My first thought was, "Oh neat... oh wait.. Autorun... people won't like that"...
I really love the idea and would love to own some of them myself but I suspect most employers would say, "Oh it's clever... can you email us a CV also" and never plug in the card.
I rather think the point is to show his technical ability and 'think outside the boxness'. If you just want a cute promotional item there are promotional companies that will put your name on anything from a foam gonk to a golf umbrella.
We interviewed an e-eng and in the interview when we asked what have you done, he was able to pull out the world's first pocket TV (sinclair gadget from the early 80s) and say - "I designed that". Certainly an ice breaker.
the entire reason it's impressive is he did it himself. if you want, i'll sell you a bunch of USB drives and you can stick your resume on them too. it kind of kills the interview when the go "wow we are so impressed by this awesome business card resume circuit board!!" and you go "well actually i just ordered it from some guy"
Mac OS X doesn't have an autorun.inf equivalent. The closest you can get is a configuration file to tell Finder (the file browser in OS X) to use a custom window size and background when viewing the drive.
I like this because he is demonstrating his technical ingenuity by designing and building the thing - from scratch - by himself. A great lead into getting an interview or being called in to quote for some work.
But does this show commercial ingenuity ? Perhaps less so. People will be terrified of plugging a random USB device into their machine. And anyway it's pretty easy to buy things just like this - you see them quite a lot at trade shows these days. (eg: http://www.flashbay.com/wafer_usb_card.html)
I like the idea of these a lot. I've been looking for a way to make sure people don't just throw out my business cards, and making them useful over a long period of time (ie: usb key!) would definitely help...
Sadly, people will just stick this, and any random USB device into their computers. I can't remember the company in question, but there was a story about a security audit where the hacker team got in by handing out free USB drives in the parking lot.
I heard the story attributed to Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and they have fairly strict security (ie men with machine guns, lots of trainig). Probably has to do with the plutonium...
Look at the card, this post's url is some of the only text on it.
(which would make me think the same care & attention should be put towards this post as his resume... typos [e.g. Opeh instead of Open in the final sentence]? really?]
Come on, haily has a point. It’s not at all intuitive. It doesn’t look like a USB device to most people. It doesn’t even say “USB” on the device, unless I missed it.
Doesn't mention how much it costs or how much time it takes to make each one. Certainly nontrivial on both, though. If you're going to have a business card like that then you it's a serious investment every time you give one out.
"Clearly, it is not the cheaper business card in the world (about 5 euros/piece for a small batch order), but it is a (relatively) small price for having a card in your pocket that has more CPU power than the computer that led the man to the moon."
This is very cool. Geekout aside: I have a micro-SD card (it plugs into an SD card for housing). It's about the size and thickness of my little finger nail. It holds 4GB (ie 5 CDs; 4000 novels), and it's near the bottom of the range.
I like it, yet can't help but think: "Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!" only in the technological equivalent.
Cute idea, but I'm not sure I'd take ideas about job-hunting strategies from someone who apparently hasn't managed to find one anywhere in the world for quite some time. :-)
A snippet of a suggestion what I posted on my blog
"Now why don't credit card companies make something like this. Make an
image of their credit card with a USB stick."
You might want to try selling this idea to credit card companies
If you go to his site's home page at http://www.t4f.org/index.php it will display a message about the service provider having problems (he also provides an alternate GMail address, since he can't get to his t4f.org e-mail). However, from the home page, you can click on the Projects link at the top of that page to get to the pages for the business card project, and others (the home page comes up in Español, just click on the British Union Jack icon in the upper right corner of any page to switch to Ingles from that point forward).
For those who think this is just a USB memory stick (e.g., the FlashBay memory card referenced earlier), it's not - he's showing his skill at integrating a PIC microcontroller that has a number of features for digital/analog data/signal acquisition (see the specs paragraph on his page). His resume and contact info are stored in the flash memory of the PIC controller (only 24KB) - but, he also provides solder pads for an optional 8-pin SPI (or I2C) flash memory chip (up to 32MB).
Of course, Homeland Security, the TSA, etc., won't understand any of that, and he could wind up in Gitmo or whatever hell-hole is being filled, now, except that he speaks Spanish, not Arabic, Persian, Erdu, or other Muslim-dominated languages (they still might not realize that for way too long, though).
60 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadI really love the idea and would love to own some of them myself but I suspect most employers would say, "Oh it's clever... can you email us a CV also" and never plug in the card.
We interviewed an e-eng and in the interview when we asked what have you done, he was able to pull out the world's first pocket TV (sinclair gadget from the early 80s) and say - "I designed that". Certainly an ice breaker.
But does this show commercial ingenuity ? Perhaps less so. People will be terrified of plugging a random USB device into their machine. And anyway it's pretty easy to buy things just like this - you see them quite a lot at trade shows these days. (eg: http://www.flashbay.com/wafer_usb_card.html)
http://www.darkreading.com/security/perimeter/showArticle.jh...
(which would make me think the same care & attention should be put towards this post as his resume... typos [e.g. Opeh instead of Open in the final sentence]? really?]
"Clearly, it is not the cheaper business card in the world (about 5 euros/piece for a small batch order), but it is a (relatively) small price for having a card in your pocket that has more CPU power than the computer that led the man to the moon."
(yes, I know I'm not seeing what's intended, just having fun)
They are a tad insane about DIY.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9782860-7.html
Can't find it in Google Cache too, Bing saves the day. http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Introduction+to+my+business...
Mine goes to
http://custom404error.com/?keywords=citibank%2business%2loan...
Missing images but mirrors:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...
http://www.t4f.org.nyud.net/projects/business-card
Schematic: http://www.t4f.org.nyud.net/archives/Business%20Card/Busines...
http://www.t4f.org.nyud.net:8080/projects/business-card
> The link you are accessing has been blocked by the Barracuda Web Filter because it contains spyware. The name of the spyware is: W32.Scrapkut
You might want to try selling this idea to credit card companies
For those who think this is just a USB memory stick (e.g., the FlashBay memory card referenced earlier), it's not - he's showing his skill at integrating a PIC microcontroller that has a number of features for digital/analog data/signal acquisition (see the specs paragraph on his page). His resume and contact info are stored in the flash memory of the PIC controller (only 24KB) - but, he also provides solder pads for an optional 8-pin SPI (or I2C) flash memory chip (up to 32MB).
Of course, Homeland Security, the TSA, etc., won't understand any of that, and he could wind up in Gitmo or whatever hell-hole is being filled, now, except that he speaks Spanish, not Arabic, Persian, Erdu, or other Muslim-dominated languages (they still might not realize that for way too long, though).