Dote
The card in your hand
There is a chip inside it. Hold a phone against the card and it opens a page — your video, your voice, whatever you point it at. No app, no account for the person tapping, and nothing to charge.
Tapping it
- Hold the top of the phone against the card. An inch or less. On an iPhone that is the very top edge, near the cameras; on most Android phones it is the middle of the back.
- A notification slides in. Tap it once.
- The page opens in whatever browser the phone already uses.
Every iPhone from 2018 onward reads a card with nothing installed. Practically every Android of the last decade does too, as long as NFC is switched on — it is the same setting that makes tap-to-pay work. If a phone is too old, the card’s web address works typed in by hand.
What it can open
One at a time, and you can change it whenever you like. The card never changes; what it points at can be swapped forever.
- A video
- Upload one from your phone, or paste a YouTube or Vimeo link.
- A voice message
- Record it and they hear you, not a transcript of you.
- An occasion page
- A small page with your words, a date, and pictures.
- A contact page
- Your details, and a button that saves them to their phone.
- A link
- Anywhere you like — an album, a playlist, a booking page.
- Just words
- A written note, with nothing else on the screen.
Setting it up, and changing it later
We emailed you a link. Open it, make an account, and the card becomes yours — then you can put a video on it, swap it for a different one next year, or point it somewhere else entirely.
Lost the email? Check your spam folder first. If it is really gone, write to [email protected] with the card’s address — the short code printed on the page it opens — and we will send it again.
Looking after it
- Do not bend it
- Flexing or creasing it can break the aerial inside — a broken one cannot be repaired, and the card still looks fine while it simply stops answering. A metal card that gets bent also stays bent.
- Heat, sun and scratches
- Plastic softens in a hot car and the print can lift, so keep it out of the glovebox in summer. Bamboo does not soften, but dislikes long damp or direct sun. Metal does not soften either — it can scratch, and a bend will not press back out.
- Lift it off metal to tap it
- A card lying on a metal table or the back of a laptop often will not read. Pick it up first.
- It has no battery
- There is nothing inside to run down. The phone powers the chip for the fraction of a second it takes to read, which is why it still works in ten years.
- Nobody can read it from across the room
- NFC works over roughly an inch. In a wallet, a drawer or a pocket it cannot be read by anyone walking past.
- Keep your manage link private
- That link is the key to the card. Anyone who has it can change what the card opens — so treat it the way you would a password, and never post it.