More and more these days, smart phones, like the iPhone, are becoming central ways to pass along and receive information. Many productivity mobile apps help us to truly, for the fist time, communicate in a nearly paperless exchange.

Thus, it seems natural that in the coming years, we will less paper business cards, that typically get thrown in a desk drawer, and instead use mobile devices to send and receive contact information.When you think about it, there’s little point of traditional business cards, for when you send or receive them, the information has to be manually entered in a computer or mobile device if it’s going to be of any future use.

Not surprisingly there are a few great ways to send contact information via your iPhone. Let’s check them out.

V-Card Method

Perhaps the quickest and easiest  way to send business contact information via SMS is by using your existing contact information in your iPhone’s Address Book.

Select “Share Contact” at the bottom of your info card, and it will create a SMS with your V-Card attached. The recipient of your “card” can open and add your contact information to his or her Address Book. Most modern digital address books accept v-cards.

You will probably want to create more than one v-card about yourself in your Address Book—one for personal contact, business, and other activities.

uME App

While the v-card method is efficient, it’s not the most elegant way to send contact information. As the old saying goes, images speak louder than words. A free iPhone app called uMe (pronounced you-me) can put a face, sort of speak, to your contact information.

UMe allows you to create one or more business cards for different activities right within the app. In addition to your basic contact information, the app also allows you to include your online social network contact information for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Foursquare. (You can also use the app to take photos of business cards, or receive cards from other uMe users.)

You can select and deselect the contact information that you want to include in on a card. Your company’s logo or personal photo can be added to the card.

The biggest limitation to uMe, however, is that you can only send to a recipient’s email, or post it to your Twitter page. It would be great if you could also send it via SMS.

SnapDat

SnapDat is another free business card apps that allows you to create custom cards and send them via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

SnapDat does not provide SMS integration either, but it does include a wide variety of template designs—or you can add your own.

Your SnapDat card is formatted and sent both as a JPG file and a v-card for downloading.  It would be even better though if the contact information, such as the phone number and web address, on SnapDat cards could clicked from with the email itself, in addition to the v-card.

Digital cards are not widely used yet, but these and other mobile apps represent the possibilities for what can be done. Let us know what you think of these free apps, and how often do you use v-cards in business interactions.

For other MUO articles about virtual business cards, start with these articles.

While it’s possible to manually build a landing page using one of the available general web builders, or maybe modify a page of your existing blog to fit the purpose; the quickest and easiest way to build a personal landing page is to use one of the available web services specializing in that genre such as Flavors.me and About.me. These services provide you with the tools needed to build a nice looking, free landing page. You just need to add a little mixture of personalization and creativity to the ingredients to make it look cooler.

Choosing The Creator

Both About.me and Flavors.me offer similar services and tools, but I chose About.me for my landing page project, because the Flavors.me free account is more limited.  But feel free to choose the service that you like for your project.

We briefly discussed About.me in the article about a virtual business card. Back then, it was still in the private beta stage, and only a handful of people were lucky enough to experiment with it. Now it’s on more stable ground, and everybody can sign up for the service. I think About.me deserves another look from a different perspective.

Before we begin building (or editing) the landing page, it’s a good idea to browse through the directories (on both About.me and Flavors.me) to steal some ideas and to get a general picture of how far can you go with your personal landing page.

This is a sample of landing pages from the About.me “Inspirational” directory:

This one is from the Flavors.me “Featured” directory:

After browsing around the directories, I noticed several design patterns that we can apply to our project. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Preparing The Picture

The first (and I think the most important) step of building your personal landing page is preparing the picture. Whether you take the picture yourself or ask a pro photographer to do it for you, having a great picture is essential to building a great landing page.

With some exceptions, a good landing page photo always put the owner as the main focus. You can achieve similar results by taking the picture with a non-distracting background – one that will make you stand out. You could also try to eliminate the background by taking a real close-up photo. Another trick that you can use is to put the subject at the side of the frame instead of in the center.

