tagSOLUTE — Michael Hengherr

What it was

Mobile tagging for Germany

tagSOLUTE was a Karlsruhe start-up founded in 2007 with the aim of establishing mobile tagging in Germany: printed 2D barcodes, mostly QR codes, that a phone camera reads to open mobile content, a trend that was already mass-market in Japan. We served companies, institutions and cities with standardized services that needed no programming skills.

What we built

From campaigns to apps

01 Platform

tagMOTO: print becomes mobile

tagMOTO was the campaign platform behind it: QR codes, SMS keywords and mobile landing pages created and managed in one place, so a printed ad, flyer or poster could open a mobile page with images, sound or a download, and sell content through premium SMS.

tagSOLUTE homepage, 2010 (archived)

02 Tools

Generator, reader, extension and plugin

Around the platform we built a QR code generator and reader, a Firefox extension that turns the current page into a code and a WordPress plugin.

03 Blog

tagMOTION, the QR code blog

tagMOTION collected campaigns and use cases, explained barcode formats and terms, and was listed as a QR code resource by other designers and developers.

04 Apps

Mobile apps and the pivot

Later we moved into mobile apps, among them price comparison apps for billiger.de on Android, Palm Pre (webOS) and iPhone, with built-in EAN and QR code scanners.

In the field

Projects and customers

Mostly from tagSOLUTE’s own project pages and news of the time, preserved in the Internet Archive, and from the press. The archived copies are linked instead of the original domain, which should no longer be visited.

Four screenshots in a row: two archived BVG pages about the QR codes on its timetables, and two ka-news articles about the ZKM banner and the QR codes on the Karlsruhe construction fences — BVG on its QR codes (archived pages) and ka-news on the ZKM banner and the construction fence codes

02 Transit

BVG Berlin

With the new timetables of 13 December 2009, QR codes appeared on all BVG timetables, because departure displays could not be extended to all of BVG’s 7,432 stops. tagSOLUTE acted as a technical advisor for BVG on the project in regards to the QR codes.

BVG: QR codes at BVG (archived, DE) BVG: press release of 13 December 2009 (archived, DE)

03 City

Karlsruhe’s metro construction

Karlsruhe’s new underground metro meant years of building sites in the city centre. tagSOLUTE was part of the consortium of the “Smarter City Karlsruhe” initiative, together with FZI, KIT, the rail infrastructure company KASIG, CyberForum and IBM, that worked on information for citizens and merchants affected by the construction. ka-news reported QR codes on the construction fences that open construction information on the phone, an idea of the same initiative.

ka-news: construction info on the phone (DE) Smarter City Karlsruhe paper (KCWS 2011, p. 190)

01 Culture

ZKM Karlsruhe

For its 20th anniversary in 2009 the ZKM used mobile tagging more extensively than any cultural institution before, according to ka-news: codes on brochures, flyers, banners and posters opened mobile pages with up to 4,269 characters of text, images and sound. The programme booklet pointed to 13 events through barcodes and SMS keywords, and its cover carried a code leading to a special with a video address by the ZKM head, Prof. Peter Weibel. The ZKM kept using the technology afterwards; its own video page from 2011 is linked here for reference.

ka-news: 20 years of ZKM and mobile tagging (DE) ZKM: Mobile Tagging video

04 Events

Festivals and tournaments

Barcodes and SMS keywords went onto flyers and posters for the Baden Open tennis tournament, the World Town Festival in Waldshut-Tiengen (one code per artist, with CD orders from the artists’ microsites) and the Technologie Region Karlsruhe’s regional day. For the Rheinkultur festival, concert visitors could download the official logo to their phone through premium SMS.

05 Brands

From print to online

Sparkasse Pforzheim Calw used QR codes and SMS keywords for its 2009 World Savings Day prize draw, KabelBW for newspaper ads in Gernsbach and Eggenstein, and the price comparison portal billiger.de for its mobile site and apps. BAUR, Grohe and KSB used our QR codes in some of their print materials and catalogues.

The patent

Authorizing transactions across channels

The patents belong to tagPAY GmbH in Karlsruhe. They protect a method for authorizing an internet transaction: if the authorization fails over one channel, a second authorization is started over another transmission channel, with the data adapted to the hardware of the device. The second patent is a divisional of the first, a route that lets the applicant pursue a further aspect of the same invention in its own application.

Screenshots of the European Patent Register entries for EP2371105 and EP2637382, showing title, status, applicant tagPAY GmbH and the inventors — The register entries of both patents at the European Patent Office (private inventor addresses obscured)

01 Parent

EP2371105: authorization over several channels

The parent application, filed in 2009 on a German priority of 1 December 2008 and published as WO 2010/063563, was granted on 14 August 2013 under the title “Method for authorisation of a transaction implying various channels”.

EPO register: EP2371105

02 Divisional

EP2637382: authorizing a transaction

A divisional of the first application, which keeps its filing date of 16 November 2009 and the 2008 priority. It was granted on 24 February 2016, with no opposition filed. It names Stefan Schwerdtfeger, Christian Dörfel and me as inventors.

EPO register: EP2637382

In the press