Notices

This idea came out of my reflections on the 'contagious content' stuff from the summit. I found myself feeling that personally I'd keep that turned off, as I spend enough of my life deleting unsolicited content (Brit.ney following me on Twitter, emails from that nice man in Nigeria...) So the comparison with the spread of viruses made me think that I'm personally very careful who I share that sort of closeness with.

But then I reflected that there are occasions when I want to share with (relative) strangers. One of them is when you meet someone, start a conversation and need to cut short. So it goes "Phone me or email me..." and suddenly you're scrabbling around for pen and paper to swap email addresses, phone numbers and something gets scribbled down wrong.

Wouldn't it be simple if the 'contagious content' system could at that point enable me to click a few buttons and send my details (or perhaps a preselected set of them) to someone else's phone, without any hassle?

I don't know if that's possible. My non-techno-head says my phone would need to know theirs first, or I'd have to go through the palaver of bluetooth coupling or some such. But the idea of contagious content seemed to rely on the idea of collecting data simply because of proximity... and somehow I feel this 'ought' to work.

Or am I havering again?

Hrnngh. I've understood there's a new bluetooth replacement/upgrade brewing that will enable you to pair devices by touch.

Have you btw seen or read about Nokia Sensor?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Sensor

http://www.nokia-asia.com/get-suppor...e/nokia-sensor

Between N900s this might be possible via IR, if the port is both receiver and transmitter.

As for a way to do it between your N900 and any other phone....yikes

EDIT: Ragnar's pointer is far more interesting

That might be a start

Yes, that might be the sort of thing I was thinking about. Neat. Thank you.

If I'm going to limit myself to hunks with n900, I'm going to be very lonely in Cornwall! Seriously, yes - eventually this is an system I'd like to see working cross-platform.

And you're right, clearly the idea behind nokia-sensor means someone else is thinking the way I am. That's reassuring!

In theory you should just be able to pair using Blutooth, and send your contact card across.

In reality this is not quite as fast as you want, but works for me with photos and contacts, but with a little fiddling. The item then appears in your message intray, and when you open it should put it where it belongs, ie pictures in your images folder, and contact cards in your contacts folder.

by the way talking of contagious content did you see this nokia software

http://conversations.nokia.com/2009/...-disease-down/

Mike C

I think my problem with bluetooth is that I generally keep it turned off (for privacy and security) so the process of turning it on, pairing and then sending is almost as complex as finding a pen and paper. I was hoping for something smoother.

The healthcare article is fascinating. Be really interesting to use this in other fields than infectious diseases: look for clusters of all sorts of things.

That video (the second link) should be titled "Picking up chicks for geeks".

But seriously, the app already overlaps enormously with Contagious Content. If it was pervasive enough it would do for lifespace what Facebook does for cyberspace.

Why not have them display their contact information on their phone and then take a picture of it?

If you store it in Evernote (one of the apps which will be available on the N900) and upload it to the Evernote servers, they will even recognize the text.

So I live in Japan and around these parts we have some pretty fun phones. One of the cool features (even ont he most basic phones) is that you have the capacity to send your "card" to other phones. There are quite a few ways to do it, IR (just point the phones at each other and hit the button), bluetooth (pair and send), and then even just through SMS or MMS. It is pretty fun.

What the card file contains is your phone number, you phones email, your picture (if you attach it), you regular email, you address, you work, etc. Basically any personal information can be attached to your card and it is really easy to just send it. Makes swapping numbers super easy.

I guess all it would take to be able to do this with the N900 would be to make the "card", just some sort of package that holds all of you personal info that you can send from one phone to another. Of course I don't know squat about making programs so this might be harder than I think.