It has been exciting to see the usage growing for BlackBerry smartphone users to include everything from payments using your smartphone to sharing photos and contact information via NFC. To create a set of extremely useful NFC tags that have helped me automate common tasks that we perform on a daily basis is very simple as shown by Tiensoon earlier. Here we have a short guide, made by the guys over at BlackBerry to create such tags!

In the words Annu, who is the Senior Product Manager for BlackBerry 7, NFC technology on BlackBerry smartphones “works like magic”. The tags are inexpensive, the apps are readily available, the technology is here today, and the end result is fantastic. Let me walk through the steps that I took to create tags such as these.

The Recipe

 

You’ll need:

• Blank NFC tags/stickers^
• An NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphone:
  BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 or 9790 smartphone, BlackBerry Curve 9350/9360/9370 smartphone
• The ShortcutMe app for BlackBerry smartphones
• The NFCShortcuts app for BlackBerry smartphones
• Plenty of ideas; the sky’s the limit with this stuff!

Tip: The size of the tags (some hold more data than others), shouldn’t matter. You won’t be loading them with too much information in this exercise.

Note: Despite the support for NFC tags, some NFC tags are not supported.

How it Works

This process involves a few steps: You’ll be creating a shortcut (think of it as an “action sequence” that can launch an app or function and then, optionally, interact with the app once it’s launched) using the ShortcutMe app, and then writing a command to launch that shortcut to an NFC tag/sticker using the NFCShortcuts app.

Creating Shortcuts Using the ShortcutMe and NFCShortcuts Apps

Both the ShortcutMe app and the NFCShortcuts app can be a little daunting to use at first. They deal with creating functions that can be quite complex, and you may need to do a bit of tinkering to figure it all out your first time through. Be patient, and leave any questions that you may have in the comments.

Let’s create an NFC tag that causes your device to turn Wi-Fi on. Follow the steps below:

1. Launch the ShortcutMe app on your BlackBerry smartphone, hit the Menu key, and choose “Add Shortcut” from the menu. This will bring you to the new shortcut configuration page.
2. To the right of “App Name”, you can choose what app or function that this shortcut will launch. For our tag, we want to choose “WiFi_ON”. However, take a look in this list to see all of the possibilities for creating NFC tags. There’s a lot to explore in terms of apps and settings.
3. Next, you’ll need to choose a 1-3 character shortcut key sequence that launches this shortcut. I chose “WFI” to closely resemble the function of this tag. At this point, your screen should look something like this:
4. If you scroll down the page, you’ll come to an area that says “Macros”. Above this is an “Alternative Launchings” setting, which you can ignore for the time being. Macros allow you to simulate actual inputs after the app that you selected launches. In our case, turning Wi-Fi on is a one-time task, so we wouldn’t need to include a macro. But if you were to launch the clock with the intention of setting the alarm for example, you’d need to add that input sequence that would be performed after the app is launched. See below for an example macro and a screenshot of the built-in Macro Editor:
5. Now you can hit the menu button and choose “Save & Exit” (remember to clear any macros out if you had been playing around; none are needed for the “Wi-Fi ON” command that we’ve chosen).
6. You should see your new shortcut on the home screen of the ShortcutMe app, listed as “WFI WiFi ON”. Feel free to click it to try it out.
7. Next, close the ShortcutMe app, and open up the NFCShortcuts app. This is where we’ll actually write data to a tag. Conceptually, we’ll tell the tag to launch the ShortcutMe app on your smartphone and activate the “WFI” shortcut that we just created.
8. Choose “Add a New Tag” – you’ll see that all you need to do is tap a blank NFC tag to begin (make sure that NFC is turned on in your settings). You should see a message that looks similar to the following:
9. Choose “Yes,” and in the next screen, you can configure the information that will be written to the tag. For “Launch”, choose the “ShortcutMe_Touch” application. Beneath that, you’ll see options for additional settings such as PreMacros. Ignore this and move down to the “Parameter” field. Here you need to enter the shortcut keys for the shortcut that we just created within ShortcutMe – so enter “wfi” (in this case, the field is not case-sensitive). Your screen should look like this:
10. Save and close the tag configuration screen, and then back on the home screen of the NFCShortcuts app, choose the correct “Stored Tag Number” for the tag that you just created. You’ll know you’ve got it right when you see the proper “Stored Tag Name” and the parameter shortcut keys listed after a comma:
11. Next, all you need to do is choose “Write To Tag”. Then you’ll have a simple option to “Write NFCL data to a tag”, which leaves it re-writable for future tinkering, or “Write and Lock the tag”, which is irreversible. After you’ve selected one of these two options, simply hold your NFC tag up to the phone, wait for the vibrate indication that the data has been written, and you’re finished! Go ahead and try it out.

That’s it! Now you have your first NFC tag ready. Go ahead and try more ideas such as contact sharing and more.

Via BlackBerry

Now, some of you might be wondering that if the battery goes flat, would that not mean that NFC on the device is unavailable?
All BlackBerry smartphones will continue to be able to provide NFC card emulation functionality even when battery is low. But when it comes to drained battery mode, whether NFC card emulation will continue to work or not depends on the smartphone model; For example, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 smartphone and BlackBerry Bold 9790 smartphone do support this mode While on the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Curve 9360, it is not supported.
You may also have noticed that the Near Field Communication options screen has a setting in the section entitled “Allow NFC Card Transactions” labelled “When Powered Off”. This setting will also affect the behaviour of a device when in low battery or dead battery mode.