It contains: 4 standard Pandas, 2 Geishas, 2 Elvis, 2 Scream and 2 Frankenstein. Reeeally nice, Poken, thank you! Makes me look forward to the next 12pack.

Oh, and you can win some of these. Want to know how? Come back this weekend!

• Poken hardware explained
• Poken hardware explained 2

Regarding the final pricing: I used my 10% Fan bonus (my Promo Code is PMXKCPHSU8SLKKLPDCPP - feel free to use it) But even with the bonus I still payed almost double the price I payed at Lift. Yeah, German customs may played a part in that. I should have bought more at the conference I guess.

When I opened the packs, I was a bit disappointed. Both boxes contained the “standard mix” of Pokens – same as the two boxes I bought at Lift. Still, the people in the agency and friends will be happy that there is still supply. Also – it gives me all the more reason to customize more of them

Well, here are the two versions I know:

The left one is the Poken that was inside my Lift09 badge. It doesn’t look like a production model and the date on the edge says “02.02.2009″. The “cute” Pokens have a very different layout. If you want to open one yourself, here is a YouTube video that shows how.

So, what is all this? First you’ll notice the USB port. Also clearly visible is the coil (the white round thing) that should point in the direction you want to high four the other Pokens. The Lift model does not have a button for ghost mode etc. while on the cute model it’s inside the coil ring.

The heart of it all seems to be a 18F14k50 chip from Microchip Technology. But that’s where the easy insights end. As Stéphane hinted in his Google TechTalk video, no obvious or known RFID or wireless chips. The coil hints to something like induction but I have to admit I’m not much of an hardware guy. I will rather poke at the software side of things in the next couple of days and see what’s going on there. But if somebody knows a bit more what’s there, please write it up and link it in the comments, thanks!

See the lash on the bottom left? Inside is a Poken, a small gadget that allows you to share your personal data with other people. So if 2 Pokens are held together, they exchange the data that is stored on them.

Actually, it goes like this: first, you enter your personal data on the Poken website, then you bind your Poken devices to this account. Then you are ready to exchange your data with other Pokens. So each Poken only transmits your Poken ID when held together. After pokening around you connect your poken device with a computer via USB and load all the collected user profiles into your Poken account.

While at the conference it was an absolute blast to use the Pokens. In an instant they made business cards superfluous by bringing so much more to the table – just by holding together our conference badges, we were able to exchange not only names, but also images, social media links and so on.

Also at the conference were some people from Poken (the company). I had a chat with Stéphane Doutriaux and Bryan Guido Hassin and I really liked what I heard. They were really enthusiastic about their creation.

Apart from the “conference badge” model there are severeal cute ones for private use. After tweeting about the Pokens, the people from the agency back home were equally intrigued and told me to bring some home with me. So I did – and all 24 were gone in a flash.

I think there is something about those little plastic things. They are real extensions of the virtual social networks, which are based on real interactions. They are easy and most of all: fun! So let’s see where these Pokens lead us and what connections they allow us to bond. Let’s Poken up!