Is your business card intelligent?

(Before It's News)

By Brian Clegg

Some of my Moo cards

Business cards are generally boring necessities, and like many people I've tended in the past to get my cards from the cheapest possible supplier – they might not look beautiful, but they do the job. I confess, I still do this with my 'gig handout cards' which just give details of my website, Twitter address etc. so anyone who feels the urge to follow me up after a talk can do so. But for my 'proper' cards with full contact details, I've switched over to Moo*.

This company has been recommended to me for ages by fellow writers, and having got some of their products, I can see why. They feel to be a truly quality product, and they have a number of innovations, including half height cards, cards with curved corners, square cards and cards with a different, full colour photo on the back of each. They also make it easy to incorporate useful features, like phone-scannable QR codes to jump straight to your website. In fact I loved them so much I got both half height and full-sized versions. There's no doubt they are relatively expensive, but I find I don't give out this kind of card very often, so it's not much of a luxury.

Now Moo has a new product: business cards with a built-in NFC chip, so you can use phones with the ability to pay-by-tap to pull up anything from contact details to go straight into your address book to that good old website link again. My feelings are a bit mixed about this. I applaud their innovation, but I'm not sure how useful they'll be as you are bound to discover that most of the people you give a card to don't have the hardware (and even if they do, might be reluctant to download any required software).

Even so, you have to admire the company for ensuring that it stays at the leading edge of businesscardery.

* As it is sometimes the case, I need to emphasise I am not being sponsored by Moo in any way to make this recommendation. However, if they would like to send me a voucher to get some more cards for free, I wouldn't complain.

Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.

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