Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, First Look
FirstLook: beamME universal vCard exchange app
Developers rmbrME have come out with a novel take on the "beam your card" app. beamME is the first universal vCard exchange app that's supposed to work with any device, whether it's a BlackBerry, T-Mobile G1, Treo, a Mac or a PC.The app and accompanying beamMe Basic service are free, and it takes only about 10 seconds to sign up from your iPhone. However, "beaming" is really nothing more than sending an SMS that tells the recipient to go to the rmbrME website and download the vcf file. If the recipient's mobile browser doesn't support downloading vcf files, they're prompted to send the file to an email address from the website. You can also text the person's cell phone number to a special number.
I tried sending a vCard to my T-Mobile G1 and gave up after 10 minutes of trying to receive the vCard. I could have typed in all the info faster than that. My personal opinion? Use one of the other Wi-Fi based beaming apps, such as iBeam or Fliq. While they're not "universal" apps, they work well with most other Wi-Fi devices.
How do you transfer business card information between devices? Leave us a comment.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Flunky Carter said 12:35PM on 11-17-2008
it works. wizzao!!!!
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brian said 12:37PM on 11-17-2008
Great app, but this is SUCH a kludgey workaround for something that Apple should have included in the first version of the iPhone--Palms* had this over a DECADE ago.
* and Newtons as well?
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Flunky Carter said 12:54PM on 11-17-2008
Dude i know... wtf why isn't it there to begin with!
quandmeme said 1:04PM on 11-17-2008
I like a couple of the apps, but, and I guess this is paranoid, all of them that use real vCards involve a server. And I'd be sending all my contact's information to them. Is that a great way to harvest data? So can anyone vouch for this or any other service provider.
I guess this is a long way of saying, Apple should make this a feature.
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Rich said 5:20PM on 11-17-2008
I think the App you are looking for is Handshake
adi said 1:17PM on 11-17-2008
Handshake is an iPhone app that does this without having to send an SMS message. I dont have a text plan, so I don't appreciate having to burn money just to send a contact. Handshake also let's you send a picture to someone else's iPhone. Pretty much a required app.
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Flunky Carter said 1:19PM on 11-17-2008
I used this without having to send an SMS... i'll look into handshake, sounds interesting.
Jameson Detweiler said 1:28PM on 11-17-2008
http://mydropcard.com/ - I send my info over SMS using Dropcard. Just sign up in 2 minutes, confirm on your cellphone, and you can send your vCard to any email address.
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Gabe Zichermann said 4:02PM on 11-17-2008
Hi folks:
I'm Gabe Zichermann, CEO of rmbrME - the company that made beamME. While it's never fun to get a "negative" review, we're always appreciative of the direct feedback.
Beyond the technical issues that Steven had on the G1 (our support team is following up with him as we speak to see what happened), I did want to make one quick comment about the SMS transport mechanism and its purpose.
While WiFi (or bluetooth or IR) contact beaming sounds great - in practice, it creates more problems than it solves. The most obvious being that the *recipient* needs to have some software on their device before being able to get your card; a problem exacerbated when trying to send a card between different handsets. There are other issues (security, accuracy, etc) - but we built beamME to enable you to send your card via SMS or email so that you could send it to anyone, on any phone, anywhere in the world. Our belief is that if you need to think twice about which device the person is using or know something about their carrier or security schema, the solution just doesn't work.
Clearly, we're not hitting our goal of 100% error-free digital business card exchange - and we apologize for that. Hopefully we'll get G1 issues ironed out quickly and get back to the whirlwind that our lives have become since launching beamME last month. :) But in the meantime, we'd love to get your feedback (www.rmbrme.com), and appreciate everyone's continued support!
-Gabe
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Kyle said 5:16PM on 11-17-2008
Handshake allows you to send your vCard to another iPhone users regardless of networking (It works on 3G, Edge and Wifi)
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Jon said 5:50PM on 11-17-2008
I am using vcard mailer which lets me email my vcard (or any contact in my address book) to anyone as long as they can read a vcard.
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Don said 6:53PM on 11-17-2008
The best way to really send your business card is using SMS or via Blutooth.
Other type of sending is for me very jurassic. Sending Vcard through SMS is more faster and universal because it can be retrieved instantly wherever whenevr the person is as long the mobile phone is on.
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brian said 10:52PM on 11-17-2008
Did a bit of looking and found that if someone sends you an email with a vcard as an attachment, you can click on it in Mail on your iPhone and it'll show you the card (it'll look like a contact) and ask if you want to save it or add it to an existing contact. BUT--if you go to a web page and click on a link to a .vcf file Safari just says it can't handle it. Lame. If Safari could handle vcards like Mail does all you'd have to do would be to post your vcard to any public website. Or you could even run something like Air Sharing (currently $6.99) on your iPhone and direct people to http://yourPhoneName.local:8080/me.vcf when you're both on the same WiFi network.
Dear Apple, Please fix. Or, God forbid, just add a 'share' (email) button to Contacts--just like Safari, Pictures, and Notes have.
And Gabe--thanks for your comments. It's always great to see devs out there in public forums talking to users and potential users directly.
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RDC said 5:24PM on 11-18-2008
This is pretty cool technology! I like to spread the word when I find fun new iPhone apps since that is usually how I hear about them. Take a minute and check out a new, free iPhone application they called Ziibii, which gives iPhone users a way of staying in-touch and in-the-loop with friends, photos and basically the world. Check it out for free via the iTunes App Store.
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