Poken - electronic mini cyber sex to replace business cards

I attended the MARKEX trade show at Sandton Convention Centre last week. I was already overly stimulated and oozing electronic gadgetry lust from everything on display, as well as heady from the effects of the oxygen bar where I just OD’d on lime scented O2, when I stumbled upon something which nearly made me jizz in my pants. A number of people were gathered around an interesting looking stall...

A lady attendant seemed to be free and I her asked what they had to offer. She then produced a little plastic figurine-like thingy with a strong Japanese Pop-Art feel to it. She called it a POKEN and started to tell me all about it:

A poken is a little key-chain gadget which at its most basic is an electronic business card exchange device. It utilizes a proprietary Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to allow the exchange of information one would usually put on a printed business card. All you need to is to hold your poken next to someone else’s and press a button and voila – your poken has electronic sex in cyberspace with the other person’s poken and your details have been exchanged. Once you plug in your poken in a USB slot of your computer, it links you with your personal profile on the poken website and all the people you have pokened are now linked to your profile.

Yet, the poken is more of a social business card than what the traditional type is. One can link all your social network information to your poken profile, which is exchanged together with your other info when you poken somebody. The same rules of inviting and accepting still apply, but it saves you having to sift through 1 000’s of John Smiths’ LinkedIn, Skype or Facebook profiles till you find the right one.

I had to have one and purchased one on the spot. I googled poken and found that other bloggers I know (such as sheebee whom I have met in real life as well) already know about pokens and have blogged about it. I love this thingy so much and would love to promote it. So, for the first time I, J. Hardspear de la Azotea, will be having a competition on my blog. 5 readers can win a poken each. To enter, please mention this post on your blog, with a link-back to this post. Also send me a mail to hardspear@hotmail.com with a link to your post and a one-liner as to why you should win a poken.