A few months ago my wallet got stolen, it involved lots of kung-fu fighting, ninjas and pirates, but unfortunately, they won. I did put up a good fight though. ٩◔̯◔۶
Anyway, as with all victims of stolen wallets, I had to cancel my credit cards and the whole nine yards. I got most of my cards replaced, except my medical insurance card. In reality there are some cards you do not need to carry on you, the only information that's needed from them is some identification number. So I thought to myself; how can I store my info where it can be easily accessible? Email! Google Drive! DropBox! Just take a picture, upload it and viola, use your fancy phone and there it is!
All that made just too much sense and was way too simple! I needed something more interesting, more techy, time consuming and equally useful. Then came PassBook!
I scoured the universe looking for articles to create just a passbook pass and then saw this amazing figure everywhere $99, so I modified my search adding the discount code "free" and came up with this site passkit.com. They are not free, but they let me template stuff for free and install it, then keep it for $0.99 on my device.
Anyway, as with all victims of stolen wallets, I had to cancel my credit cards and the whole nine yards. I got most of my cards replaced, except my medical insurance card. In reality there are some cards you do not need to carry on you, the only information that's needed from them is some identification number. So I thought to myself; how can I store my info where it can be easily accessible? Email! Google Drive! DropBox! Just take a picture, upload it and viola, use your fancy phone and there it is!
All that made just too much sense and was way too simple! I needed something more interesting, more techy, time consuming and equally useful. Then came PassBook!
I scoured the universe looking for articles to create just a passbook pass and then saw this amazing figure everywhere $99, so I modified my search adding the discount code "free" and came up with this site passkit.com. They are not free, but they let me template stuff for free and install it, then keep it for $0.99 on my device.
I created a template for my Insurance provider under my present place of employment ThoughtWorks and made it publicly available. I have no idea how long the free account lasts, but it can be found here
Password protected, use the wifi password for ThoughtWorks
Serial No: <<Your Insurance ID >> this helps generate a barcode that spits out your ID when scanned.
Modify the details to add your name and Insurance ID, then the passbook is created and stored automagically! (Look at that, the dictionary did not complain with red squiggly lines, automagically is a word, who knew? *types "techy"* hmm now its asking for my English teacher's name ).
It also asks you for your email so you can retrieve a new pass if your phone gets lost, stolen or replaced.
Screenshot: Click for larger image
Let me know what you think and if this is something worth building an in-house API.
