Proximity Content Distribution: Hypertag

This last in a 3 part series looks at Hypertag, a U.K. production. Hypertag works much like our previously discussed solution, Wideray, but its target market is a little bit different (although there is a lot of cross over).

For example, Hypertag is ideal as a solution coupled with a traditional print advertisement. Let's say, you're standing at a bus stop, and there is one of those board ads that form part of the shelter you stand under while waiting for your bus -- it's a new CD advertisement for the band Audioslave. On the ad you notice a "point your IR port here" -- you do that, and you get a 15 second sound sample straight to your phone via IR. Not only have you saw the band's new CD cover on the ad, but you get a piece of their music, too. This is actually pretty cool ... it doesn't seem very interactive, but that's not what it's really designed to be -- it's meant to add another layer of "multi-media" or usability to the traditional print ad, and I think it's a pretty cool thing. Same thing could be used quickly to nab a coupon, or get the phone number of a booking office (say, the Blue Man Group is coming to town). .

From looking over their site, it first appears that you don't need any client application on your device, which would make it stellar (for getting one piece of content), but further study shows that this isn't the case, and you in fact need a client side application. Also, like Wideray, admin isn't discussed in much detail. I believe, however, that the hardware of Hypertag and Wideray have their admin done via GSM -- that is, a SIM card is inserted into their hardware (probably on some embedded Linux setup), and you directly link to those little boxes (not really sure how big Hypertag hardware is), and you update the content from there -- I'm guessing, that alone could get expensive, but it make sense in the case of Hypertag if you have their hardware all over the place (with Wideray, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth admin, or even standard RJ45 makes more sense). They probably get users on the service to update, too -- way to generate money, but gauge their customers (only speculation of course).

Anyway, their website doesn't reveal much -- it seems Wideray, Hypertag, and Bluepulse are all sneaky, as their webpages aren't all that informative, especially for larger funded companies ... maybe it's a "we don't want anybody to know about us" type thing, but that doesn't make sense (or maybe it does, as how they do things isn't so important to the users). If anybody in the UK (or in the US, where it seems they've got a foot on the ground) has used it, please let us know your user experience.

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