I've been wanting to play around with Passbook since I first got wind of it. In short: Passbook allows companies large and small to start handing out things like boarding passes, coupons or loyalty cards for iOS. Whether this will become an actual thing largely depends on the amount and types of companies using it.

A twist on coupons

This website (and business) has been undergoing some changes and to highlight this new direction I decided to put a spin on a Passbook coupon. Grab the coupon and you'll be eligible for a free hour of consulting by yours truly - but really, you're welcome to shoot an email at any time.

Where's the twist? Passbook passes can carry up to ten locations. When a pass holder nears one of those locations -and the pass is allowed to- a message will pop up on the lock screen. Now, Roam isn't a retail chain; there's only one location to specify. Instead I added the locations of some customers, outlining the supplied services. This means anyone who downloads the coupon can be reminded of my services whenever they're near someone I've worked with. It's like pull-based referral marketing. Or an interactive, mobile portfolio.

But seriously

Although the coupon is a fun little experiment, I can really see some value in Passbook in the intended use cases. Start exploring and start helping people to never leave their loyalty cards, coupons or boarding passes at home again.

A heads up:

• You can view the card in OS X, but the rendering isn't entirely accurate. Date values, for example, are not rendered at all. You should use the iOS Simulator to preview instead.
• Don't forget to specify the correct mime type (application/vnd.apple.pkpass).