Month: June 2010

Microsoft Tag is an interesting way to add a new dimension to your current business. By creating a tag, you can connect your audience in the real world to a virtual experience via their mobile phone. Creating tags is free and scanning tags is possible from just about any phone with a camera.

We’ve previously discussed what place mobile barcode technology has in the future. It’s obvious that it’s useful, but we haven’t seen many popular services or brands take advantage of it. Microsoft may change that by putting a familiar name and some free tools behind tagging technology.

With Tag, you can connect your brick-and-mortar business with the infinite possibilities of the digital world. Rather than hoping potential customers remember your website or relying on the telephone game that word-of-mouth sometimes becomes, you can provide a direct conduit to your product or service. Tags turn inanimate objects into interactive experiences that let your products sell themselves.

Creating Your Tag

Your first step is to actually create a tag. This is simply the bit of information that you want to give people access to once they scan the tag.

• Tag Title – This is the name of the tag
• Tag Type – You can choose URL, Free Text, vCard, or Dialer
• Tag Notes – A few details about your tag (I don’t believe these are shared with the user)
• Start Date – When your tag should go live
• End Date – When you tag expires

Depending on which tag type you choose, you will be able to add additional data to your tag. For instance, the vCard type lets you upload a vCard to distribute and the Dialer type lets you specify a phone number that the user will be connected to.

The most popular option here might be the URL because it can possibly provide the richest digital experience, but having option to specify Text or connect the user to a phone number expand opportunities without relying on a data plan.

Once you’ve created your tag, the next step is to actually render it. This simply means printing it out for display at your location. All tags should follow the implementation guidelines before rendering so that you can maximize your efforts.

Scanning Tags and Usage Scenarios

The end user simply needs to grab a tag reader and start scanning. Then, the magic happens. Microsoft provides a set of tools that lets you track daily scans, so you have a way to track your results. Here are a few scenarios where Tags might be useful:

An automobile company might want to place a Tag on a billboard as a way to advertise their latest models to potential customers. Passengers and pedestrians could scan the tag as they pass by.

A film production company might put Tags pointing to a movie trailer on a poster at a movie theater, guiding the customer to more extensive information and interviews with the movie stars.

A video game company makes special custom Tags to be used at its trade show booth, allowing gamers to scan the Tag for custom in-game gear or clothing.

A sports drink company might choose to display a series of Tags for a product on the jumbotron in a stadium during a game, providing the fans with a collection of “secret phrases” throughout the game that enable free products or discount coupons.

What do you think about Microsoft Tag? What scenarios would you use it in.

Zynga has inked a five-year deal with Facebook in attempts to patch up their strained relationship. The details of the deal are not available yet, but the negotiations to get there show two companies definitely at odds with each other. While both companies have benefited from their close relationship up to this point, it seems that the Zynga gaming platform has grown beyond simply being a part of the Facebook experience.

Games are an easy way to make any site sticky and keep users coming back. Services like Foursquare, 12seconds, robux generator and Glue have shown how integrating some level of gaming, achievements, and competition, can help your user base grow. Facebook games are a huge part of the site’s attraction as many users are mostly there to play Cafe World, Sorority Life, and Farmville.

Sources say that Facebook was pushing for a long-term deal with Zynga, but the terms were in Facebook’s favor. One major sticking point was Facebook forcing Zynga and other apps to use Facebook Credits as their only virtual currency. Not only that, but Facebook takes 30% cut off the top for Facebook Credits transactions. This is bordering on robbery for Zynga, who already showed they can make huge sums of money in virtual goods on their own when they raised over $1 million for Haiti.

Even after both parties threatened to part ways, they eventually came to an agreement. The question is whether they have patched things up, or are following the old saying of keeping friends close and enemies closer. At this point, it doesn’t seem that Zynga really needs Facebook’s cooperation to be successful. It actually seems that Facebook might be more dependent on Zynga’s games than Zynga is on Facebook’s social network. In either case, both parties still gain some benefit by being connected. Facebook gets the benefit of return visitors and a slight influence over Zynga’s direction while Zynga remains entrenched in the hottest social networking site out.

Zynga has already been making moves to exist outside of the Facebook ecosystem. They definitely plan to have their cake and eat it too. They have Farmville.com up and running with plans to launch a social game network called Zynga Live. They have also recently entered into a partnership with Yahoo, which could connect their social gaming platform with 600 million Yahoo users. It’s clear that Zynga’s games won’t be buried somewhere on the site, but will be tightly integrated into most of Yahoo’s current services and probably end up on it’s front page.

The once modest gaming platform is doing big things these days and one thing here is clear: Zynga is playing no games.

Soundation is an application that lets you create music on the web. There is no software to download or hardware to install. All you need a browser with Flash support and you can start making music immediately. The Soundation online sequencer provides 11 real-time effects, 3 synthesizers, and a drum machine. There is an introductory library of over 400 sounds, samples, and loops to create your projects with. If this isn’t enough to satisfy your creativity, Soundation provides an integrated Sound Shop where you can buy more sounds.

Adding Sounds

Getting started with Soundation is simple. You don’t even need an account. Simply fire up The Studio and you’re good to go. The interface is similar to other audio programs you may have come across, with a list of audio channels on the left, menu at the top, and transport controls at the bottom. To add audio to your project, browse through the library to find what you need and drag it to an audio channel. Samples are organized by tempo and genre.

The waveform for the selected loop is now displayed on the track. You can extend the loop by dragging the top-right corner to fill out your track. This doesn’t stretch the loop, but duplicates it to fill the space. This makes sure your project stays on beat. If you want to actually stretch the loop and change it’s tempo, drag from the bottom-right corner.

You can drag clips around between channels and within the same channel. There is a snap-to-grid feature that helps make sure everything lines up. Delete a clip by selecting at and pressing Del or Backspace on your keyboard. There is also an Undo feature accessible from the Edit menu or by pressing Ctrl-Z.

Adding Effects

Each audio channel can have multiple effects added to it. This makes it easy to add compression to your drums for more punch or reverb to a melody to give it some depth. Just click the FX button (next to Solo and Mute), click the ‘+’ symbol, and choose the effect your wish to add. This will pop up another window which lets you optionally tweak the effect to your liking. Click the FX button again to hide the list of existing effects, tweak your existing effects, or add more effects.

Adding Channels and Instruments

Add additional audio channels by clicking the ‘+’ symbol at the bottom left of the studio. The button just to the right here adds an instrument channel. This allows you to add a few instruments, including a drum machine, to your project. While you can add instruments to your project and play them using the virtual keyboard, it doesn’t seem that you can record yet. Keep in mind that you can only play the drums by clicking on the first set of keys on the virtual keyboard, the corresponding keys on your keyboard don’t work. Other instruments work fine in this respect.

Saving Your Work

Once you’ve got a hot beat going, you have a few ways to keep it. The down-arrow symbol on the bottom right of the studio will let you mixdown and download your project as a WAV file. More interesting is the ability to publish your project to the web. This gives you a link that you can share so that others can hear what you have done. Publishing to the web also provides you with an embed code to share on other websites. The last option is to save the project on your local hard drive in Soundation’s native format. This is best if you plan to change things later.

Soundation is obviously a work in progress, but you can still use it in it’s current form to create some advanced music. It’s easy to use even for amateurs. As long as you understand the basics of music and know how to drag and drop, you will be fine. You could use Soundation to easily create original music for all types of projects. Once you get tired of the 400 available sounds, go ahead and buy more.

Here is a sample project I threw together real quick. What do you think about Soundation?