Tagging the world

Some of the benefits of using electronic tagging technology and its application in several devices are discussed. The most common ways of tagging involve visual codes such as the barcodes seen in the supermarkets and radio frequency or RFID tags. The most promising use of tagging is associating physical objects with digital information, especially the emerging World Wide Web. The first application of electronic tagging, developed in collaboration with Swedish medical authorities, was the linking of barcodes on medicine packaging to an Internet information directory. The codes can hold hundreds of characters which is more than enough for a complicated Web address. An important step for tagging may be better, more colorful tags such as the Korean ColorCodes system that are easier to integrate into existing design. Things are expected to get more beneficial when electronic tagging would be combined with another tagging explosion.