Send Your Digital Business Card via Text Message (US Only)

Kyle Judkins — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:01:18 +0000

Do you want to make friends or business contacts but don’t have a business card? Do you want to find another way to be a little more eco-friendly? Contxts is a great solution for both of these questions. Contxts lets you send your business card via mobile phone text message (SMS). This is not only amazingly cool, but it is also really useful. It is always nice to have good ole fashioned business cards, but in a digital age, digital business cards are that much cooler.

Setup

Signing up for an account is painless and only takes a second. Just put in your name, number, username and email, and you’ve got an account. Once you have your login information, you will need to fill out your “business card.”

As you can see, it’s very easy to set up your digital business card. You have 140 characters to provide as much information about yourself as possible. If you are familiar with Twitter, putting all your information in a simple 140 characters will be extremely simple and easy. I did find that my title and company weren’t coming through in the text message, but they could easily be placed within the body of the text message.

How it Works

In order to send out your card, you just need to get someone to text your username to 50500. My username is KyleJ, so if you want to see it in action, just text KyleJ to 50500. You also have the option to receive a text when someone has requested your business card. This is a great way to remember who got your business card after a long night on the town.

If you are at a conference (for example) and someone asks for your card, you can also send your digital business card to their phone. Just ask for their mobile number (in this example, it will be “3034759204″) then text from your phone, send 3034759204 to 50500 . The other person will then get your card details on their phone. The other advantage is doing it this way is that you will now be on their mobile phone contact list.

Your Profile

This is one area where Contxts is a little lacking. There are options to fill out your information for other social networks, but they don’t appear on your digital card or on your site profile. This may just be due to Contxts being in alpha, but it is a feature that I would really like to see.

There is also a section for adding contacts. This would be a great feature, as I see this digital business card idea taking off, especially in very technical circles and areas of the country. It would be great to keep all of your technical contacts together on this website. However, this feature is still under construction.

Conclusion

Contxts is a great service as is. It is extremely easy to use and gets the job done when you don’t have one of the old business cards lying around. However, the lack of other services makes me a little sad, but it’s only because I see the potential there. I really think everyone should go out and make their own digital card. It’ll come in handy one day. I just know it.

Do you agree? Is this a service you see yourself using? Or can nothing replace the good old cardboard business cards? Maybe online digital cards are the way of the future and SMS cards are just a fad? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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5 Ways To Create Your Business Card 2.0

David Pierce — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:01:56 +0000

Business cards are out of date. They’re paper, which immediately makes them dinosaurs. You get them, and have to figure out what to do – do you copy it all into Outlook? Do you use a Rolodex? It’s just not the best way to do it.

Thankfully, there are a growing number of ways to use the internet to create, share and use your business card. Using these services, you can send your card to others, get contact information in your email (where all your contacts are anyway), and have the business card work with your existing address books, which are increasingly online.

Although there are many, here are five ways to bring your business card into the 2.0 World.

Retaggr

Retaggr is a business card, an “about me” page, and a signature to add to emails, blog posts, and anything else you can think of. When you create a card, you can embed it into emails, paste it onto your blog, or send it to someone. It’s a great tool for connecting with other people, and is very social-network heavy.

Retaggr lets you link to your profiles (on hundreds of sites), so you can find friends all over the Web. For more information, check out Kyle’s great article about Retaggr.

Dropcard

The thing I love about Dropcard is that it’s dead easy to use. While it doesn’t have any unique features to speak of, its delivery system is what makes it so great. When you meet someone, you send Dropcard a text saying “drop theperson’semail@theirdomain” and Dropcard sends all your contact information to their email. Most of us use contacts and email in the same location anyway, and Dropcard knows that.

There’s an iPhone version, lots of keyboard shortcuts, and a number of other great features. Another nice touch – you can have two different cards, a business card and a personal card. Customize them however you want, and give people only the information you want to.

Nuebbo

Nuebbo is a fully-featured contact manager, but also works great for giving people your personal information. You can import contacts from Google, Outlook or Windows Live Mail, and then send your contact information to others. Create one card or many, and send them to other people. Cards can be organized into categories, updated automatically by Nuebbo, and even downloaded as Points of Interest on your GPS (an unnecessary, but cool touch).

If you want a full address book, and not just a business card, Nuebbo’s a great one to try out. If you’re just looking for a simple business card to send to people, Nuebbo’s good, but not the best of the group.

Handshake

This one’s iPhone-specific, but deserves a mention. On your iPhone, boot Handshake. The application lets you send a business card or a picture to anyone else using the Handshake application, with the touch of a button. It’s a great way to exchange contact information with someone, right when you meet them.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see an application like this for the Blackberry or Windows Mobile in the near future. For now though, if you meet a fellow iPhone user, a simple Handshake is all it takes to exchange your contact information.

Plaxo

Plaxo remains the gold standard online contact-manager. Plaxo syncs with Outlook, Google, Yahoo and others, automatically updates contacts’ information, has an integrated task list, and keeps everyone in contact.

Sending your card is easy, and it works really well. Plaxo even has a FriendFeed-like feature called “Pulse”, where you can see what your contacts are doing around the Web. Actually, ‘Friendfeed-like’ is a misnomer, because Plaxo did it first. Plaxo’s a great utility, and becomes unbeatable when all your contacts use it.

No longer is the business card a tiny, index card-like thing you put in your wallet, sit on for a while, try to find, and painstakingly enter onto your computer. With any of the services above, bring your business card to the Web, and make the sharing of contact information even easier.

You do everything else online, right? Why not your business card?

How do you manage your contacts and business cards? Online or on paper?