I’m not cool — NFC for Your Socials
How to share your social quickly at a conferences & meetups
Remember how we were promised we’d be able to share our socials by tapping our phones together? No special app, no complex configuration, just *tap* and you’re done. Yeah?
Most solutions I’ve seen for this have been terrible! Where’s the promise of sharing stuff easily? Data between two phones shouldn’t be difficult.
What if there’s no app? What if you just touch phones and TADAAAA!? Well you’re in luck. We can do this in a way that’s EZ because technology is finally catching up to the promise.
HOW?
You’ve probably heard of NFC (near field communication), which allows you to use cheap tags to store data. You could even add automations so your lights, music, and even your door lock can be controlled when you scan them.
For a while background NFC tag reading was a pipe-dream, but since the iPhone 12, phones have been able to read NFC directly from the OS.
BUT! There’s one caveat
When you hold your NFC tag up to a stranger’s phone, their phone reads it and generally, doesn’t tell you anything. There’s no automation, no action, and even no notification! UNLESS it’s vey specific.
iPhones will give you a small notification if it fits a VERY specific criteria.
If it’s a simple URL with no metadata you get a notification.
Let’s Do It!
We start by buying some small blank NFC tags on Amazon that we’ll use. These are reasonably inexpensive, and you can use the extras to give tags to your friends, or automate your home!
Once those come in, we need to do two things. Program it and affix it to our phone case. If we do it correctly, we can just tap our phone to another iPhone (or other passive NFC reading phone) and they will see a notification they can click.
PROBLEM 1: How to Program NFC Tags from your iPhone
To write tags from your phone, we’re going to use the app NXP TagWriter.
REMINDER: You need an app to write NFC tags, but you won’t need to use an app to access the passive reading feature for an up-to-date iPhone.
Once you have the app, you will:
- Click “New” in the middle nav
- Select “Link” from the menu
- Make sure you do not enter a description
- Use “Custom URL” for the URI type
- Enter the entire URL in the URI data section, starting from “https://”
You might be inclined to select the URI type and shorten your URL, but I’ve noticed this simply doesn’t work for iPhones if you do this.
NOTE: When you save the record it will try to remove the
https://and if that’s missing, the NFC tag will not cause a notification. This seems to be a bug in the app.
Make sure your record looks like this:
Now you can select “Save & Write” at the bottom right, touch the top of your phone to the tag, and you’ve written it!
Leave the app, and immediately test the tag by holding it to your phone to see if a notification appears. When it does, you can click that notification and follow the URL!
Now you’ve programmed your NFC. You can place it anywhere… but how do you keep it with you on your phone?
PROBLEM 2: How to Affix the NFC Tag to your iPhone
You could buy NFC tags with an adhesive attached, but I find these to be kind of bland, and sometimes they don’t work too well. IMO, the most awesome way would be to have a 2 inch circular sticker hold the 1 inch NFC tag to your phone. That way you don’t have to worry about it being an ugly white splotch that often falls off.
Custom stickers are easy to design and order! You can even design them with transparent sections, so the unused areas blend in with your normal phone. My favorite custom sticker provider is Sticker Mule.
Now that I have 2 inch circle stickers, I can peel them and turn them over. This lets me center the NFC tag exactly in the middle of the sticker so I can assure that all the sides are 100% sealed.
Now, all I have to do is place this on my phone and I’m set. A few caveats that you should observe.
- NFC tags can’t go through much material at all. So I would not recommend putting the tag under your case, because you’re already going through their case.
- The NFC tag reader is at the top of your phone, so you’ll want to place the tag on the bottom back. This keeps the tag far away from your reader, so you can’t accidentally read your own NFC tag. You could probably put it in the middle of your phone just fine.
- MAKE SURE IT WORKS! Once you stick it, you’d need to use someone else’s phone to re-program it. That’s a pain. Get it right the first time!
Et voila!
Conclusion
Could I have made it look better? Probably, but look at the title of the post, I’m not cool! Even with that, I think it will be fun sharing my Twitter info this way. QR codes, printed handles, and all the other ways feel kind of slow and boring.
You might be too cool to put a silly sticker on your phone, or maybe you’re artsy and you’re getting custom stickers made right now? Regardless, I hope you learned a little bit about NFC and interesting ways to share.
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About Gant
Gant Laborde is a co-owner and Chief Innovation Officer at Infinite Red, published author, adjunct professor, worldwide public speaker, and mad scientist in training. Clap/follow/tweet or visit him at a conference.
