RIM touches BlackBerrys together to swap content
Rubbing off on one another
Research in Motion has brought its community of BlackBerry users closer together with a new system for connecting one another's smartphones and sharing multimedia content.
BlackBerry Tag allows users to share contact information, content and URLs, simply by tapping phones together. 'Tap to share' can instantly add each device to the other's contact list on BlackBerry Messenger too.
The service - similar to Bump for iPhone and Android - is set for integration in BlackBerry apps too, with RIM pledging to leave the APIs open for devs to make use of BB Tag's NFC-based tech within their software.
Tag will be incorporated into the next BB7 OS update and will only be supported by handsets with Near Field Communications, such as the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930, plus the BlackBerry Curve 9350, 9360 and 9370. ®
COMMENTS
But no mention of the outage that is affecting 50% of Blackberrys service today? Don't worry, I'll get my news The Telegraph. If I need regurgitated blogspam I know where to come.
'Fraid so...
I'm reminded of a mobile advert where one young wannabe exec is trying to wow a senior client by saying he'll bluetooth him his business card...it didn't work but now he can ask the senior client to hand his BB over and he can sit there runbbing them together...
Why the negativity?
Ok, we've had BlueTooth for years, but it's always seemed a bit of hassle turning it on and swapping 4 digit codes etc... Touching two phones together to exchange telephone numbers seems pretty intuitive to me. This idea has been in my head since I had a Nokia 3210i, only then I envisioned the mechanism as being two little studs on each phone.
Yup....
...after all these years being encouraged to do things wirelessly, now the way forward is direct physical contact - that's progress!
So...
Not convinced this is much better than, say, bluetooth or even SMS/email sharing of stuff. Plus the latter is cross-platform which immediately makes it a bonus in my opinion.
