Fun with Windows Phone 8 and NFC

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I currently have a Windows Phone 8 device, specifically the HTC 8X.  One the features in this phone is Near Field Communications (NFC).  I had heard a lot about NFC so I wanted to try it out.  So, I bought some NFC tags from Amazon.  I found the tags by searching for windows phone 8 nfc tags on Amazon. It cost me about $10 for 5 tags.  Below is a picture of the NFC tags:

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In order to use the tags I downloaded NFC Launchit from the Windows Phone Store. NFC Launchit lets you launch applications and perform actions when you tap your phone a NFC tag. 

So, I opened NFC Launchit.

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After the application opened, I tapped on Start.

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I wanted to configure or write to the NFC tag so that when I tapped it, my phone would launch my blog website.  So, I selected Launch website, from System Apps.

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I then entered the URL of my blog which is https://blogs.technet.com/b/xdot509/, and tapped on the check mark.

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Next, I held my phone up against the tag to write this information to the NFC tag.

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Once the tag was written to, I was presented with the following screen.

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So next, I wanted to test the tag and NFC Launchit.  So, I tapped my phone against the tag, and was prompted on whether I wanted to receive content, and I tapped accept.

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And as expected Internet Explore launched and navigated to my blog.  I stuck the NFC tag to my laptop, and now anytime I want to open my blog I just have to tap my phone against the tag and tap accept.

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-Chris