As Microsoft explains their tag in their FAQ, "Microsoft Tag connects real life with the digital world. Microsoft Tags are small, colorful codes that can be printed, stuck, or displayed just about anywhere. When you snap a Tag with the camera on your internet-enabled phone, additional information or experiences are automatically opened on your phone. There is no fumbling with URLs or texting short codes. Microsoft Tags can make product packages, posters, print-based ads, magazine articles, exhibit signage, billboards, storefronts, business card, or just about anything else, interactive. "©

This code generates the contact information for Small b Systems.

The entity that publishes the tag signs up for an account with Microsoft at http://tag.microsoft.com/SignIn.aspx?lc=1033. There is no charge to sign up. Visit Microsoft's web site http://www.microsoft.com/tag/webhelp/mibp.htm for more information on managing your tags.

The second part of the systems is the FREE application that run on a cell phone. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/download/ from your computer or http://gettag.mobi from your cell phone. Once you have installed this application, open it and follow the on screen instructions to read the data from the above tag.

This tag system is far more useful than the other 2D barcode readers for cell phones for three reasons:

1. The tag links to a Microsoft Server where the data is stored for this tag. The data can be almost any text.
2. Microsoft provdies the tag owner with many useful reports on tag's data retrieval.
3. The tag to data conversion is far more forgiving that other systems we tried.

The answer is nothing, most of the time. But occasionally the program gets very slow and cantankerous. I have had times when the program would not run until the next Microsoft update came along.

This made me angry and sad because Outlook 2007© is central to my communication with the world. I tried other email programs and none of them satisfied me. I bought programs that saved my emails as individual msg files and one that could read these files. I bought another one to save my attachments. Yes, you can backup up your Outlook Personal Folders (pst) but you need Outlook to read them.

We at Small b Systems now use Microsoft Exchange© hosted by 1 and 1, our Internet Service Provider. It cost about $7 a month and it is the best money in our budget. As part of the service, you get a copy of Microsoft Outlook 2007©. Emails are delivered to your exhange account which you can read with any Outlook installation that has been linked to the exchange account and by web mail at https://exchange.1and1.com.

When you connect to your exchange account using Outlook 2007, the computer you are using and the exhange account syncronize the data that each has so whenever, or from wherever, you connect to your exhange account, you share the same information with all users sharing the account. We also syncronize our Blackberry phones with exchange using  Blackberry software.

The exchange account is our company's backup to our communications data. But we had a few clients that had another need. They wanted to backup their Outlook contacts and emails to a databse they could control and use as needed. To that end, we have designed and written Contacts Database and have Email Database almost finished. Our program reads information from Outlook 2007 without user intervention and stores it in an Microsoft Access 2000© database. The current version database is read only. All editing and additions are done in Outlook. You can read more about the program and download a trial copy by visiting our web site http://www.smallbsystems.com.

We would like to hear your ideas on how we could make the application more usefull to you, or your company. My email is paul@smallbsystems.com

Utilities for Microsoft's Outlook 2007©

We have seen that many business users do not know how to export and share the information they have accumulated in Outlook. The Outlook Personal Folders are binary and not readable by most programs. Microsoft plans to give programmers access to these folders in the future. Our first utility extracts the contacts from Outlook 2007 with the click of a button and puts in contacts in a database which can be searched and shared by many commonly used business programs such as Microsoft Word©, Access© and Excel©. It is important for users to be able to access their data freely and our program does that for the contacts stored in Outlook. 

Our next utility will extract the inbox email messages and their attachments. The emails database will include 43 information fields plus the attachment file names and internet header. This is more information than the average user is aware of and a perfect way to comply with legal requirements to maintain a record of emails. The attachment files will be stored in the same directory as the Microsoft Access© database. The user will be able to search the database for emails and read them from within the program.

Systems administrators could take these individual databases and attachment files and merge them into a corporate database.

We plan to take the same approach with the Sent emails and calendar if there is enough interest.

Contacts Database

Outlook 2007 has 65 usable fields for contacts. Our utility captures all of them and presents them to you in a easy to read Windows Form (see below). The information in Outlook is not altered at any time and the information presented in our application is read only. All contact additions and editing take place in Outlook. The user can refresh the database at any time.

Our program, Contacts Database, installs into folder C:\Program Files\Small b Systems\Contacts Database\ and C:\OutLookDB\ where Outlook2007Contacts.mdb database is created to hold the contacts extracted from Outlook 2007. This is an Microsoft Access© 2000 database which can be read by Micorsoft Office Access©, Excel©, Word© and Microsoft SQL Server© to name only a few. We do not make any entries into the Windows Registry. The program has it's own uninstall program.

Please try this program before buying. There is a FREE TRIAL VERSION that is fully functional but limits the contacts extracted to 100.

Download Trial Program