NFC enabled business cards | Hacker News Reader

NFC enabled business cards

moo.com

103 pointsEwanToo56 comments

I should get some with my URL set to tel:27673855# . I'm sure there's a case to be made for NFC, but I'm not totally sold on the value of invisible things that cause phones and other electronics to do things.

One of the primary features of NFC is the requirement that you be near (within inches of) the NFC tag in order for it to work. One useful application I've seen for this is a custom NFC tag someone placed in a homemade docking station to activate their phone's dock mode. Another was used in a homemade Gameklip[0]-type device to activate bluetooth and connect with the controller.

[0] http://thegameklip.com/

And what happens when they're hidden in a perfectly ordinary desk blotter in a hotel room in Silicon Valley?

You've got the first act to a corporate espionage story.

i feel NFC holds a lot of promise in these types of applications; in that it seems like an ideal technology for developing 'trigger' cases, where you could set any number of actions based on NFC pairing..

Nokia showed off that very thing you described with their Lumia 920; where placing it on one of their NFC wireless charging docks automatically launches a predefined app (presumably some sort of dock mode, but you can set whatever you want). likewise, with one of their wireless speakers they showed NFC pairing used to rapidly connect (via Bluetooth) and start playing music without having to mess with anything on the phone [1]; i thought that was pretty neat..

[1] can't find the actual video of them demoing it, but this is it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4zx2xy6VjE&feature=playe...

Yep, I use a tag by my front door to turn on 3G and Bluetooth on my phone before I leave. It's great. The phone (Galaxy S3) needs to be turned on & unlocked and the centre of the back needs to be within about an inch of the tag to activate. It seems like a decent security tradeoff.

I use an application that detects where I am and turns things off and on as required. Much better than waving your phone at a sticker.

Care to share which app?

Tasker https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....

Thanks - It's not the same as http://www.taskerapp.com/, is it?

Blackberry famously solved this problem with magnets (in the holster which activated holster/sleep mode)

> I'm not totally sold on the value of invisible things that cause phones and other electronics to do things.

I'm not either and with good reason:

"Black Hat speaker shows how NFC can be used for malicious attacks"

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/28552-black-hat...

Apparently the NFC opens a link to a QR code.

Ha very funny. My first thought was 'this sounds awfully a lot like a QR code'.

Also, as an iPhone user I feel NFC is not used nearly enough. Maybe Android users feel differently but until NFC is brought to the iphone I just dont see this being that useful.

I think NFC is great for things like payment. I actually used it for the first time in a new AMEX credit card that I got by just being able to tap the card on the register. It would be even cooler if someone would make it widely adopted on phones now. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

As an Android user, I've used NFC primarily to share apps with other users. I just open the app, tap phones, and presto they've got the Play Store open with the app.

No! Bad!

You would only ever need one paper NFC card (for yourself). The whole idea is to store the info digitally. That's what NFC is for. In fact, even one paper business card is too many if your phone supports NFC.

According to TFA, you get one NFC card with a pack of plain-paper cards, so that you can give paper to someone without NFC and lend the NFC card to someone with a supporting phone.

Which means that this would be a rather good choice for someone who just bought an iPhone 5.

Hahaha. Figure this: "Do you have a card?", "Not only have I got a card, I've got an NFC-enabled card. Put it against your phone and let magic happen." Awkward but hey I want one.

And the inevitable pickup line, "Got a card?" "Sure rub your phone on my pants pocket"

For read only data (such as business card data), what is the benefit of using NFC over RFID? I was under the impression that NFC is backwards compatible; can Android devices with NFC scan RFID tags?

NFC is a subset of RFID. There are many RFID frequency bands.

Android devices can read most 13.56mhz tags... but none of the other bands.

What's the benefit over just using a QR code on the back of your card? Every modern smartphone can scan QR codes. Only a small fraction can use NFC, and it surely increases the marginal cost of each card more than a double sided print.

I think there's a lot more friction involved in interacting with a QR code: tapping a phone to a surface is a lot easier than opening the appropriate app and trying to focus (hard in low light) on the code.

But it's not like NFC based card would solve this problem, you should still give a permission (I think) if you want the contact to be added to your phonebook etc.

I understand you have to put the card very close, 3-4 cm or so to the phone but otherwise it would be good way to troll or scam people... create a fake card and the name would be Your Mom, actually call to a friend/extremely expensive number... or things like that.

