MS Tag being used for new show promotion by IFC

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Although MS Tag has been around for a few years now, it really didn't launch till early 2009. The big competitor to Microsoft's High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) system would be the more universal QR Code, which is popular in Japan and has been adopted by the Google juggernaut and Android.

So it's interesting to see MS Tag appearing in a commercial on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) for the new series Portlandia. The Tag appears at the end of the commercial and upon scanning it, it takes you to YouTube to watch an extended preview of the show.

Once again, nothing revolutionary here nor unique but it's good to see Microsoft's much nicer looking Tag getting a bit more mainstream.  One hopes that these "partner" barcodes get more widespread as scanning for more information, apps, links, etc. is a great use of smartphone technology.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.