Card Sharp

Earlier this year I managed to commit all sorts of social and business faux pas by going over to Japan without a stack of business cards. Over there, everyone you meet – from business people to the concierge at the hotel – hands you their business card and expects the same in return. I was blithely unaware of this and subsequently appeared even ruder and more antisocial than usual through my perceived unwillingness to be contacted. I’m due back in Japan in December, and this time I’m determined to be prepared.

I do actually have several business cards (one for my employer, a ‘business’ one, and a ‘personal’ one) but they’re all out of date in one way or another, so I decided to get some new ones printed.  I thought I may as well get one card printed to cover all eventualities, but then hit the problem of (1) not knowing exactly what information to include, and (2) struggling with how to fit it all on a single card.  Along with the usual couple of ‘phone numbers (work and mobile – I never use the home phone), three websites, and several e-mail addresses, there’s also a multitude of other ways to contact me – a handful of IM clients, Skype, and the usual social networking sites, including LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Facebook. (Not that anyone ever does, you understand, but they could…)

Then there’s the added complication that I don’t necessarily want everyone to have all of my details – for example, I don’t particularly want my business contacts knowing my blog address, and my ‘friends’ don’t really need to know about my wiki, and so on. So ultimately I hit upon a compromise. On the front side of my new business card I have the usual standard contact details – name, phone number, primary website, and so on – and on the back I have icons for the various other contact/networking methods I use, along with a space to write either my user name, registered email address, or whatever. When I give the card to someone with whom I want to share a particular avenue of contact, I simply circle the appropriate icon, and write my user name in the space.  Genius!

Of course I’m entirely incapable of stopping there.  One of the contact mechanisms I’ve become increasingly excited about is BlackBerry Messenger (which uses BlackBerry’s own network and is therefore free). All of the IM clients on the BlackBerry seem to have been upgraded and improved recently, but with version 5, BlackBerry Messenger has stepped things up a notch by adding support for QR codes (2D barcodes). These are those odd-looking square black-and-white things that work kind of like standard UPC barcodes, but have the advantage that they can easily be scanned by a camera (as opposed to a laser scan-gun – I know all about them thanks to my current exciting Warehouse Management project). And because just about all phones (and all recent BlackBerry models) have cameras, BB Messenger users can swap contact details by photographing each other’s QR code (one user displays it on their screen and the other photographs it with their BB camera, and their BlackBerry adds the scanned user to their contact list).

Actually, all the BB Messenger QR barcode contains is your name and BlackBerry PIN (device ID). Which is all that BB Messenger needs, but is not much use to non-BlackBerry users. So I did a bit more research and learnt that you can pretty much encode anything into a QR barcode (and there’s plenty of free creators on the Internet to do so). You can encode a URL which, when scanned (by BlackBerry or other device) will send your browser to that address, or an email address which will open your email application, or a phone number which will dial that number, and so on.  What I really wanted was something that contained all of my various contact details, and that could be read by any device.  The two things that came closest were vCards and MeCards. vCards are more common, but contain more information and are therefore larger. MeCards were invented by NTT DoCoMo (Japanese telecoms provider) and are not so widespread (except in Japan) but have the advantage of being smaller.  Unfortunately, in both cases, the resultant QR barcode was really too big to fit on a standard-sized business card and still be recognized by a cameraphone. So in the end I just opted to use my BlackBerry Messenger QR barcode instead.  So my final (back side of my) business card looks as follows:

What I really wanted to do (given the size limitations) is have a URL encoded into the barcode which, when scanned, sent you to a website where you could find/download all of my other contact details. But that would necessitate having all of my personal contact information available on a web page somewhere, and I didn’t like the sound of that.

What I did find, in the course of trying to find my ultimate solution, however, was a new-ish service called DUB (crappy name, good service). This is really just a way of making sure that you have the latest contact information for your contacts. People create a DUB account and record all of their contact information there. If you update any of your information (new email, phone, etc.), then DUB automatically sends the updates to all of your contacts – at least the ones that are also using DUB. Which may not be many, but one of the advantages of DUB for the BlackBerry (or iPhone for all you Apple fanboys) is that it will update the contact details in your regular device address book automatically, so you don’t have to maintain/look in two address books. Which is all pretty clever.

What’s even more clever is that if two DUB users are in the vicinity of each other, DUB can swap their contact details wirelessly and automatically, without any barcode scanning. Which is great for someone like me who likes to keep in contact with the minimum amount of actual contact possible.  So I signed up for DUB, too.  Not that it helps me with my business cards (although I do include the icon on the card, now) but I do like to explore all technological opportunities, no matter how useful (or not) they prove to be.

Anyway, in a few days I should have my new business cards, courtesy of those nice people at VistaPrint, all set for my trip back to Japan, where I can confidently throw my new cards around like a Vegas croupier with Parkinson’s.  And then all I need is to find someone there who uses BlackBerry Messenger, or who has even heard of DUB. Because I currently don’t know anyone who does/has so far, and scanning my own QR code (only to be told “Contact already exists”) is getting old (and a little bit sad).