If you experience any other problems please contact me at: mstaglib@suddenelfilio.net

Since Microsoft released Tag I was a bit behind to update the interface to include the GetTagID functionality. This is now made up for and the service available for all to enjoy.
I also updated the documentation on how to use the REST interface to get a Tag’s id.

If you experience any problems please let me know using the address that you can find over at http://tag.ws.suddenelfilio.net/ or leave a comment on this page!

System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority ‘ws.tag.microsoft.com‘.

As you can see the authority is complaining about the Microsoft domain. The issue was the certificate used by Microsoft’s Tag API was outdated and thus the error was thrown when the  REST service communicated with the Microsoft service.

Since the certificate has been renewed and is now valid till somewhere early 2011 this problem should be resolved.

http://tag.ws.suddenelfilio.net for more information.

Or download below:

MS Tag Reader HD2
Downloaded 288 times (this is a rar file that contains the CAB file)

UPDATE: The service has been relocated.

I will soon be moving the MS Tag REST API to my new server. Currently this is hosted at Windows Azure, but I don’t want to risk an unwanted and unexpected bill being served because I overused the azure service. Since I currently don’t track the usage I decided to move it.

I will announce the move on codeplex, getsatisfaction.com and the tag site at ning.com During the migration I will try to keep this painless as possible and with the minimum amount of download. It will be a matter of DNS propagation.

So if you are using the MS Tag REST API please leave a comment and I will inform you personally when the transfer will happen.

I really hope that they still extend the API, but my feelings are that the project has halted except for some marketing efforts.

Things I would like to see are:

• Getting a list of your existing tags/categories and their status
• Getting reports on the usage statistics of a tag. (times resolved, mobile device types, platforms,…)
• Deleting tags and categories.

Although I prefer to keep all the Tag information in-house there are already solutions available that allow you to monitor a Tag campaign. Check out Microsoft Tag Perfect Metrics over Lunadevelopment.com

If you want more information about this topic check out the links below:

• Support site at Getsatisfaction.com: http://getsatisfaction.com/microsofttag
• Community site at ning.com: http://microsofttag.ning.com/
• Official Microsoft Tag site: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

If you are a developer using the API I would love to hear which features you would like to see added.

Go check it out at codeplex: http://mstagjavalib.codeplex.com/

I used the following fonts from Dafont.com:

• MS text = Ubuntu title
• Tag text = Electro Insanity
• Rest barcode/text = c39hrp24dhtt (I know strange name, but what is in a name, right?)

Since there is no better way to learn a language then actually working with it I decided I would create a PHP library to access the Microsoft Tag API. Problem with the API is that it was not really PHP friendly in that PHP soap-client could not parse the wsdl created for the API. I the tried a couple of other soap libraries out there but since I’m a newbie not much success was granted to me.

Also I saw that  a REST interface to the MS Tag API was a popular demand over at the community site for MS TAG. I set off to create a REST interface for the API. To do this I used the WCF REST Starter kit preview 2 to create a sort of facade to the actual API service (which is also WCF, but just not REST exposed). It is nothing more than a service that forwards request to the genuine service and returns the result of that service in json. For more information on this facade service go to: http://tag.ws.suddenelfilio.net. The facade is hosted in the Windows Azure cloud.

Along side the development of the REST interface I also started implementing a PHP library that uses the facade service to interact with the MS Tag API. I put this library up at codeplex: http://mstagrestlib.codeplex.com
Currently I’ve implemented support for generating uri, dialer, vcard and freetext tags as well as requesting the generated tag from the MS Tag API. The codeplex project site also has some samples on how to use the library

I plan to implement the entire MS Tag API but the keyword is baby steps

Feel free to download the PHP library a give me feedback on how to improve it because I’m pretty sure it can be better, but I’m limited by the little php knowledge I posses.