Tippecanoe Systems recently introduced a new approach to the traditional business card, claiming that it has solved the age-old problem of
keeping business cards from getting out-of-date: virtual business cards.
The VBCard Web site links paper business cards to ‘virtual’ cards accessible over the Internet. The linking is made possible by printing a ‘username’ and ‘pin number’ on the business card which will identify a single virtual card in the VBCard Web site.
Visitors to the site can create new cards or update their existing
card–while also having facilities to design and print paper cards using the
print command on their Web browsers. The new cards will have the username
and PIN printed neatly at the bottom. When friends and associates update
their cards, the site automatically notifies subscribers by e-mail.
“The problem with ordinary business cards is that a simple change renders them obsolete,” said Mike Tyler, president and CEO of Tippecanoe Systems.
“How many cards have you thrown away because your phone number
changed. . . or your title, or address? How many cards in your Rolodex are still
valid? How many friends have you lost?”
VBCard uses the vCard V2.1 specification from the Internet Mail Consortium
and the vCard V3.0 specification approved as a proposed standard by the
IETF.