Microsoft offers second app for iPhone

After the impressive release of Seadragon for the iPhone/ iPod touch, Microsoft has followed up by releasing an iPhone version of Tag Reader. [App Store link] Tag Reader allows you to use your iPhone to grab a quick photograph of a colorful icon that contains lots of digital tagging. It could be a web site, product information, even your contact details from a vCard or even free text.

First, download Tag Reader from the App Store and install it on your iPhone. Then, test it against some samples on the Microsoft Tag web page. Next, if you like, you can create your own tags. You'll need a Microsoft Live ID, but those are free. I tried creating one for our TUAW website and it came back as blacklisted (#$&!!). Is it something we said?

I tried again, this time creating a tag for the Apple web page. That seemed to work. You can try it on the icon at the bottom of this post.

Just make sure the tag fills about half the frame of the camera image. Snap your photo, then follow the instructions in the app.

I'm not sure if this will ever catch on. You can put one of these tags on your business card, or on a product box, or even on your own web site. As you've seen if you tried my example, you can capture the tag from a monitor.

At some point, Microsoft expects to charge for the creation of these tags, but for now, it's all free.

For this to work, a lot of people will have to participate, and it could be the cure for which there was no disease. Still, it is nice to see Microsoft recognize that the iPhone is a force in the world and if they want to deploy mobile technology they have to take the millions of iPhone/ iPod touch users into account.