We found a Microsoft technology recently that sparked some interest for anyone with information to reveal, called Microsoft Tag. The basic idea is that on your camera-enabled mobile phone, you install an application that can read tags. When you see a tag in the future - you use your phone to scan the tag, and the phone browses a website, or dials a number, or does something else based on the tag itself.
Some other technologies have been attempting to use Near Field Communication where other electronic equipment is involved, but this is a highly simplified way of doing it - and what we feel is currently the cheapest.
The idea isn't new - cash registers do it with bar codes already, shipping companies do it to track packages. The difference is that the bar code in this case has been separated from just a scanner/database and has been linked with phone functions that anyone can use regularly. Microsoft even went further to design something that could be completely customized, so it doesn't even look like a traditional bar code on a package. (The image on the left of the balloons is actually a bar code!)
For one of our Real Estate customers, it meant that people with supported smart-phones could scan a for sale sign and instantly be directed to the mobile portal of the agent's website - with information about the house, images, etc. Further to that, once the listing information is downloaded, a user can tap a link on the web-page to dial to request an appointment.
Admittedly, there is a chicken and egg situation forming with the technology that may be insurmountable in making the technology viable everywhere. The tag reader application has to be on the phone to read the tag - and most people would not install the tag reader until tags were common, tags not being common because nobody has the reader, etc.
Marketing something with new technology however may mean a new audience and new clients - in this particular case, technically intrigued clients that normally would have passed the sign by without giving it a look. Now, they have something interesting to try.
(Within the next 30 days, if you are in the Deep South of Calgary, check out 1336 Shawnee Rd SW, North at the light off James Mckevitt Rd. with your Tag-enabled smartphone.)