While you can use an image of up to 1680 x 1050 pixels, it’s best to set the main focus of the image to be within the 960 x 620 pixels area.

After you are ready with the image, upload it to the server using the upload tool.

2. Boasting With Biography

For some people, a personal landing page serves as an online curriculum vitae (CV) to help them seek out employment. They treat their landing page as the “boasting box”. While this is totally OK, it’s advisable to keep the bio short and sweet.

Instead of filling out the landing page with your ramblings, use the “link” feature in the text editor to connect your landing page to your other pages.

3. Customizing The Colors

You can set any element of your free landing page to any color you want using the provided color palettes. But sometimes this freedom can be overwhelming. So even though the color combination possibilities are virtually unlimited, it’s advisable to use colors that similar to or complement your photos.

For example, a black and white photo would go along well with black, white, and shades of grey.

4. Fiddling With The Fonts

About.me gives the user access to a handful of premium fonts provided by Typekit. You can play around with the fonts for a while to find the different combinations. The basic combination for most people is “flashy” fonts for the headlines and “easy to read” ones for the content.

Another element of fonts that you can play with is the size. To make your page look neat, try to adjust the “name” and “headline” lines to be of the same width.

5. Summarizing The Services

Even though About.me doesn’t limit users to four services (like the Flavors.me free account), you can only add one service once. To overcome this limitation, you can use the “add direct link” feature by clicking the “Add a URL or RSS” button, or by inserting the links within the body of your bio. Please note that clicking a direct link will open the link in a different tab/window and redirect people away from your landing page.

You can easily delete the services (should you want to) using the “Services” menu.

Using the pointers above, I built my own free landing page on About.me and here’s the result.

I also tried to replicate the process in Flavors.me and got more or less a similar result.

What about you? Do you own and use a landing page? What service do you use? Please share your own tips on building your landing page using the comments below.

There are several free services that make it easy to create your own free personal virtual business cards, and some of these services taking it one step further, making it easier to share them. If you’d rather not use a third party service, there are many free WordPress themes to use with your own personal domain.

About.me

About.me is probably one of the classiest layouts available for a free virtual online business card, taking a very minimalist and user-friendly approach.

Currently in private beta, About.me gives you one page and a significant amount of control over how it appears. You can choose your background image, colours and fonts of all text that appear on the page.

The services available on About.me include, amongst others, Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, Facebook, as well as any RSS feed of your choice.

Visitors don’t have to leave your About.me page to see the content on each site. Clicking on any given icon will open up the latest content posted on each of those services, with a link to the original posts.

Another way in which About.me sets itself apart from other similar services is with a dashboard featuring visitor statistics and more.

Who would use About.me as their online business card? About.me is ideal for photographers or other visual artists who want to make a strong first impression.

If you want to get in on the action, you can. About.me have kindly offered beta invites to the first 100 readers to reserve the username of their choice. Of course, we can’t guarantee the availability of the username of your choice, and if it is already taken, the folks at About.me will let you know. All you need to do is head over to About.me and reserve a URL (username). When you’re done, come back and type in the reserved username into this form.

Card.ly

Card.ly has a similar selection of services that you can add to your online business card, from the popular Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Digg, to  Mixx, Plurk and Friendster.

You can also add one RSS feed from your blog, as well as general contact details.

Card.ly is also customisable with a variety of themes, however, at the moment you have to preview the themes one by one as there seems to be something wrong with the theme browser.

The final card changes depending on the theme you choose. All of the information could be included on the same page or may be divided into tabs. Some themes include a stream of links coming in from your services.

Another advantage to using Card.ly is the ability to download a vCard with your information, which makes it easy for others to import your contact information, no matter what kind of address book they are using.

So who should use Card.ly? If appearance matters most to you, their wide selection of themes will definitely be a big selling point.

WordPress

If you have your own domain, why not host your own virtual business card using a free customisable WordPress theme.

