The Digital Business Card

As part of my ongoing (and growing) fascination with QR codes, I asked the Communications folks at Sacramento Public Library to embed a QR code in my business card; they responded to my somewhat esoteric request wonderfully! Now recipients of my business card will be able to scan the code and easily import my contact information into their phone's contact list! Take a look:



Getting this to work as planned took a little bit of wrangling as the QR code generator I was using was creating codes that scanned well on the monitor but not when printed. I ended up using the generator at QRStuff and got a code that scans pretty well on my Blackjack II Of course, because I did not test QR readers (I prefer the reader from i-nigma) on other phones, I can't say that my business card will scan reliably in all or even most settings. I suppose that I'm acting as SPL's QR code guinea pig in this respect. If you're interested in trying this, too, just search for QR code vcard generators and you'll find several options available.

As we continue to develop ways in which we can use QR codes in the library, we will certainly need to test a variety of generators and readers on several different types of phones. For the time being, though, I'm excited to have added this level of interactivity to my otherwise very static business card.