The Printable Clickable Link
Posted on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 1:39 PM
How QR codes and Microsoft Tags are making print publications
interactive.
Print magazines are starting to offer readers
clickable links to Web content. The technology for doing this relies
upon capabilities of the increasingly popular smart phone genre of
mobile devices. The process is simple to implement. First, the magazine
prints the link in the form of a mobile tag. Here are examples of two
popular formats:
A Microsoft tag.
A QR code tag.
The reader uses the camera feature of the smart phone to capture the image of the tag. Then, an application on the smart phone facilitates the connection: reader to Web content. Get Married magazine, one of the publications that has begun using the Microsoft mobile tags for both editorial and advertising content. Here is an example of one of their tagged editorial pages:
A Get Married magazine editorial page offers readers a
Microsoft tag link.
QR codes have actually been in use in
Japan for many years. They are used not only in print publications, but
also on business cards, signs, even busses. But, the practice seems not
to have migrated to the U.S. to any large extent. More recently
Microsoft has begun promoting its own variety of mobile tag.
Regardless
of which tag format is used, it will be necessary for the user to
download an application to the smart phone. Typically, the downloads are
available for free. (App for scanning QR codes: http://www.neoreader.com/download.html;
Microsoft Tag reader: http://www.gettag.mobi/)
For
those of you who have smart phones, we have compiled a number of links
that provide additional information about the technology. Just use one
of the tags above to see them. (We'll leave the list there for 60 days.)