Showcase - Sacramento Book Review

The Sacramento Book Review is the first book review publication to use the Microsoft Tag technology, giving its readers the ease of purchasing books they find of interest as they are reading the reviews using their mobile phones. Throughout the 32 page, 200 book review tabloid that is distributed around the greater Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area in bookstores, libraries, coffee shops, colleges, and other gathering places, Microsoft Tags appear accompanying each review.

“After publishing our 1,000th printed book review, we’re excited to be on the cutting-edge of technology—bringing together ease of finding something over the Internet with traditional newspaper printing. We’ve discovered that people still prefer to pick up a newspaper, magazine, or book to read. We all spend so many hours staring at our computer screens, sometimes we just want to pick up a newspaper and relax. With Microsoft Tag, SBR allows the two mediums to converge,” says Heidi Komlofske, owner of 1776 Productions and Co-Publisher of SBR.

Transforming static print into dynamic actionable content

Readers of the Sacramento Book Review within the first page of the tabloid are introduced to the Microsoft Tags that accompany each book review throughout the tabloid. They can instantly download the free, small application to their data-enabled cellphone where they can then begin to scan Tags launching their mobile browsers to a well known online book purchasing site.

Small code size makes a huge difference

Aesthetics for a multi-column tabloid is a critical factor to how readers warm to and receive the publication, Microsoft Tags given their very small size are perfectly suited to be subtly integrated into each page without distracting the reader and keeping the look and feel like that of traditional non-interactive print media.

Color and/or Black and White print - No problem

Microsoft Tags can be printed on color or black and white media, offering the publisher maximum flexibility in terms of keeping costs low, keeping the aesthetics in line with the relevant color set, yet still provide the cellphone user a highly reliable code scanning experience.