Now that I’m officially a card-carrying member of the self employed militia, I’m trying to come up with the best way to save myself a heap of cash by avoiding the inevitable job of getting business cards made up. But is the rest of the world ready to give up their business card with me?

It turns out that finding an appropriate app for contact exchange is easy. Bump is a free app that’s been featured in Apple’s iPhone ads and lets you exchange contact details, photos and apps with other iOS and Android devices by bumping the phones together. It works well, is free (did I mention that already) and seems to be an ideal solution.

But as I discovered on the weekend on a table full of technology journos, making the move from business cards to apps is going to be a tough one. On a table of about 10-15 people, I was the only one who had the app installed.

Which kind of defeats the purpose. It’s hardly effortless is one party has to download an app before you share a virtual business card.

Is there a better way? Of course, email is the obvious solution, but it’s a one way transaction. I really need to be receiving details as well as offering my own.

Any suggestions are more than welcome…