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Wish I could give ten upvotes for this, there's nothing I like better than a five minute solution to a problem that has plagued me for years.

My problem for years has been that people still ask me for business cards even though I stopped carrying them in like 2005.

Turns out there is a package called qrencode in the Debian repositories so this is as simple as:

$ sudo apt install qrencode

$ qrencode -o linkedin-qrcode.png 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/myprofile'

Plus a few others, personal website, company website etc. All copied into a Google Drive folder as you suggest.

Next time someone asks, boom pop out the qr code.

Brilliant. Thank you.

Try the following:

    echo "RSVP by Text"
    qrencode -t UTF8 'SMSTO:212-555-1212:Thank You! RSVP for (name, number of adults, number of kids)'

    echo "RSVP by Email"
    qrencode -t UTF8 "mailto:rsvp@example.com?subject=RSVP: Some Event&body=[ ] - Yes      [ ] - No"

    echo "Directions"
    qrencode -t UTF8 "1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington, D.C. 20500"

Plasma lets you generate a QR Code by copying something to the clipboard and clicking on the QR Code button. It is able to display the QR Code, and the QR Code happens to be draggable.

It seems we are very close to add a Save button there, which would be incredibly convenient :-)

That might be for a future contribution.

It also has an option to do the same for Wi-Fi networks, which is pretty cool

Popular apps already have this built in (WhatsApp / LinkedIn / other social media platforms).

My "killer" idea back then was simply putting a LinkedIn-qr-code on back of my business card. Whenever I handed it over to someone (at a conference, mostly), they found it brilliant, scanned it immediately and sent a request on LinkedIn. The good things about this procedure were that:

* I didn't need to keep random people's business card and forge who they were after a 3-5day busy conference, I just had to go to my LinkedIn, and could remember them by their face

* vice versa: they could associate my contact accept with a face. Not to mention that this opened a more direct communication channel with a lesser chance to "ghost" me.

I guess business cards are not really a thing anymore on the more popular conferences that target a younger (engineer) audience.

This helps with the initial exchange of contact information, but keeping it updated for the people that have it is a real challenge, especially if you want to avoid using social media.

I did this for some people in my wider team when they were going to events.

Most generated qrcodes (from a URL) will work fine, but LinkedIn is strange as their direct link will open a web browser and not always kick open their app on a persons phone. (The issue mostly seemed to be older versions of iOS that created headaches).

If you’re doing this for LinkedIn, instead open the app on your phone, find your QR code for your profile, screenshot the QR code their app generates, then crop it and use it as you need.

IOS link handling might not be that great on older versions. Probably if you decode that QR code they might be using some custom link scheme that they register for their app. That's still a valid approach but should not be needed with modern phones as you can just register your website urls to be handled by the app.

Two iPhones now also can exchange contact information when you tap them together. Not sure whether this also works for wifi credentials. Sharing wifi credentials does work between contacts if you are on the same wifi as they are trying to join.

Closest thing is that you can view your current WiFi password from settings and copy it to your clipboard. You could probably airdrop that to another iPhone. The feature to share your WiFi may not be far away though.

I feel like in the time I take to open an app, find a QR code, and they open the camera and scan it, I'd have just told them the 10 digit phonr number and been done with it

that's true, yet before I unlock my phone, Google shows me what song is playing... its almost as if it should not be called a phone because they don't prioritize that functionality.

I also have a QR code in a photo widget. It takes me < 2 seconds to unlock my phone and swipe once on the home screen, and there's usually a delay as people pull out their camera, but there are a couple advantages:

1. People spell my name right. Even when I tell people how to spell my name exactly, they still get it wrong. If they scan my QR code, they always get it right

2. I can put all my info in one place. My vCard has my phone number, several emails, links to my social media, Discord, and whatnot.

3. You can include a photo, if you don't mind making the QR code much larger. With a well optimized image, this can be a nice addition.

wondering how the https://indieweb.org movement and their microformat approach to profiles and the use of RSS feeds isn't already an expression of this idea, only missing bit is the ability to quickly pull a blog contact into one's phone?