I notice that Moo are now selling NFC enabled business cards. As regular readers know, I'm not a great fan of NFC - mostly because it's so expensive. The NFC cards are £1.20 each - the regular cards cost just 26p each!

What if we change the idea of what a business card is? Why do I need to hand over a physical bit of dead tree in order to exchange contact information? That's dumb.

Last week I was at the Over The Air hackference. While there, I was lucky enough to grab a few "Physical Web" beacons from Ilario Gressi of Google.

Is there some way to turn them into a high-tech business card?

Yes. Yes there is.

What Is An iBeacon?

There are a lot of misconceptions around iBeacons. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a version of Bluetooth which is specifically designed to be efficient at broadcasting small amounts of data.

An iBeacon simply transmits an ID number via BLE. That's it. When your phone hears the broadcast, it looks up the ID and does something with it. The typical use case is that it alerts your Coffee Shop's app as to which branch you are in.

Google's Physical Web project does something much more interesting with iBeacon technology. Rather than just broadcasting an ID, it (ab)uses the Advertising Packets to broadcast a URl!

How It Works

I carry around a Physical Web beacon on my keyring. I've programmed it with the URl of my .tel website. It spends all day broadcasting that message via BLE.

If you have Android's Physical Web app, or iOS Chrome - your phone should display a persistent notification showing all the nearby beacons.

Or, you can open up the app and see a list of nearby beacons.

One click (either in notification or app) and it takes you directly to a website with my digital business card.

Fantastic!

Issues

The Physical Web specification is still evolving - and this BLE Business Card idea isn't without problems.

• Beacons are expensive. Around £20 each - or US$50 for 3. More expensive than NFC, but you keep the beacon rather than hand them out.
• URl length is limited to 144 bits. That's really short. I've suggested using a 7-bit alphabet, but it seems that the preferred solution is to use a URl shortener.
• Web addresses only. You can't directly embed an email address, phone number, or BitCoin link - just web.
• Limited hardware support. Just like NFC - you need a phone with the right chips in it. And you need an app. (*mutters darkly about how QR codes only need a camera lens. And an app...*)
• Battery life. BLE beacons should last 2 - 5 years on a single coin cell. NFC has no battery - it is powered by the phone - so should last forever. Similarly, QR Codes will last ask long as their ink sticks to paper.
• Size. A Physical Web beacon isn't small. Not as big a business card holder, true, but not quite small enough for a key-ring.
• Business cards, for all their faults, provide a physical memento of an interaction. A ritualised exchange takes place which, culturally, may carry more semantic weight than merely scanning the æther for nearby signals.
• Finally, I'm pretty cool being the only person in the room with a BLE Business Card - but what's it like when everyone has one? At the conference we set up loads of Physical Web beacons at once - and the app quickly became full of every beacon in a 75m radius:
  
  Theoretically, the app will sort by whichever signal is the strongest - which should mean that if I'm standing next to you, your app will pick my card first. But no guarantees.

So, not perfect - but certainly a neat way to broadcast your identity to nearby people. With BLE making its way into more and more devices, it's certainly possible that it will overtake NFC as the primary way to discover and exchange data.

I encourage you to contribute to the Physical Web spec and apps, as well as to EddyStone which is part of the underlying technology. You can buy Physical Web beacons or, if you're feeling adventurous, build your own BLE beacons.

An edited version of this paid-for post appeared at Moo.com on the 7th of June

QR codes are awesome! I mean, you may think your moo mini-cards are pretty funky - but they're nothing without a QR code.

Why do you hand your card over to someone? You want the recipient to plug your contact details into their address book, right? So you give them a bit of card and then you expect them to tap away on their phone, like a primitive ape, until they've saved your number. And hope they've saved it correctly.

That's just so.... analogue... Isn't there a better way of doing things?

Yes. Yes there is. QR Codes are here and they are going to ROCK YOUR WORLD!

Introducing QR Codes

QR Codes are two dimensional barcodes which can quickly and easily be scanned by most camera phones. They're free to create, easy to use, and they look like this. Go take a look in your phone's app store - you'll find several free readers. If you can't, point your phone to GetReader.com to see what's available for your device.

QR Codes can contain many different types of data - URL, phone number, SMS, and vCard. I'm going to show you how you can integrate these into your Moo Cards.

URL

With a QR code on your Moo Card, you can point people straight to your blog. To your .tel website. Or any other site you like. Perhaps to search Twitter for your hashtag?

Phone Number

Scanning in this code will prompt your phone to give me a call. Why not leave me a message?

SMS

Want someone to scan your card and send you a message? Dead easy.

vCard

Scan this code and my address will appear in your phonebook as if by magic One thing to note is that these QR codes are rather large - it's probably best to print them on full size cards.

Putting It All Together

Here are some of my cards. I've used free or Creative-Commons images of phones and placed the QR code inside them.

Resources

There are several free sites you can use to create your QR Codes. I recommend using QRstuff to generate these codes. You can also use Google Charts for QR Codes if you want dynamic, highly customised codes. Finally, if you want to generate QR codes on your own site, there are several free resources. I use Swetake's QRCode v0.50.

Final Tips

Here are some tips to make sure you get the most out of your QR codes.

• Use black ink on a white background to ensure the code is readable.
• Ensure there is some whitespace around the code.
• If you resize the QR codes, don't use any interpolation.
• QR Codes can have variable error-correction. Unless your codes are likely to get dirty, you can set this to "low".
• If you're pointing people to a URL, make sure it's mobile friendly.
• Make sure your phone numbers are in International Format (+44 for the UK).
• Be creative! QR Codes are appearing on everything from advertising posters to urban graffiti - make sure yours stand out.

Enter WorldCard Mobile - the app for Android which claims to be able to recognise the text on business cards and add them directly to your address book. At only US$5.99 it's a good deal cheaper than some of its competitors - but does it work?

Walk Through

Snapping a card is simplicity itself. The camera focuses, then churns away, You get the chance to rotate the image if, like me, you took the photo from askew.

Processing is relatively quick if the card is simple. Some complex designs fail completely - especially if the text colour isn't sufficiently differentiated from the background.

One nice feature is the ability to add a contact picture. You can either snap a photo there and then - or use the image of the card. Most useful when the card has a photo on it.

Finally, you can edit the entry if the scanner has got any of the details incorrect.

Bugs

OCR is an inexact science. WorldCard fails in the same areas that any other bit of software does. Is that a phone or fax number? Is that an I or l? So it's worth double checking any entry.

One annoying bug is the software's assumption that all phone numbers are formatted in the American style - that is my number of +447717512963 is formatted as +44 (7717) 512 - 963. It's not a show-stopping bug - but it's annoying for neat-freaks like me.

It also missed out my Twitter handle - @edent - admittedly, there's not always a field for that in an address book - but it could go into "notes".

Conclusion

WoldCard's website proclaims:

No manual entries. No typos. No more confusion in your contacts

It's nearly right. There is still some manual entry to do.

It's far better than Google Goggles which - while fine for scanning books - is hopeless at business cards.

It's cheaper than paying someone to enter the details for you.

In short, until everyone puts their contact details on a .tel site - or uses a VCARD in a QR code - this is an essential piece of software.

WorldCard Mobile is available from the Android Market.