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.
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.
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.
