I just hailed a taxi using NFC
By touching my phone and accepting a dialog box, I hailed a cab. The cab knew where to pick me up and was there in minutes.
What’s the big deal? I could have texted that information myself. Possibly had I a) known the taxi company’s text number, b) known the full address of where I was and c) understood the local language. The NFC tag obviated these needs in a relatively painless way.
Yes, I could have just asked the receptionist to call me a cab but I can’t help but get excited about the potential to extend the functionality of something that we all carry around all day in such a useful manner.
I follow a lot of NFC press. There’s a lot of emphasis on NFC as a way to help make transactions seamless. I feel that it’s about a lot more than transactions. NFC can act as a lubricant in our environments. It’s about making things less hard: doing things, learning things, playing games, exploring.
Are you asking, what the hell is NFC? Well near field communication is pretty well defined at Wikipedia, so I suggest you check there first although Nokia has a pretty simple-to-understand page also available for more information.