Hot on the heels of macro image viewer Seadragon, Microsoft have announced a version of Tag Reader for the iPhone.

Tag Reader uses the phone’s camera to scan Microsoft Tag codes that act as links to multimedia clips, web pages and other content. These small four-colour patterns are wholly unlike QR code 2D barcodes - which act as links to multimedia clips, web pages and other content, only in black and white.

Tag Reader is also available for BlackBerry, Symbian, J2ME and of course Windows Mobile phones. It is free, and you can create your own Tags if you have a Microsoft Live ID. It will be interesting to see if this takes off where QR Codes (mostly) have not.

Available now | Free | App Store (iPhone version) Microsoft (other platforms)

(via TUAW)