At BarkWeb we’re eager to try different technologies, understand them and investigate their usefulness for our clients; one that has caught our attention recently is NFC Tags.[endclip]
NFC stands for Near Field Communication and is set as a standard for most popular smartphones such as Samsung Galaxies, Sony Xperia’s, Google Nexus devices and more. NFC tags are simple to use, tap or swipe your android device on one and then the data from the tag is transmitted to your phone.
This is a neat feature for smart phones and it can also be used to tap two devices together to transmit data, in a similar way to Bluetooth, but in this case the NFC tag is used to push pre-programmed information to a phone that requests it via a tap or swipe.
Although very impressive NFC hasn’t really had a major impact in the smart phone market yet (Apple products do not currently support NFC).
Awareness of NFC is low, but increasing with the advent of NFC for use in small payments, no doubt it will be a technology that will grow or soon be dropped!
We are looking at deploying multiple NFC tags into a couple of clients at the moment, the idea being that when visiting a showroom they will be able to link to further on-line information about products and services whilst seeing the offering. They could also be useful for conferences, trade fairs or market stalls to offer on-line ordering, retail units to provide out of hours offers and information etc!
How to enable NFC on your smartphone:
Assuming your phone is Android and NFC compatible, here are step by step instructions on how to enable NFC on your device.
- Navigate to Settings
- Select “more..” (Settings > More…)
- Select the tick box on the right hand side next to NFC
- Now you have successfully enabled NFC
If you want to make your own NFC tags there are plenty of online retailers selling them. You will need additional software to write the data; this can be found on the Google Play store for free. The best application we have used is ‘NXP's TagWriter’.
If you want a demonstration or to discuss your NFC project please contact us.