NFC could easily be implemented so that permission isn't necessary, but even then tapping on one's screen (only the sender has to tap in the existing implementation of Android Beam) is much lower friction than scanning a QR code.

swipe>unlock password> 123456 AppX>locate, open Permission?>Y/N

Its not frictionless either way. NFC cannot be trusted. You need to aknoweldge Y/N prior to letting anything write data onto a phone. Too much risk otherwise.

You don't need to location AppX, the Android Intent system (Android being the only consumer mobile platform with an NFC implementation at the moment) can respond to the data in the NFC tag and open the appropriate app.

I'm not claiming it's frictionless, but just that there's less friction than a QR code.

The worst QR code implementation I've seen was at a quick-lube place. The QR code was on a banner inside the garage, but because the light from outside would wash out any camera, you had to get out of your car to scan it. Then all it did was open a web page telling you to text a number to get a coupon...

NFC requires you to physically be at the location and QR codes don't. For example, you can take a pic of a QR code and upload the picture for anyone else to scan. NFC only works if you're near :).

What's the benefit of QR over just having text in an OCR-friendly representation?

The processing power available to a smartphone is improving (not just locally: cloud-based contact management would benefit greatly from business card scanning), and making text look good is the foundation of print design, while QR codes always seem tacky if they're printed at a size appropriate for scanning.

Ostensibly ease-of-use - the NFC can theoretically be done with a tap, QR requires a dedicated app or QR-aware device and proper aiming with the camera.

It doesn't have to be either/or. I have a thin NFC tag with a QR code printed on it stuck to the back of my business cards!

Perhaps the amount of data?

For reference, here's a QR code with a three line postal address, email address and mobile number:

http://www.moongate.ro/products/qr_code-vcard/serve_card?c=K...

Not beyond the realms of what could be placed on a business card, a lot cheaper to make and certainly more useful for most phone users.

On the other hand, the NFC card is a lot more attractive looking and has an extra "wow" factor. Of course, it would be useless to me as my phone doesn't have NFC, so I would be left keying the contact details into my phone by hand.

Now add in PGP key sigs (or the entire public key), website, SSL key sigs, bitcoin address, and other information I haven't thought of yet, oh, and wrap all of that inside a VCARD, it becomes quite large quite quickly.

I'm not saying for the basic info a VCARD QR Code won't work, but for more info it breaks down.

Wikipedia has some more information on it, but for realistically printable QR codes (version 10), you can probably store about a hundred bytes.

Alternatively you could use Video QR: http://stephendnicholas.com/archives/310 ;)

You can easily contain all the data needed of a vcard to qr-code... except picture of course - http://yeblon.com/vcard-on-business-card-with-qr-code

I'm not saying for the basic info a VCARD QR Code won't work, but for more info it breaks down.

My NFC tag is simply a link to my vcard.... Well, a php file that looks like this:

<?php

header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename=klinquist.vcf');

header('Content-type: text/x-vcard');

readfile('klinquist.vcf');

I love the concept of this product, especially in the context of contact exchanges and "business card replacements."

If implemented and adopted by the masses, something like this embraces the digital realm without forgetting the physical.

When there are enough NFC enabled phones out there to make this useful, the card owner will most likely have an NFC phone also. 2 NFC phones nearby will make this card a bit unnecessary.

Great idea, though I hope there reading this and start selling NFC proof wallet holders for them.

What with all these NFC pass's for this and that and now credit cards, you would think somebody would sell proper protective wallets for them to prevent the details being read by passers by and the like (there be kit that can read them from across the street for a while now, its radio based after all).

Still, I'm impressed at the way there testing the market for them and promoting them, genuis.

There is already plastic sleeves [1] with the same effect. The primary goal is to prevent interferences between all the NFC cards you'll have in your wallet (Yes, that's not a problem to have in the US for a few more years)

[1]http://flux.bz/whatis.html

I did this in Jan 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjUoSO__Bno

I also recently added an NFC tag to my iPhone 5: http://i.imgur.com/1pQxJ.jpg

Could you please link to this NFC tag - where can you buy it?

I just bought a pack of those cards a few days ago. There is a high likelihood that my cards have chips embedded. I will write a blog post testing them if that turns up true.

So now my iphone 5 needs a nfc reader - anyone build one yet?

Tether it to a Samsung S3...

Or the better HTC One X... :oP

That's a nice idea and execution. But I really think about the role of paper business cards today. Is it still a necessity?

A friend of mine was doing them for posters to give feedback on them. Don't know how that's going to work.

Why not just have a phone with NFC instead of cards?

Because as soon as you meet someone who doesn't have NFC (iPhone) you're going need that card.

Then the NFC of the card won't work. You may as well have a regular card then!

Why not both? :)

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