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Not since the inclusion of stale bubble gum has there been an innovation in trading cards as awesome as what these Nuko cards are capable of. They look, feel, and flex just like regular cards, but they can be recognised by touchscreens when simply pressed against the display.
The secret is a printing technique called Touchcode that uses special capacitive inks, which are apparently still compatible with existing printer hardware. The ink is printed in a specific pattern on one end of the card that’s detected by the touchscreen as multiple simultaneous finger presses. And the arrangement of this pattern can be used to transmit data like a website URL. The capacitive ink is also printed on the other end of the card where it’s held, connecting it to the unique pattern so the whole thing basically serves as an extension of your fingers.
The technique is downright clever, and while Nukotoys is using it in a couple of sets of collectible trading cards that interact with games on the iPad, the other potential uses are pretty exciting. Imagine passing someone a business card they just press to their phone’s screen to store your contact info, or pressing a receipt to your tablet’s display to automatically initiate a payment.
It could even be used in printed currency, letting a cashier simply press a twenty quid note against their terminal’s display to determine its authenticity. So here’s to hoping it’s adopted for other uses, and not just the second coming of Pokemon.
[Nukotoys]
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Wouldn’t it be simpler and cheaper to just make holes in the cards?
Yes, but it wouldn’t be Magical and require any Unicorn Blood.
But unicorn blood is a limited resource. Even with the secret unicorn battery farms in China Apple barely has enough to meet demand for its products. Have you seen the conditions in those farms? Hundreds of unicorns packed into filthy squalid sheds, raised in the dark to prevent them using their rainbow powers to escape. Surely we don’t want to see more of this kind of suffering?
We must join together and fight the exploitation of Unicorns.
Apple are holding a big event of some kind next week. I suggest we start with a demonstration at that. If that doesn’t work we should start fire bombing their stores
I like the second idea better! Soooooo, when are we going to start it?
That’s clever!
“It could even be used in printed currency, letting a cashier simply press a twenty quid note against their terminal’s display to determine its authenticity.”
Well, no. As you said just before:
“uses special capacitive inks, which are apparently still compatible with existing printer hardware”
So it’d be really easy to forge.
So Gizmodo is for the magical, unicorn blood capacitive inks but against useful QR codes?
This has no real use outside of trading card games.
Touching someone’s business card to your phone to store contact details? Why not just send your contact card via, I don’t know, bluetooth or something? Or a QR code on the business card, since pretty much everyone has a QR code reader on their phone.