The only compelling use case for this device appears to be for kiosk-esque setups. For the casual user, it seems unlikely to catch on. I'm certainly not going to carry that thing with me, pull it out, plug it it in, open the FloJack app and tap one of those stickers to call my mom. This would be WAY more compelling if the device would fit flush with the phone in some way such that it'd be reasonable to keep it attached any time the headphone jack wasn't in use. I could see it fitting around the backside of the phone, as there's some pretty good real estate that could be covered without interfering with any other function of the phone. Unfortunately, supporting the different shapes of the target devices could get tricky.
NFC has a lot of potential, but right now it needs a lot more support from industry. I found trying to spend money in my Google Wallet very frustrating. Almost no store has nfc readers, and the one place that did have one didn't have it working. I ended up contacting Google to get my balance refunded. So right now an nfc reader would not have much use except as a toy. And kiosks still have to deal with the fact that most people don't have nfc-enabled phones. So all they would need is to get one of those portable credit card readers. Right now the only nfc chips I regularly come into contact with are in library books.
The FloJack aims to support the NFC ecosystem. It's hw compatible with any device with a 3.5mm audio jack. It's the smallest -and lightest- full fledged NFC reader on the market. And it's available for anyone to buy (unlike enterprise-only icarte, devicefidelity, twinlinx, roamdata, etc with their "ask for quote" bs)
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The only compelling use case for this device appears to be for kiosk-esque setups. For the casual user, it seems unlikely to catch on. I'm certainly not going to carry that thing with me, pull it out, plug it it in, open the FloJack app and tap one of those stickers to call my mom. This would be WAY more compelling if the device would fit flush with the phone in some way such that it'd be reasonable to keep it attached any time the headphone jack wasn't in use. I could see it fitting around the backside of the phone, as there's some pretty good real estate that could be covered without interfering with any other function of the phone. Unfortunately, supporting the different shapes of the target devices could get tricky.
NFC has a lot of potential, but right now it needs a lot more support from industry. I found trying to spend money in my Google Wallet very frustrating. Almost no store has nfc readers, and the one place that did have one didn't have it working. I ended up contacting Google to get my balance refunded. So right now an nfc reader would not have much use except as a toy. And kiosks still have to deal with the fact that most people don't have nfc-enabled phones. So all they would need is to get one of those portable credit card readers. Right now the only nfc chips I regularly come into contact with are in library books.
The FloJack aims to support the NFC ecosystem. It's hw compatible with any device with a 3.5mm audio jack. It's the smallest -and lightest- full fledged NFC reader on the market. And it's available for anyone to buy (unlike enterprise-only icarte, devicefidelity, twinlinx, roamdata, etc with their "ask for quote" bs)