The Digital Business Card Theme is a very easy to use WordPress theme. From the backend, you can add various social networks including Twitter, DeviantArt, Facebook and LinkedIn, amongst many others.

The theme is divided into two sections – online profiles, and a contact page with your contact details and a large picture of your choice.

With the most basic knowledge of CSS, you can customise the theme to add more profiles that are not included on the list. Other WordPress themes worth giving a try are Ipseity, Visiting Card, and the MiniCard theme.

Who would use WordPress to create a virtual business card? If you don’t want to depend on a third party service that could shut down at any time, or want a highly customisable option, WordPress is the best bet for you.

E

After signing up for a free account on E, you will be prompted to upload a photo, and add your social services and IM contact details.

An advantage that E has over other similar services is that you can create multiple cards. This is particularly useful if you want to create one card for business purposes, and another for social purposes.

The final card includes all the details that you add on one page – contact information and social services.

E is accessible from any mobile phone, making it easy to exchange details on the go by simple logging into your accounts and adding each other to your contact lists. iPhone users have the added advantage of a free app available for download from iTunes.

Who should use E? E is the ideal solution for people who want to create multiple online business cards.

There are many other services that you can use to create your online business card that have been reviewed on MakeUseOf. DooID is a great customisable service that offers the unique feature of video bios. Flavors.me is a good option for people looking for a bold option with no limit to the colour palettes you can use. Retaggr is another solid option to use that has been around for a while.

Have you created your own virtual business card? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to reserve your About.me username using the form below.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Setting up a personal DooID page/virtual business card is fairly easy, and it offers a nice range of customizing tools for both its free and pro accounts.

Menu Bar & Business Data

The best way to set up your DooID page (after registering for your account) is to work down the DooID menu bar or tabs — providing your profile data, web services, layout style, and add-ons.

In setting up your profile, you get the option to make some data private.

However, your private information can be accessed by a password, which visitors to your site can request via a popup window, or by you sending the password directly.

Another nice feature is that you can set the language for your page, for English, Español, or Deutsch.

Social Networking Sites

Similar to other Web 2.0 sites, DooID.com enables you to add a couple of dozen website services to your page, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Formspring, Skype, WordPress, and YouTube. You can of course, add any other website or RSS feed not on the list of services.

Layout and Style

For the free account option, DooID.com offers three page layouts options. You can customize the style of these pages, including changing the title fonts and wallpaper, and colors for text, background, links, and title. You can also upload and use a photo background (see final screen shot in this article).

Sharing

As you might expect, DooID.com provides a very easy and quick way to share your DooId page via various social networking sites, as well your unique URL. Click the DooID Quickshare button at the bottom of your page.

Add Ons

You can also include additional data to your page such as a map, video bio, and an email signature (these are the free account options).

The Video Bio feature is a great add-on allowing you to talk directly to your potential clients and contacts. Check out our MakeUseOf article, “How to Shoot Your Own Promotional Marketing Video,” for tips on producing a video bio.

At any time during the layout process, you can preview your page to see how it will look in its public release. All the changes and additions you make, update very smoothly in a few seconds.

V-Card

Another unique feature is that visitors to your page can download your pertinent information in a V-card format, which can be added to their computer address book.

View Page

You will no doubt want to spend some quality time customizing and tweaking your page. ï»¿What’s great about DooID.com is that, like Flavors.me, you don’t need to know a bit of CSS or HTML code in order to build your page. All that is done for you in background.

With a DooID page, you’re providing a lot more information about you and your services that can”˜t possibly be printed on a traditional card. And unlike your business card, you can update your virtual business card anytime you want.

So what do you think? Is this a service you would use? If you get a chance to create your own DooID page, please come back and share it with us on MakeUseOf.

But apparently I was wrong. I stumbled across my friend from high school a few days ago. He runs his own printing company and I guess he’s the old school type, because after the usual, “Hi! How are you doing?” He gave me his card and waited. It took me a while – quite a long while – before I realized that he expected me to give him mine in return.

