Broadcast vCard
I was in a (very interesting) meeting today. And at the end we were doing the usual business card swapping. Since all of us were doing notes on our Macs and PC laptops, this seemed like a bit oldfashioned way of doing it. Yes, we could of course e-mail vCards to each other, but how would that happen if you don’t have the other person’s e-mail adress yet?
vCard
So I got an idea. And if it already exists, feel free to tell me in the comments below! Here’s the idea: My Mac has an Adress book with my contacts, and my own adress data. I can export any person as a vCard and e-mail that to someone. When the person who receives my vCard clicks on it, it will open the default contact manager and put my data in there.
This works on any modern OS, Macs and PCs. Most modern laptops also have 802.11. Or WiFi. Or Airport. Many names.
Broadcast it!
I would like to have a meny item under the Airport icon in OS X. It should read: “Broadcast vCard”.
What it does is to listen for other’s sending me their vCards, and also sending out mine. When it finds them, the OS show me a list of who else did this around me, and let me check off which ones I allow to get my card. The others in the room do the same. This is to prevent anyone else around to get all our vCards without our permission. Like this:
It’s crude, but you get the picture. What do you think? Would this be useful? Would it be hard to put this on OS X or XP/Vista?
Now this is “almost” possible. See Bonsoir, here’s my vCard.
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You can already typically “push” vCards via bluetooth to other devices – but that only works with BT. As for wifi, you would have to either use an Ad-Hoc wifi network, or some Bonjour – and so then most easily only with Mac, as writing ZeroConf clients on Windows that worked similar would be much more work.
This new command would then need to set up a network just for this, and take it away when finished. Would that be possible?
What about this app: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23635
?
I believe you also can add vCard when you add a buddy in iChat via Bonjour.
The problem is that few windows users have discovered the Bonjour technology…
You can also share vCards (by bluetooth) when you choose “Send dette kortet/Send this card in the Kort/Card menu in Mac OS X Adress Book
That is interesting, Ole. What I would hope for, is that both Apple and Microsoft could pick up on this. And include some kind of function that does this in an easy to use way. And the same way on Macs and PCs.