Business Cards 2.0: Add Some NFC Magic

Business cards are just as familiar a part of a business as email or telephone. Many have long been predicting death for them due to the "progress" of QR codes, social networks and file transfers, but they are still alive than all living things. We still cannot do without paper cards to transfer contact information to our customers and partners. QR codes did not become popular, as they required the installation of additional applications, good lighting and were too bulky to store all the necessary data. Not all are registered in social networks and it is sometimes inadmissible luxury to store personal data there. And file transfer using various technologies such as AirDrop, Alljoyn or Beam, we will be honest, while not convenient enough and widespread.

Nevertheless, there is a way to add a little magic to your paper business cards and quickly transfer your contact details directly to your partner’s phone book. I am talking about NFC.

Actually, it’s clear what to do with paper business cards: we scan and recognize it using ABBYY Business Card Reader and save it to contacts. But in order to add "IT" and some charm to business cards, you need something extra. In this role, the NFC tag will play perfectly.



I admit honestly that NFC is still supported by devices on Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone (no iPad and iPhone), but some sources indicate that perhaps iPhone 6 will still interrupt Apple's contempt for this technology and support for the standard will be introduced.
In any case, even now the list is pretty impressive:


So, if your client or partner has one of these devices by adding an NFC tag to your business card, you can immediately and magically transfer your full contact details to the device simply by attaching the business card to your phone (of course, NFC must be turned on). But there are some features.

The richness and diversity of the inner world of NFC tags

When I tried to learn more about technology, I noticed that, as a matter of fact, the current market was not there. There are a number of small wholesale sellers, there is AliExpress, there are a couple of stores, as well as tags from Samsung and Sony, which in principle are available in a large number of places, but there is practically no way to just pick up and buy the desired tag in several copies. There are, of course, manufacturers of business cards with tags already embedded inside, but they are inadequately expensive + they also come from Europe and the USA. This, for example, www.nfcbusinesscards.us and us.moo.com/nfc


A more interesting solution is NFC tags that can be pasted onto a business card, but which, as it turned out, are also different.
First of all, through search engines I found an NFC-tag store, which, apparently, is a subsidiary of i-Free and another strange store.
And it seems like everything is fine. Here you have both flat and voluminous, and trinkets, and cards, and you can buy 1 piece.


But ...
They all inside themselves contain an NFC chip NTAG203 ... Which, of course, is supported by almost all possible devices, but it makes it possible to record only 144 bytes of data. In fact, only a full name, company name and telephone number (field names and service symbols are also needed). Which already brings us closer to the point, but somehow you won’t get away with it ...

Finding any other chips turned out to be really difficult. Topaz 512, which holds 450 bytes and is supported by all devices, can only be ordered from the Chinese. Therefore, I decided to go through the "branded" manufacturers and look carefully at Sony SmartTags and Samsung Tectiles .

By the way, a convenient tablet on the characteristics and applicability lies here.

It turned out that Sony has a simple and also slightly compatible MiFare Ultralight chip (up to 60 bytes in total).


And with Samsung everything turned out to be more interesting.
In general, Tectiles of the 1st version contained the Mifare Classic 1K chip, which had a fairly decent capacity (716 bytes is what you need), but the largest manufacturer of chips and equipment NXP, which created this chip, moved away from the standards and zafigachil it Support only for NXP hardware. And therefore, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, Nexus 7 2013, LG G2, HTC One and, most strange, even the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 were not supported and always perceived the label as empty, without the ability to read or write anything due to use another chip - from Broadcom. Naturally, it would be very strange for Samsung to issue branded chips without the support of their top-end devices. And thank God a solution was found.

Samsung has released a new version of Samsung Tectiles 2 with a chip that supports the NFC Type 4 standard, which means it is compatible with many devices, which is also sold in almost any large mobile store (they were in Megaphone, Euroset, Svyaznoy).
So, I bought Samsung Tectiles 2 - 5 chips for 500 rubles (100 rubles per chip, a little expensive, but taking into account the difficulties with the search - I was glad to give at least someone this money for the result):

Nfc software

Next, it was necessary to find the right software to record the maximum possible contact information on the "magic business card." I tried every possible set from Google play and settled on the program from the chip manufacturer (NXP) - TagWriter .
In addition to reading and writing, it can temporarily or completely make a read-only tag, copy tags, read full data from a chip, and so on. In addition, it records the maximum possible business card, and not just pre-recorded data types.
What information can be written on the label in principle?

• business card;
• link to the site;
• just text;
• SMS (and you can record the number and message);
• Email (address, subject, message);
• telephone number;
• Bluetooth data for automatic connection to the device;
• coordinates;
• file link on the device’s file system or on the Internet;
• launch the application on the phone.

Pretty good list. In other applications, NFC recording came across exotic options, for example, recording data for access to a Wi-Fi network or automatically sending SMS to a specific number with text, but for normal situations this set is enough.

We select a business card and select our contact from the address book (having previously created it), which may include a name, a surname, various phones, email addresses, websites, a physical address, date of birth, notes. In theory, you can also take a photograph, but of course it will not fit in a kilobyte business card.

We save the data on the label plus add the launch of the “Contacts” application.


Paste it on the business card.


Check on Samsung S4 and Nexus 4. We bring the card - the magic works, the contact is created automatically!


Now, if you get to a conference where there will be not only iOS devices (for example, I used the “magic business card” on Google IO this way), you can easily let your “augmented business card” be attached to the device and immediately save your contact in the visitor’s address book . WOW effect provided. And taking into account the likely support for NFC in the new iPhone, the area of ​​use is expanding significantly.

By the way, there is another way to use NFC tags, including used ones (for example, old metro maps): record the sequence of actions when a tag with this ID is found next to it. Leader in the Field - Trigger App(former NFC Task Launcher, which added support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth triggers, coordinates, time, battery percentages). You can, for example, put a tag at home, in the car and at work to connect / disconnect wi-fi, data transfer, bluetooth, silent mode, send messages, launch navigation or work applications, start playing music, etc. A very cool way to automate familiar activities. You can read more in the article on the hub.

As a result, with the help of a physical tag, you can add charm to your business card and easily "register" in your partner’s notebook using "NFC magic".

Igor Akimov,
Mobile & Lingvo Department