{"id":110,"date":"2009-01-31T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/?p=110"},"modified":"2022-10-18T12:00:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T12:00:37","slug":"more-on-barcodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/?p=110","title":{"rendered":"More on (bar)codes…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my previous post I talked about barcodes and QR-codes. One of my dear commentors, Aldon Hynes<\/a>, asked me about the Microsoft Tag<\/a> in relation to my post. I didn\u2019t hear about that before so I went right at it. What\u2019s that all about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"qrcode\" versus \"Microsoft
Microsoft Tag is another system for tagging offline objects with a code or tag and allowing mobile users to connect to online resources that are linked to the tag. You see the MS tag pointing to my domain here. It\u2019s, ahemmm, ugly. I guess taste is personal\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s get into the reason Microsoft Tag is not a good idea when we compare it to QR-codes. The reason is simple. The QR-code<\/a> is self-contained, which means that it holds all the information. If the QR-code points to an URL, it contains the URL. You don\u2019t need any back-end database-connection to get the information it links to. In the case of the MS-tag you do need to first get the information from the Microsoft Tag-database before you can use it. This means more network traffic, an external dependancy and therefor it\u2019s simply slower and more expensive to use. (and I\u2019m not including printing cost here!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount of information you can encode in a QR-code is limited. Alphanumerically (is that a word?) you can store a maximum of 4,296 characters in such a code. (that\u2019s quite a lot actually). That\u2019s it.  In most cases you would however include an URL so all the rest of  the information you want to share you would include on the resource the URL points to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, the MS tag is similar to the old fashioned barcode. You simply look-up the resources that are linked to the unique number encoded in the tag or barcode. I don\u2019t think fancy colouring is adding anything functional to the black&white barcode. In fact, if the tag has to blend nicely into the layout and theme of the offline object you attach it to, B&W is a better option as far as I\u2019m concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I\u2019m not saying that the MS Tag isn\u2019t going to work. It does it\u2019s job (if you\u2019re able to install their app on your phone, because it wouldn\u2019t work on my Nokia 6600 Symbian 60\u2026) I just think it\u2019s not adding anything important to the systems we allready have and use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope you liked this post<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"4c685b3de1f98bc3665afa55cc11559d<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous post I talked about barcodes and QR-codes. One of my dear commentors, Aldon Hynes, asked me about the Microsoft Tag in relation to my post. I didn\u2019t hear about that before so I went right at it. What\u2019s that all about?  versus Microsoft Tag is another system for tagging offline objects with a code or tag […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willemkossen.nl\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}