I made toju, an android application that makes it easy to share, backup and sync your contacts and profile
Features:
You can share your full information including emails, phone numbers, address, social media etc with others using NFC or Qr code. Good for fast sharing and eliminates the need for business cards
All your contacts are automatically backed up on our servers and are automatically restored if your phone is stolen, misplaced or changed once the app is installed, no charge or hassle
Once you have the app, if someone who has the app in your phone book updates their profile, e.g. adds a new phone number, email or office address etc, you automatically see the updated information on your phone and same goes for you too if you update your profile.
You get to see some useful stats and you can also export your contacts to a file, csv of text format (good for bulk messaging)
You can save the Qr code image of your profile from the app and add it to your business cards so someone with this app can just scan the code instead of typing every information
Do you swear on your life not to spam the contacts backed up on your server?
Will the data just sit on your server(s) or you intend to use it for some extra-curricular activities?
If youāre wondering if I installed it, I didnāt. I have a natural aversion towards installs - gotta be worth it.
Btw, I donāt think itās āgood for fast sharingā. I think I can hand someone a business card quicker than Iāll pull out my phone and have both of us do the dance.
I do like the update and stats feature. What sorts of stats though? How many times I viewed a contact, etc?
I donāt understand, please specify. But your contacts are stored.
I donāt really see the benefit of hacking my servers yet, but Iāll take steps to make it difficult.
Yes I do swear, I canāt easily read them because of the way they are saved.
It will just sit there, what I plan to use is not peopleās number in your phone (that is just plain wrong) but the info you provide when you create and update your profile, and by use I donāt mean in a spammy way
You should install it, I know it is worth it.
When you receive business cards (which happens very fast, I agree) you still have to type the information on the card in your phone (slow and tiring) and carry it around in your wallet (I hate wallets), with toju, once you scan a qr code or use nfc the information goes straight to your phone book and this information (number, emails, physical address, social media account etc) is updated automatically if the owner of the info updates it, now tell me if that is not faster than business cards and worth it
To add to all that, everything (back up and syncing) happens in the background if you have internet connection. The app does not in anyway disturb ur flow, no notification, message, alerts etc. You can just open it up to view stats, update your profile and see some contact info the stock contacts app canāt show (like social media accounts)
I like the idea of having my qrcode on my business card, so when I give it out to someone, by just scanning the qrcode, it automatically add my business card information(contact,email, business name, address etc ) to their address book.
The argument for, and use case of QR codes is very idealisticā¦ but also has been seen to conflict with natural human tendencies. You take the effort to launch the relevant app to scan a code, maybe once or twice, and then the novelty wears off. It doesnāt help that for almost everytime a QR code is presented, somewhere behind your mind, you can imagine other ways the information could have been passed, and perhaps faster too. Pretty much the only perfect use I know of is setting up 2FA on websites using Google Authenticator or Authy, and those are one-time actions you never look forward to repeating unless you misplace (or change) your phone in case of GA - Authy persists on their servers.
Typing āwhy qr codesā into Google gave me this image
Moving on, I noticed your QR code looks crammed with so much information, perhaps because youāre attempting to pass the entire contact metadata along. Hereās a tip - the information is already synced to your server, you have an identifier, the person scanning is definitely running your application, they scan the ID, and fetch data off your servers to their account. Done. At least do your bit to reduce the awkwardness of trying to get a good shot of the code.
On the use of qr codes, there is another method of adding contacts and I plan to add more like using urls and wifi-direct which I think will be easier. Sharing is just a part of the app, you can still just add a phone number the normal way and other information about the person will come from the server. You can currently use NFC which is a lot cooler I think but not on every device.
I know it will be easier to just share an id and get the remaining info from the server but I had to add more info in the qr code in case the user doesnāt have or has bad internet connection at the time of receiving. Many people will not understand if they donāt see all or almost all the info on someone immediately they scan a code, I tried it with friends and they kept asking strange questions
Thanks for your input, I appreciate it and nice joke