A little awkwardly I explained that I don’t have a business/name card. He replied with a long explanation of the importance of having a personal name card and tried to convince me to use his company service to print a few sets.

Starting A Quick Design

I finally managed to lose him with a promise to send a card design as soon as possible. Even though I still don’t know whether or not I will send the design to my friend, I decided to go through the design process anyway while trying Drawberry – a free image editor for Mac that has been collecting dust inside my hard drive for a long time.

But let’s set something straight before we begin: Drawberry is no Illustrator or Photoshop. But it can be a decent alternative for those who need a simple but powerful enough drawing application.

Let’s start by defining the drawing area. Click “Create” to start drawing.

Don’t be too afraid in determining the drawing area because you can easily change it in the “Page Setting” floating bar. Look for the “Canvas” option.

To add an image as the basis of your card, go to the “File – Import” menu.

And browse to the location of your photo.

If you need to change the settings of the image, go to the “Forme” floating toolbar on the right.

Resize the image and drag it to the correct position on the canvas.

If your image is not fully covering the background, you could insert a rectangle to fill in the blank spot.

Now let’s go to the next step.

Adding Some Text

Go to the “Layers” floating toolbar and create a new layer by clicking on the little “Plus” button below. Then you can rename the layer by double clicking it on the main pane of the toolbar and retyping the name.

There are two small icons next to the name. If you want one (or more) of your layer(s) to be non-editable, use the “Lock” icon. Click the icon one more time to unlock those layers. The “Eye” icon is to make the layer(s) visible/invisible.

After creating a layer, go to the tiny “Tool” floating toolbar and click Rectangle.

Draw the rectangle in your canvas.

And edit the color fill using the “Fill” tab in the “Forme” floating toolbar. You can use Gradient or Solid Color as the filling.

Whichever option you choose, click on the color box to choose the color(s) for the filling.

If you don’t want an outline at the edge of your rectangle, go to the “Stroke” tab on the “Forme” floating toolbar, and choose “None“.

Then create a new layer for the text, choose “Text” from the tiny “Tool” floating toolbar, and draw the writing area on the canvas.

You can write your name or any other text that you like, select the text, click on the “Text Format” icon at the toolbar, and edit the Font Type and Size and other Font attributes.

Drag the text to the position that you want and you have your final product. A quick and simple personal name card.

Of course you can create a business card instead of a personal name card. You can also add more personal information such as an address and phone number. Just be sure to choose an appropriate image to go along with the type of card.

The last step is exporting the card to the format that you need. To do that, go to the “File – Export” menu.

As a footnote, I noticed several misspellings in the app interface and a few glitches in the workflow. It’s to be expected from an app below version 1 (I was using the latest version 0.81 at the time of writing). Hopefully the developer will address these issues in future releases.

And if you’d like to have more references on creating a name/business card, you can read our other related articles: Design Your Cool Web 2.0-ish Namecard using DrawIt Lite [Mac] and 5 Ways To Create Your Business Card 2.0.

Image credit: Lucid-Dreams

The program can be freely downloaded on PC, Mac, and Linux machines.  The best part?  It can open files from any other program!  Read more about Open Office here and here.

If you need inspiration or want to produce a specific kind of document, never fear!  Their free user-created Open Office templates are awesome, and can save you lots of time and money!

Truly, there is no reason to spend your hard earned cash on expensive software when you can get everything you need right in the Open Office suite.

If you need a word processing program, use OOO’s “Write” program; if you need a PowerPoint program, use their “Presentation” software. They even have an Excel-ish program and a database program like Access.

In addition to their powerful tools, they also offer a sweet repository of Open Office templates. You can choose between Business, Education, and Personal templates.  These user created templates are simple to download and simple to use.

This article will highlight some of the most useful templates available in each of the three sections.

