Non Stop Portals

The latest social media craze to hit Raleigh, NC is the Poken. A Poken is a device that uses near field wireless technology to communicate with other Pokens. Users store their personal information on the Poken and then they can exchange their personal information by touching their two Pokens together (or putting them close to each other).

It's an electronic business card. When you get back to your computer, you simply plug your Poken into a USB drive and you have access to the information from the other user. The mutual exchange of information happens automatically by connecting you to a Poken web site (where you registered your information). Wikipedia has a good overview of how the device works.

Pokens are available in two basic versions: a read-only device and an USB memory stick configuration. With the USB memory stick configuration you can use the Poken as a regular USB disk drive to store other files of your own. The read-only device is cheaper than the USB memory stick, but it can only be used to exchange information.

Pokens have "funky" designs to help draw attention to the fact that you have one in your possession. Poken Zoo has a great assortment of Poken designs you can choose from.

Pokens have been burning the Raleigh, NC Internet circles as the latest and greatest. Martin Brossman has been a great proponent of the Poken as a new entry to the social media world.  Martin has created some great educational information about the Poken and how it works.  I learned about the Poken from Martin's initiative to share his discovery with the Raleigh community.

It's going to be interesting to see how well they catch on. I paid the extra money to get the USB memory stick version. Can't ever have too much portable disk space around!