Technology Convergence Makes All Media Work Better

Yesterday my associate Frank Isca wrote about a not-so-new technology from Microsoft that's finally starting to get some traction because of the dramatic growth in smart phone penetration. In his post "What Are Microsoft Tags?" he explained that these tags can appear on any printable surface (print ads, transit signs, clothing labels) and are hyperlinks recognized by smart phone cameras using a Microsoft app. With smart phones approaching 30% of cellphone users, Microsoft must have decided the time was right to start getting more aggressive.

In a world that's gone increasingly bonkers over our mobile devices, here's something that allows those devices to use a physical world cue and deliver something more relevant and meaningful than ever before possible. Think about it: you're shopping for wine, and the shelf tag for a certain vintage links you with a click of your Blackberry camera to Kyle Meyer on the Winery Channel telling you what's so special about that bottle.

So now you can take anything with a printable surface and transform it into a hyperlink that can instantly engage your customer, patron, political supporter, you name it, to the content of your choice. Talk about a connected world! I'm starting to have flashbacks to Minority Report, the futuristic Tom Cruise movie that used corneal scanning to customize ad messages to passing shoppers. But instead of your eyes it's your iphone that gives you away.

Expect to see print publishers jump fast to offer this capability, since it will make their medium work harder. Better yet, use your imagination about how you might use it. What's the next big idea that MS tags makes possible?