tickets for a show. You go on line to purchase the tickets and you receive a tag that you can then present to gain entry at the gate. A person (or automated system in the case of transit systems) can then read your tag and provide access. A similar case can be made for any type of discount coupon. You could in fact read a tag from a manufacturer’s packaging, that directed you to a website, where you could obtain a coupon or receive an offer for a discount and then instead of a paper coupon you would receive a tag, which in turn you could present to a retailer to discount your purchase. Elsewhere on this site there is an article about replacing transit tokens with Microsoft tags that simply carries this concept further.

Summary

The bigger picture here is that LunaTagGEN for Mobile compliments Microsoft Tag in a way that changes it entirely. Up until now, it has been a one-way process; read a tag and get something back. Snap a tag and go to a website. Snap a tag and download an app. However, now that you can display a tag as well, read-only is now read-write. So in the larger sense, the write capability, displaying a tag on screen extends current information systems to truly bridge the gap between the physical and digital world, letting everyone be both a sender and receiver.