Microsoft Tag API Released

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Jim O'Neil hCard If you’ve been at one of my presentations, including the most recent one I did on Mobile Development at the Greater Buffalo IT/Dev Day, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Microsoft Tag – the colorful (and creative) 2d-barcode technology from Microsoft Research that you can read from just about any mobile device equipped with a camera and a small application available at https://gettag.mobi.  My contact information, for instance, is encoded in the tag to the right.

Today, Microsoft announced the release of a Web Services-based API to enable the creation of tags.  So now you don’t have to visit the Tag site to generate your tag, and you can do it programmatically from Visual Basic and C#.

Visit the Tag Development Center to get started, and have fun!

Jim O'Neil hCard By the way, the tag above is a custom tag; the default one looks more like the one on the right, but you can really get creative and build your own distinctive designs as long as you follow a few rules.  Earlier this summer there was a contest for the best custom tag – you can check out the finalists in this Deep Zoom experience.  (The winner is in the upper right)