How to make vCard QR Codes that are compatible with iPhone, Android and Blackberry
Published on 4/12/2011
I’ve been working on a web page where you can scan a company’s vCard easily on your smartphone and have it saved to your contact list. It’s definitely a pain in the ass. Here is a sample QR code with a vCard in it:
Here are some tips:
- use the Image Chart Editor on Google Code - you have to look for the QR Code chart in the gallery. Basically, you send it a URL with the vCard in the querystring and it sends back a QR Code image. Don’t forget to url-encode your querystring.
- You don’t need to email a vCard to iPhone, it can read them directly from a QR Code with the right app.
- I tried a few different QR Code readers for iPhone and most of them sucked at parsing vCards. The best that i found was Qrafter, and it’s free.
- I used Barcode Scanner on Android.
- Android didn’t want to accept a URL, so I put it in the NOTE as well. Any tips?
- With Blackberry 6, use AppWorld, hit the menu, then choose Scan a barcode.
- Blackberry can’t read vCards directly from a QR Code, but you can qr-code a URL that returns a vCard. You’ll want to send back this PHP header: header(“Content-type:text/x-vcard”);
Young, bored, and know Java? Please write a decent QR code reader for blackberry :)
Here is a vCard that I tested with Windows 7, Blackberry 6, iPhone 4 and Android 2.3.3
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:;Company Name
FN:Company Name
ORG:Company Name
TEL;WORK;VOICE;PREF:+16045551212
TEL;WORK;FAX:+16045551213
ADR;WORK;POSTAL;PARCEL;DOM;PREF:;;123 main street;vancouver;bc;v0v0v0;canada
EMAIL;INTERNET;PREF:[email protected]
URL;WORK;PREF:http://www.example.com/
CATEGORIES:BUSINESS,WORK
UID:A64440FC-6545-11E0-B7A1-3214E0D72085
REV:20110412165200
END:VCARD
UID should uniquely identify the contact (use a guid), and REV should identify the revision (just use the date+time)
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