Microsoft at CES has just unveiled its second iPhone app, Microsoft Tag. The program lets users take snapshots of almost anything then the program retrieves information including media, contact information, special offers, and so on. Microsoft Tags is based on Microsoft’s High Capacity Color Barcodes system, which is a high capacity barcode system that stores more information, as seen in the image below. The system is similar to the QR Code matrix. You can get Microsoft Tag now Read the full story

Visa has just released their first financial application for Google’s GPhone. Visa originally announced it Sept 25 08. The application has a lot of useful features. It allows you to monitor your account, transactions, and it alerts you when there is new activity. You can also use GPS to find where the closest ATMs are from a map within the application. The application can also present you special offers from merchants, probably one of the less useful features. The most useful feature is probably the ability to locate ATMs, and the ability to see new notifications from activity on your accounts. This way, you can be better informed and take necessary actions faster if you notice abuse.

I personally don`t think this app is too useful, I mean, you can easily locate ATMs from Google Maps already on your phone, and you probably don`t want to be constantly reminded of activities you already know of.

The Google Open Handset Alliance today has just announced 14 new members are on board for further developing and adopting Google’s Android Mobile OS. The new companies include Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Garmin, ASUSTek, AKM Semiconductor Inc., Telco Vodafone, among others. Ericsson has also previously announced it plans to release a Google powered device by mid 2009. “Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, CVP and head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson. The most notable news here is that Vodafone is on board, who has more than 280 million subscribers. The GPhone is expected to sell about 500,000 units by the end of 2008 (manufactured by HTC), and will only sell more given the new partnerships in 2009. The GPhone is free for partners to use while other mobile operating systems are significantly more costly. I can tell you from experience that each Windows Mobile license costs about $7 per unit, while Symbian costs about $3 per unit. Clearly, there is a lot of money for companies to save when they sell millions of units.

The mobile phone space has become very interesting recently. Companies are realizing consumers expect more, want to stay connected, and want to have access to a variety of reasonably priced applications. More recently, BlackBerry maker RIM started a $150 million fund towards the development of third party applications for the BlackBerry. However, third party applications for the BB are scarce and pricey. Nokia also realizes that users want to stay connected with friends all the time and will introduce a new home-screen platform for their upcoming Nokia N97 where users can easily update their location and stay connected with friends via Facebook and other social networking services. As the GPhone becomes widely adopted, we will begin to see an array of programs, that will hopefully benefit consumers as other market players increase innovation to push bigger and better products of their own.