Printing company MOO Labs has just brought the humble business card into the information age. Employing the same NFC (Near Field Communications) technology that makes it possible to make a credit card purchase without actually having to swipe your card, the new MOO Labs business card takes the technology in a whole new direction, and it’s definitely worth a look.
The cards employ a silver nano printing technology that allows them to take advantage of the NFC tech, and can even be programmed to provide a variety of actions that allow them to interact with various apps on your smartphone. For instance, you can program a card in such a way that simply waving it in front of your phone will initiate a call to the person who gave you the card. You can also program the cards to send an email, send a tweet, take a photo, or anything else you can imagine.
All of this is accomplished via IFTTT (If This, Then That) technology that allows you to create a virtually unlimited number of unique functionalities, specifically tailored to your individual needs. Some might call this a simple marketing gimmick, but the reality is that this opens up an entire new avenue of communication. The kinds of interactions you can develop, and the data that can be stored on the cards themselves is virtually unlimited. You could, for instance, program the business card so that when it is “swiped” in front of your phone, it pulls up your company website, a maps page that shows you the fastest route to the location, a store locator page that reveals the nearest brick and mortar location of the business represented by the card, or pretty much anything else you can dream up.
This is but the latest in an ongoing series of iterative steps that is slowly bringing the digital and physical worlds together. It’s a clever use of AR (Augmented Reality) technology that is well worth a look to see if it might be something you want to deploy in your business.
