Next Fridays issue of Entertainment Weekly will have something a little different in it. The magazine is publishing 2d barcodes from Microsoft in the magazine, to give movie fans a way to see previews of upcoming movies.
What’s Microsoft Tag?
Microsoft Tag is a 2d barcode specially designed and controlled by Microsoft. The multicolored tags can be scanned and decoded by any phone with the Tag Reader software installed on it (which includes Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, S60 and Java versions).
In the case of Entertainment Weekly, once the barcodes are decoded, they’ll point your phone’s browser at a YouTube trailer for a film. The April 23rd issue of Entertainment Weekly is the Summer Movie Preview edition, and there will be 20 different films that have Tag codes on them.
What we think?
This isn’t even the first magazine win for Microsoft this week – WebNewser reported on Wednesday that Woman’s Day will be debuting Tag codes in its May issue.
I know it’s good news for Microsoft – and, in general, any story like this drives awareness of mobile barcodes and is good for the industry. I just wish that this was based on an open, non-propietary standard. There are plenty to choose from. Aztec, QR Code and DataMatrix are all well established, widely used standards.
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