Proud to be a G.
Today’s a big day for us. We just broke 1000 members in our community. With over 190 questions and more than 480 replies, our Forums are buzzing with use cases and know-how for building NFC into your applications. Android is currently the best platform for it, but we’ll get the iOS folks sorted soon enough.
Educating the market on NFC has been a challenge but our progress is a clear indicator that demand is growing. People are starting to realize that despite Apple and the media poopoo’ing all over NFC, the technology -when applied right- is nothing short of *magical*. Take Disney’s implementation, for instance. Their guests can walk around their properties and checkin, pay, or validate themselves with a simple tap of their NFC-enabled “magicbands”. You might have read about it but seeing their implementation shows how adding some embellishments can accentuate the experience:
The lighting and sound effects make the interaction a lot more engaging and fun. We observed kids jumping at the opportunity to scan their wristbands and discover what new personalized experiences were triggered. It’s just like Arthur C. Clarke put it,
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
We get the core technology but if we want NFC solutions to be embraced by the public we need to add the polish. Attention to every detail, every nuance of the experience. We’re convinced these types of features are what will accelerate adoption so we’re working extra hard to support them on the FloBLE and it’s SDKs:
Developers and creators will be able to leverage the low cost of the FloBLE to produce instrumented spaces like never before. This is where we foresee a disruption and the pent up value of NFC ultimately uncovered. Cheap, engaging hardware meets a tidal wave of compelling ideas.
Phones with Super Powers
One idea we think is fascinating is being built by the Cliq cats in the UK. They’re appealing to instrumented people and making the super-powers of NFC shine through with a fresh line of Smartcases.
Cliq is a smartphone case with customizable hardware buttons for Android phones. It can shortcut almost anything on your phone, from a dedicated camera button to full music control. Cliq uses NFC to communicate with your phone so it requires no wires or charging. The buttons are customizable with the complementary app, and they are ergonomically placed for one-handed use.
Check it out if you get a chance, it’s a well polished, innovative and customer focused application of NFC. In their words,
Smartphones are so technologically advanced it’s almost crazy that cases are still just an overpriced piece of plastic.
Nice article, too bad that it didn’t contain any status update/info about the FloBLE, I would love to know when I can expect to receive my FloBLEs.
The FloBLE development continues to progress. Issues encountered are more about company resources than technical challenges. Badanamu has agreed to provide some more support but we’re still waiting on that. In the meantime, we keep pushing forward over nights and weekends to get the firmware and SDKs ready for primetime. Based on our current pace I estimate we won’t have units out to the Kickstarter backers until mid to end of summer. We will continue to send out updates as we learn more.