How pottery studio can makes use of NFC/QR in their masterpiece gallery?

You may find out the writer of this blog like ceramic and pottery so much. Yes, we even tried to chip the ceramic plate before the heating process, of course we failed.

Here, this is a much more simple NFC/QR code application, actually, it is similar with the museum guided tour, or Audio guide.

I went to the pottery lesson sometimes ago and I remember that the Pottery Master Alan Lai has so many great pieces that worth to tell. And that's how I helped Alan to create the ARTHOME Smartposter that linked to facebook, and some name plates for these masterpieces.

We don't get into too commercial, after all, it is a art gallery. So, I didn't use the analytic function to track the number of taps, and track the trends for each week, each months, even we can do so.

I introduced it to a number of visitors, and they really love it.

Special thanks to the great help of Kitty.

McDonalds' Happy Table for Children

Singapore McDonalds have just started a Happy Table campaign for children to have fun. Those Happy Table have hidden NFC tags to form a "NFC race track". When the children have a NFC phone, they can enjoy the NFC-McDonalds racing game. The game itself seems great and the graphics look nice. I wonder if naughty children will mess up, and if the trays on the table will block the way of the "racing cars"... but I still believe that there is a potential as children should be interested in the game.

Tell the Plasma What You Want Using Your Phone

I've heard that the Shibuya Clickable Project will be having interaction between the outdoor TVs and the mobile phones... but seems that they are yet to implement this to their system.

On the other side of the planet, I mean Australia, oOh media set up interactive screens in airports for travellers. To start using the screen, they have to tap their phone to the NFC tag or QR code. Then they can select the content to be shown on the big screen and download many different things - movies, magazines, books... anything you can say from the Google Play store. This should be really useful to people in airport, as they always love to grab something to kill their time on the flight.

Innovative-marketing Series 1 : Fast food delivery

Here I would like to do some BBOOOM!.....a Brainstorming on NFC applications, inspired by some NFC news worldwide.

Reference Link:
Domino's readies nationwide NFC summer campaign

Domino's App: Google Play

Why not make a NFC sticker on a pizza cutter, or fork or spoon for Fastest pizza order using smartphone?

Customers can tap on the NFC tag to quick dial pizza order hotline without any APP. OR...customer can tap on the tag and link to a mobile-website to place order. OR...customer tap on the tag and get launch the app to do the ordering with GPS-location or address information. Customer can also accumulate points and redeem rewards

NFC-enabled Promotion Items help customer
- quick dial
- quickly place order
- no need to spell out tedious ADDRESS
- earn loyalty scheme and redeem prizes

Of course, we can still include QR codes on any printed materials to fit with i-device users.

Step-by-step Guide in NFC-Facebook Marketing (2)

Last time I introduced the way to link up your Facebook Page or photo to NFC tags. This time it would be about they way to initiate people to share your contents to their own timeline. The principle is similar but this time is a bit more complicated. This is again a step-by-step guide:

1. Make sure that you have installed Google URL Shortener and an NFC app which can write URL to NFC tags.

2. Open your mobile web browser. This time not necessarily loading Facebook. Just browse any website you want others to share.

3. In front of your URL, add a string of text "facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?m2w&u="

4. Press the "Share" button, share the long URL to Google URL Shortener and generate a shortened URL.

5. Press "Share URL" button in the Google URL Shortener. This time, share the shortened URL to the NFC app you have installed, and write it to your NFC tag.

6. (optional) If you also need a QR code for your URL, just go back to Google URL Shortener and press "Share QR code".

When you read the tag with your phone, you will a share dialog for your website. However, the dialog is the desktop version, instead of the mobile version of Facebook. It might not look well but when people press the "Share" button there, your website will be posted to their timeline.

I used the desktop version, by including the "m2w" element in the URL, as the mobile version of Facebook doesn't support sharing with this kind of URL. In case Facebook support it later, we will just need to add "facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=" in step 3.

Step-by-step Guide in NFC-Facebook Marketing (1)

Facebook never can be missed in SNS marketing. Almost everybody are just keep inviting people to like their Facebook Page so that their information will be shown on others' Facebook news feed.

This time, I will tell you how to link up your Facebook Page or photos on your Facebook Page to NFC tags. Then, when people read your NFC tags, their phones will show your Facebook Page or photos automatically, such that you can easily invite them to like you. And here comes my step-by-step guide:

1. Make sure that you have installed Google URL Shortener and an NFC app which can write URL to NFC tags.

2. Basic NFC-Facebook marketing starts with using mobile web browser to browse Facebook. Open your mobile web browser and load your Facebook Page / photo.

3. Now its likely that you can see a long URL in your browser, especially if your are browsing Facebook photo. That URL is too long to be written to most of the NFC tags so you need this step - press the "Share" button, share the long URL to Google URL Shortener and generate a shortened URL.

4. Press "Share URL" button in the Google URL Shortener. This time, share the shortened URL to the NFC app you have installed, and write it to your NFC tag.

5. (optional) If you also need a QR code for your URL, just go back to Google URL Shortener and press "Share QR code".

NFC Sticker on Direct Mail Cards

I found the NFC Direct Mail Cards, again from a Japanese company, to be quite interesting. These cards have peelable NFC sticker on them and I guess these cards might become the future way of promotion for companies delivering their merchandise.

I like the pizza example from the seller as pizza is great as we all want ordering pizza to be as convenient as possible. To enjoy the convenient pizza ordering service, we have to peel the NFC sticker out from the card and stick the NFC sticker to a convenient place beforehand. I think sticking it beside the TV would be nice but metal surfaces like the fridge should not be OK. When we feel like having a pizza, we just have to tap the sticker, then the phone will automatically call the pizza restaurant for our hungry tummies.

Dream Aquarium Takeaway?

I love looking at the tropical fishes swimming freely in water but there are not many aquariums near my home so it's difficult for me to see them frequently. However, I found out an interesting Japanese app that can let me build up my own aquarium and visit it anytime I like.

With the app, when I visit an aquarium, I can add the fishes there to the aquarium in my phone and decorate it let it be my 'Dream Aquarium'. The decoration is simple - just to choose background image and add objects but it looks nice. And the app can be ran even after I leave the real aquarium!

It's a sad thing that the app works only when the aquarium is supporting it. Both Sunshine Aquarium in Tokyo and Kaiyukan in Osaka held campaign with the app a few months before...but there is no aquariums currently supporting the app. Hope that I will have a chance to visit an aquarium supporting the app in the future.