I’ve spent a lot of time this spring learning about Near Field Communication (NFC) and the NFC networking API in WinRT. That part of WinRT is present both in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, which means it’s relatively easy to get tablets and phones talking to each peer-to-peer. One of the things I love about NFC is that while NFC itself only works when two devices are in close proximity (3 or 4 centimeters), devices that are tapped together can use NFC to establish a network connection and continue to exchange data efter they’re pulled apart using WiFi or Bluetooth. WinRT’s NFC API makes this tap-and-connect scenario extremely easy to implement.

I did a couple of talks on the subject of NFC in WinRT at Microsoft TechDays Europe conferences in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Netherlands talk is available on Channel 9:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays/Techdays-2013-the-Netherlands/Tap-and-Go-Proximity-Networking-in-WinRT

If you’re not familiar with NFC but wonder what’s in it for an app developer, take a few minutes to watch the first two demos I do in the video. The first occurs at the 21:35 mark, and the second starts at 35:50. Hopefully you’ll come away with some ideas how to incorporate NFC into apps of your own.