Ping lets you leave virtual sticky notes for houseguests

Sticky notes — great concept, occasionally poor execution.  After all, how long can you really count on a sticky note to stay, well, sticky? And if that little piece of paper falls to the wayside, does your important message get lost, too?

Luckily, there’s a digital solution for all of that, and it comes in the form of Ping. Branded as “guidance for your shared home,” this invention from Royal College of Art graduate Kristian Knobloch is meant for Airbnb hosts to give their guests a bit of extra information about their new living quarters by way of a “digital guide book.” But the applications of Ping are seemingly endless.

Ping features a series of little round disks that can be placed throughout a house. Whenever you touch your smartphone against one of these modules, it opens a web page on your device, which gives you a bit more information about say, your surroundings, or a reminder about picking up some extra milk.

The disks are actually room-specific NFC pads, so an Airbnb host could easily give guests instructions or advice about a tricky toilet in the bathroom or where to leave the sheets at the end of the stay. Messages left on Ping’s modules can take any form — from a few paragraphs of text to a voice recording to a video — but should there be any confusion, the Ping app can also be used to call its owner.

“Our private spaces were never intended to be rented out,” the smart home device’s website reads. “Ping improves the experience for absent hosts who are renting out their flats and their visiting guests.”

While Ping isn’t available to the public quite yet, if this sounds like a concept you’d like to try out, Ping is inviting interested parties to “become one of our first beta users now.” You can sign up on their site, and the team promises to “be in touch shortly to get you your own set of Pings as soon as possible.”