My problem for years has been that people still ask me for business cards even though I stopped carrying them in like 2005.
Turns out there is a package called qrencode in the Debian repositories so this is as simple as:
$ sudo apt install qrencode
$ qrencode -o linkedin-qrcode.png 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/myprofile'
Plus a few others, personal website, company website etc. All copied into a Google Drive folder as you suggest.
Next time someone asks, boom pop out the qr code.
Brilliant. Thank you.
echo "RSVP by Text"
qrencode -t UTF8 'SMSTO:212-555-1212:Thank You! RSVP for (name, number of adults, number of kids)'
echo "RSVP by Email"
qrencode -t UTF8 "mailto:[email protected]?subject=RSVP: Some Event&body=[ ] - Yes [ ] - No"
echo "Directions"
qrencode -t UTF8 "1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington, D.C. 20500"It seems we are very close to add a Save button there, which would be incredibly convenient :-)
That might be for a future contribution.
Most generated qrcodes (from a URL) will work fine, but LinkedIn is strange as their direct link will open a web browser and not always kick open their app on a persons phone. (The issue mostly seemed to be older versions of iOS that created headaches).
If you’re doing this for LinkedIn, instead open the app on your phone, find your QR code for your profile, screenshot the QR code their app generates, then crop it and use it as you need.
My "killer" idea back then was simply putting a LinkedIn-qr-code on back of my business card. Whenever I handed it over to someone (at a conference, mostly), they found it brilliant, scanned it immediately and sent a request on LinkedIn. The good things about this procedure were that:
* I didn't need to keep random people's business card and forge who they were after a 3-5day busy conference, I just had to go to my LinkedIn, and could remember them by their face
* vice versa: they could associate my contact accept with a face. Not to mention that this opened a more direct communication channel with a lesser chance to "ghost" me.
I guess business cards are not really a thing anymore on the more popular conferences that target a younger (engineer) audience.
1. People spell my name right. Even when I tell people how to spell my name exactly, they still get it wrong. If they scan my QR code, they always get it right
2. I can put all my info in one place. My vCard has my phone number, several emails, links to my social media, Discord, and whatnot.
3. You can include a photo, if you don't mind making the QR code much larger. With a well optimized image, this can be a nice addition.
I started doing this around the time IOS added QR code support to their camera app (six years ago or so). Very fun to watch iphone owners heads explode that were expecting to go through a tedious ritual of typing out a phone number or email address. Still happens occasionally. People are used to awkward and tedious rituals for exchanging contact details and this is the complete opposite.
Very simple to do and very practical. Most phones have QR code support built into their default camera apps now. You don't need any special apps for this. So, there's very little friction with this. Mostly it's just people being unaware that they can do this. There are gazillions of websites where you can create QR codes for web links, vcards, wifi credentials, etc. That part is easy. All you need to do is create a QR code and save it to some location where you can access it from your phone easily and show it to people.
I use Google drive for this but it's pretty easy to find alternatives to that.