Business

The Business section is stuffed full of excellent and resourceful templates.  If you want to publish ANYTHING, you should stop here first.  Open Office offers templates for every make and model of book, magazine, or document.  In addition to the standard letters and reports, you can also find lots of neat extras!

Business Cards

Every person needs to have a business card.  While there are lots of great places to get them made online or in your community, you can use Open Office to create your very own!

This simple template opens and is ready to be completed!  It takes just seconds, and you can use the menu to customize the look to your needs.

Event Posters

To get your business recognized or to announce sales or other groovy events, you might want to use the awesome poster template!

Again, you can change the picture, the background color, the fonts, etc.  Or, if you just need something quick, fill in the blanks and click print!

Time Cards

If you have employees, you need to keep track of the time and pay rates. Open Office hosts a simple template that will allow you to do both!

DVD Inserts

If you provide DVDs to your customers, you might want to include a professional looking DVD insert.  This template is incredibly easy to use!

Finally, you will need to know how to charge your customers, and Invoices are a legal agreement between you and your client.  The template calculates math and has spots for all of the necessary legal information.

Education

Educators will find many of the OOO templates quite handy!  Instead of purchasing expensive software or trying to create a tool on your own, you can instead peruse their repository of templates.

Lesson Plan Templates

There are a few different lesson plan styles, but all of them are fantastic.  They are easy to edit and modify according to your particular needs.  I like this one, but, again, there are others that are just as fabulous!

Rubrics

If you use a rubric for grading or you want to try out a few different types, OOO has the right resources for you!  I like to provide a hard copy of the grading rubric at the start of an assignment, and I like to provide a copy to parents in advance of a lesson.

These various templates are a great starting point for me, and they are off-the-shelf ready for new teachers, too!

Formatted Paper Guidelines, Formatted Paper Templates

If you are in college, you are familiar with the challenge of formatting papers in a particular documentation style (MLA, Chicago, Turabian, IEEE).  OOO has ALL of the formats ready for you to use!  I totally wish they had this kind of template when I was in college.  Be careful, though, and always make sure you use the correct style as instructed by your professor.

Grid Paper

If your son is in high school, and it is 11:00pm when he decides to start his math homework, NEVER FEAR!  OOO has printable grid paper for FREE!  No more midnight Walmart runs!

Gradebook Templates

There are several different kinds of gradebook templates, and you can customize each one to your liking.  I love that they are set up to do the math for you!

Personal

There are lots of times when you need to make a certain type of document for your kids or for the country club.  Who has time to search all over the web when you can stop by OOO and get what you need for free?

Recipe Cards

Every organization I have ever belonged to has made a recipe book as a fundraiser. Since I don’t cook much, I always struggle to remember what a recipe actually looks like.

OOO has a fantastic selection of recipe card templates that make the job of sharing recipes so easy!

March Madness and Sports Grids

A little friendly competition among friends is fun, but it can be such a pain to figure out those charts for Final Four!  OOO comes to the rescue!  Just print these out, and you have instant success.

Shopping List Templates

If you live in a place like Lakeville, you only get to a big grocery store once a month. Instead of just using slips of napkin, we printed out two of OOO’s shopping lists and we use one at the Big-Ole Grocer and the other at the Farmer’s Market.

It saves us so much time, and I don’t have to find those little slips of paper!

Family Budget Planners

There are all sorts of different kinds of budgets and planners to download and print. There are, literally, pages and pages of different ways to organize your cash.  This is just one example, but there are so many more that you might like!

Creative Writing Tools and Templates for Script Writing

Script writing software is expensive.  Comic book layout software is expensive. Generally, most folks that want to write these kinds of ditties don’t have the income to afford them.  OOO has a whole host of resources for the aspiring writer.

Need to write a commercial?  Want to write a memoir of your life?  Need to format a screenplay?  OOO has the tools for you!

The Bottom Line

Open Office has awesome templates for every possible situation.  The best part is that these resources are fast to download (on any platform) and are FREE!  Let us know what Open Office templates YOU like.