No NFC On Your Phone? How About an NFC sdcard?

With Google's recent announcement of Google Wallet and other fun goodies using NFC, they got our collective hope up -- only for us to realize that owners of the Nexus S and new phones with NFC built in will be able to take advantage of all the NFC fun, and not the rest of us. 

To get around that a Chinese company called Netcom (no relation to the Norwegian carrier with the same name) has put together a microsd card with NFC built in. Much like the EyeFi card (which combines Wi-Fi and flash storage), this card will combine an NFC chip and antenna with a flash memory card. Sounds great, right? 

Before you pull out your wallet, there are some restrictions. Your smartphone's back cover can't have any metal in it, nor can the microsd slot be made of metal. Since the antenna is tiny, scanning is reportedly "tricky" -- especially if the reader has a small sensing area. The phone needs a special app running in the background to communicate with the NFC circuitry. Lastly, the device hasn't been released yet, so even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it. 

None of those restrictions makes it any less cool! 

Source: Engadget