Tapfolio

A 3D-printed NFC keyring. Tap it against a phone and the owner’s name, contact details and links appear.

Why I built it

Getting someone’s details at an event is a small, frequent awkwardness: find the phone, open contacts, type a name, and miss half the conversation doing it. A tag removes every step.

The problem

Paper and plastic business cards get thrown away. Their digital replacements require the other person to have the right app, or to open a camera and scan. The convenience is always paid for by the recipient.

What I was using before

Paper cards, and then nothing — I had stopped carrying them, which meant relying on someone else to take my number down correctly.

What it does

• Tap-to-contact, using the NFC reader every modern phone already has
• No app needed by the person tapping — it opens a web page
• One tag holding one permanent address, so a lost tag is disabled rather than hunted down
• Per-field visibility, so you choose what is shared and with whom
• 3D-printed, which makes it a gift rather than a purchase

Where it is now

In design. The architecture and the privacy model are settled; printing and a pilot come next. The interesting part is not the hardware — it is that a tag can be handed out before it does anything.

Who it might interest

Anyone who meets people for a living and is tired of the exchange that follows. Also anyone interested in physical objects that carry a privacy model, which turns out to be a genuinely new problem.