You may now have seen the multicoloured triangular shaped as one of the contact numbers on our contact us page. This is part of a new free application for your mobile, called Microsoft TAG.

The idea being, you download and install the free application via your mobile, from http://gettag.mobi, and when you scan the bar code above, it will automatically offer to dial our main contact phone number to reach us at Parlour Design. The barcode can be designed to do other things too, such as:

• Open a URL suitable for your mobile, in your mobile internet browser.
• Have a text automatically sent to your phone, with further information about whatever you’ve just seen
• Open a new contact card, with the relevant company details, names, numbers, email, etc. onto your phone.

Microsoft are expecting this tag to take off in a big way. (other applications have already been developed to read standard bar codes from products, and then compare prices with local stores automatically, this system however should offer quite a lot more)

Official launch day was yesterday, and over a million posters have already had this kind of tag printed on them.  Mobiles are of course a part of every day life for most people now (recent research shows that a 7 year old is more likely to own a mobile than a book in the UK!). So having a simple way for people to walk around with their mobiles, see a tag, and get the relevant information directly onto their mobiles could well be the future of things to come.

If you’ve got a ‘new generation’ phone (ie one with a built in camera, internet access, and the opportunity to install applications), then just visit http://gettag.mobi on your mobile.

To learn more about it in your normal web browser, just visit http://tag.microsoft.com