It’s not always easy to explain why NFC is such a big deal, or why it has the potential to completely change how you use your mobile device. NFC gets the most attention when it is seen as a means for mobile transactions, but the sheer volume of simple automation tasks completely change how users do things like checking in to locations or sharing information between devices. There was wide speculation that NFC was coming to the iPhone 5, but sadly that didn’t happen. Fortunately, the team at Flomio has assembled a plan to bring NFC to iDevices with the Flojack dongle.
Similar to how a credit card reader would connect to an iDevice for card payments, the FloJack pops into the headphone jack on the iPad or iPhone. Once connected, the NFC Actions app being developed by Flomio will be able to receive content from any NFC enabled utility. As demonstrated in the video above, you can receive content from tags, and even send content back and forth with other platforms. Services like Android Beam for photos aren’t likely to work since they require more than just NFC to function, but all of the basic features found in NFC phones will be available.
Flomio is also making their SDK available to iOS developers who want to include NFC support in their apps. Foursquare check-ins, for example, can be triggered by a simple scan of an NFC tag so long as the app supports the content. NFC for iOS would dramatically expand the userbase of the technology all at once, and give iOS developers a whole new kind of technology to play with. The FloJack kickstarter starts at $39 to get one of the dongles, and $99 for the developer kit that unlocks access to the developer program and the Flomio dev team.
Obviously a dongle you have to carry around in your pocket when you wanted to use NFC is far less elegant than having the technology built into the device, or having a sleeve that goes over the phone to provide the service. Flomio makes it worthwhile though, by the apparent lack of restrictions. This is a tool that can be given to users and developers to allow them to find their own purpose, which is how NFC has grown into what we know it to be today.
Read more on Kickstarter
No comments:
Post a Comment