SHOOT: Business Cards

Ten people meet. Nobody reads out a phone number, spells an email, or photographs a badge on somebody else's screen. Everyone taps once, and it is done. HOW IT WORKS Someone says "shoot". Everyone presses the button. Any phone that pressed within the same eight seconds, standing close enough, joins the same huddle. Two people save each other straight away — they both pressed a button while standing together, which is the yes. Three or more see a list of cards first, so anybody from the next table who tapped at the same moment can be taken out before anything is sent. Then cards save both ways. You get their card only if they also kept yours. No pending requests, no one-sided follows, nothing to accept later. WE HOLD NOTHING This is not a promise about how carefully we would look after your data. There is no account, no database, and nothing on our side to look after. - Your position is read for a few seconds while a huddle forms, so the app can tell who is standing next to you. Held in memory, never written to disk. - Your card passes through to the phones in your huddle and is gone from our side once they have it. It lives on your phone and theirs. - Your contacts are read on the device only, if you turn it on. Your address book never leaves your phone. - What you call people, and anybody you have blocked, are never sent to us. They stay on your phone, and travel only in your phone's own backup, to your own iCloud account. - There is no account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to delete. THE PART A CONTACTS LIST NEVER DOES Your address book knows a name and a number. It does not know you met at a festival in June, or which of these people is the one who does sound. Label people the way you actually think of them - a festival, a client, the Tuesday table - and invent a new label whenever none of yours fits. Then search by what somebody does rather than by a name you have half forgotten, because the person you need next month is "that ceramicist", not "Jane". CARDS WORTH HANDING OVER Ten designs, and none of them look like a form. Matte black and gold with a name that lights letter by letter, pressed editorial ink, soft blossom, a blueprint grid. Pick a colourway and a typeface; put a photograph on the ones that show one. Carry up to three cards - work, personal, and one more. The card showing on your home screen is the card a shoot sends, so you swipe to the right one and tap. ALSO - Read a paper business card with the camera and keep it as a card - Show your address book as cards, and move anybody across into SHOOT - Send your card on WhatsApp or anywhere else as a link. Somebody without the app sees it in a browser and can save it to their contacts; somebody with SHOOT opens it straight in the app - Or send it as a contact file, with your photo on it - Add your Instagram and LinkedIn. They show as small marks on your card, and a tap opens the profile - Block somebody and they never appear in a huddle of yours again, at any event. They are not told, and it stays on your phone - Back up to your own storage whenever you like. The file is plain, readable JSON - a backup you cannot open is one you cannot trust SHOOT needs two or more phones in the same place. On your own, tapping the button will tell you nobody else shot, which is the app working rather than failing.