Joel's Mutterings

A Hardy Digital Handshake

In this digital age, it is hard not to argue the the time and place for the paper card is destined to come to an end. I am in fact kind of shocked that given most people carry some form of cell phone and or smart phone/PDA that we would still be passing paper cards back and forth instead of exchanging our data.

Back in the day when I had my first PDA, I would often look to exchange data with other PDA users only to find they were not prepared, comfortable or able to make a digital exchange.

So I was more then a little intrigued when I spotted a link to the Poken website which despite its sparse information and rather cutesy outward appearance seems a tool with great potential.

A Poken is a RFID enabled device in a small USB sized token that is capable of exchanging one of a few different virtual ID cards with other Poken tokens. Once the data is exchange the Poken can then be inserted into a USB port on a computer and the gathered data is uploaded to the Poken portal which is not another social network since we already have enough of those. What the sight does is let you instantly bridge the gap between the people you have met and the social sights you do utilize.

This is not to say that as with all new technologies there are not issues.

As much as I love the idea of being able to exchange data the to cute nature of the Poken might be a detraction for business types. This is easily fixed by offering a plain poken cover and in fact since I am sure the cover is the cheapest part of the Poken one need not wait for this since replacing the cover later would be simple and cheap.

Image via Wikipedia

The value of the Poken and the system is limited until such time as there is more general acceptance. Let face it owning one is pointless unless you are likely to come across others who own them and who you do not know or have not yet exchanged data with.

I am please that at launch they support both Mac and PC and that the web interface is already capable of handing off social media identity info for most of the social networking tools in existence.

I also think it was well thought out that once can have a few different identities on your poken and control how much data you wish to grant in the exchange by having each identity crafted for deeper or different levels of information exchange.

So what is a digital though leader to do at this point. Simply put lead the way. So putting my money where my mouth is I have purchased a dozen of thePoken and hope to make them a featured item available to my ExecTec Networking group. ExecTec is a perfect place for the Poken since different members are to be found at each of our weekly dinners in Westwood and often members are meeting other members for the first time and always exchanging business cards and social meta data.

By making Poken a staple of the ExecTec culture perhaps I will be able to overcome the first issue which is having some place to readily overcome the lack of Poken adoption caused by a lack of other Pokens.

If you live in the Los Angeles Area and are interested in getting a Poken feel free to contact me through the ExecTec website and I would be happy to help you to get one of your own Pokens.

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• Poken: Tiny RFID thingies that share all your personal data with others (crunchgear.com)