Tiny NFC Tag Challenge

Size does matter, in NFC's world, larger label size  is everything, even more important then large memory size. Good NFC scanning experience is most important.

However, today I will demostrate several types of tiny NFC tag and provide some hints reading them.These tiny tags are quite useful to apply on small objects, such as tools and jewellery.

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.

How to DIY NFC Retro Charm Phone Plug

Making retro charms became a trend these days. The charms look nice and are really easy to make. The materials are also readily available through Taobao.
This time, I also tried to make a retro charms but it's different from others - its a NFC retro charm. I hid a NFC on-metal sticker into the charm and wrote a Youtube video link into it so my phone can play a lullaby from Youtube with a tap of the charm. It's also with a phone plug so I can plug it to my phone to bring it with me.

And the NFC on-metal stickers can be bought here.

Simple App for You to Manage Your NFC Tags - NFC Doctor

There are now many NFC apps on the Play Store, and NFC Doctor is one of the simplest ones to use.

The functions of the NFC Doctor are made clear on its first page – reading, writing and cleaning NFC tags. When you read a NFC tag with the app, you can see the data, type and state of the tag. I tried to use the app to read my tag and saw its data on 'tag data in hex' page and understood that its a rewritable 168bytes Mifare Ultralight C tag from the 'access condition' and 'tag information' page. Such information should be useful for the advanced users.

We can also use the app for writing URL, plain text or application launcher into my NFC tags. It let me to write tag from records in the history so its quite convenient for me to write the same content into many tags.

It has 2 options for us to clear data from our tags. Just randomly choose one of them when you need to clear data. When it has finished clear your tag, it will display a detailed clearing result.

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".

See how Japanese Educate Users about NFC

Education is very important for NFC technology. Although most of the Android phones on the market are NFC-enabled, it just seems that most of the phone users are not awared of the usefulness of NFC.

A mobile accessory company in Japan understands what the users don't know and is trying the teach them through illustrated guides. I guess most of you don't know their language but I believe every one of you can understand what they want to express through the illustrations.

For the guides they have, I think the most interesting one is this. They teach you how to make a key chain using their templates and kits so that elderly can phone relatives, hospital or emergency service when they tap their phone with the key chain. And they also teach you to make a magnet (with their nicely designed icon templates and kits) and smart poster (this one is with a tutorial video).

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.

Answer the Door Even When You are Out

You might not always have someone to visit your home but it won't be a nice thing when you miss any of the visits. Sometimes, may be our neighbour or other people came by and left because we were not at home.

Now here is an application to help us to answer the door even when we are out. What we have to do with it is simple - load a NFC sticker with the app and stick it at your door. When visitor came by, they can read the sticker with their phone, then their phone will automatically phone or message you. With the notification, we can contact the visitor right away and will not miss any of the visitors. Of course, you can also choose not to answer the door when you don't feel like it.

Take a Look in the Latest Make-up Tips with NFC

During the semester, I used NFC to help me study, but now exams ended and my holidays came. It's nice to be able to get out and enjoy but here comes a new trouble - how to do my makeup? These days, I installed a makeup app - Beautylish for me to read the latest makeup tips during makeup. And more than that, I found out a convenient way to open the app.

I've set up a NFC tag behind my mirror so that I can load Beautylish with my mirror, even when I am out. The app I've used is NFC Actions. The set up process is really easy. I just have to add a new task - launch an app and then choose Beautylish. Then, with a tap of my tag, the tag is ready to go.

Using NFC as a tool in studying

As an Industrial Engineering student, I have to study quite a lot of statistics and often refer to various statistics tables while doing statistics questions. I don't like printing the tables out because I tends to lose them.

To read the tables quickly and conveniently, I loaded the link of my course website to a NFC sticker stuck on my ruler. As the writing only involves a simple web link, I used the NXP TagWriter to write the tag. When I use my web browser to access my website, I shared the website through TagWriter, then chose to write the website link to the tag. I found TagWriter quite nice. It is userfriendly and shows you the types of tag you can use to write your information but it would be even better if it can provide more functions.

Now, whenever I need the tables, I put my Nexus 7 onto the sticker to access my website, and choose the table I need for my question.

Writing tag through the sharing function is quite convenient as I don't have to open the nfc app for writing the tag every time - I just have to access the thing I want to write and press "share". This can be a new concept of sharing. We are all used to sharing through facebook or whatsapp... but I believe sharing through NFC tags can be fun in a different way.