Looking Back on "How to NFC on the Android Platform"

Jesse Chen • December 30, 2011 3 min read

android

My previous post, How to NFC on the Android Platform, has seen over 9,000 page views since I published it in the summer of 2011.  When I was researching how to integrate NFC on Android, there were very few examples and tutorials on how to write Android apps that use NFC.  I thought that by writing a tutorial, it would benefit others who were in the same predicament, and it turns out that it was a much-needed resource (seeing that the only reason people visit my website now is to view the tutorial :P).

Yesterday, one inbound link (http://mocs.vtt.fi/pdf/Peer_to_Peer_communication_with_NFC_on_Android.pdf) struck my curiosity and I found that it was from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which, according to Wikipedia, is the largest multidisciplinary research organisation in Northern Europe. Wow, it turns out that some dude is doing research on NFC peer-to-peer communication on Android and referenced my tutorial in his slides :D.  I find it fascinating because it showed me first-hand how connected the world is and how knowledge can be retrieved so quickly regardless of location now because of the Internet.  The next generation will wonder how we even lived without the Internet ("well you see..back in the day, we used to go to this place called the library, or try to physically find someone who is knowledgeable about the topic at hand..").

I noticed that the origin of most visits to the tutorial came mostly from Europe and parts of Asia.  That is interesting, but not surprisingly, to see that interest in NFC development for the Android platform is greater in other parts of the world than the USA.  NFC adoption in the United States is still in the early adopter phase, but I believe that it will have mass consumer adoption within the next decade, even faster if Apple integrates NFC technology in the iPhone.

Haven't wrote a new entry at all during the fall semester, with more free time coming up next semester - I should be able to start writing more regularly.  I also might write an updated tutorial on how to NFC on Android, since with the advent of Android 4.0 (otherwise known as Ice Cream Sandwich), they actually deprecated some of the NFC API calls that existed in 2.3 and have new API calls (related to their Android Beam feature).  Also, perhaps a tutorial on how to write Android apps that takes advantages of root (superuser) permissions.  Stay tuned for more :)

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