Keep in Contact Creatively: my facecard
Posted by: iRob in Reviews, iPhone News, iPhone apps, iPhone apps - Free, iPod

Anyone who uses their iPhone to its full potential is probably connected all over the Web. Between social networking sites and email, calls and texting are almost secondary features for smartphone users. The developers of my facecard recognize this, as well as our increasing ability to customize not only our own online experiences but the experiences others have interacting with us online. With all that in mind, they’ve created a new type of contact card sharing application that connects the dots while it connects people to one another.
Contact listings in your phone can get messy—how many times has someone emailed you at a defunct address? How many times have you found someone’s FB profile and realized you never had it synced with the rest of their info in your phone? With my facecard, that could become a thing of the past. Instead of depending on your contact’s software to make all the connections, you’ll create your own “facecard”—a personal version of a business card, kinda—digitally. This virtual card will contain all of your contact information, which you keep up to date, and share as you wish. Not only is it a tidy solution to sprawling and redundant address book entries, it’s also an attractive one. You personalize your contact card and design it to represent you, with photos (hence the name of the app, I suppose), fonts, and colors.

The interface is almost too straightforward. When you download my facecard, a brief introduction to its purpose and capabilities is presented. Tap through that, and you’re ready to make your own facecard. A sidebar steps you through the four parts of the process: add photos, fill in a profile form, design, preview. Once you’re at the preview you can save and share. The “design” function lets you rearrange the info you put into your profile form and adjust fonts and colors.

The my facecard app seems to present a nice solution to organizing your own info and sharing it efficiently. I think a few changes would make this app awesome, though. First, make the profile a little more flexible. Adding a phone number is mandatory, for example. I assume this is so the call and text icons display and work correctly, but why not make it possible to leave them out? What if I want a contact card only for email? Also, it appears you can only share your facecard with other my facecard users—non-users you send to receive a link suggesting they join my facecard. I get that this is supposed to motivate people to join, but it also limits the app’s practicality. I do like the variety of social networks that can be included, and that they can be accessed directly from a contact’s card. One of the app’s finest features is that you can exchange your facecard with another my facecard member by tapping phones. It’s called the “bump” feature, and it’s accessible from within the app.

All in all, Facecard is a good concept and worth checking out! It’s available for free in the iTunes App Store, so play around with it and see what you think.
iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-facecard/id485195729?mt=8

