I was browsing YouTube and found a few interesting demonstrations the uses of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.  

NFC for Beginners by GeekBlogTV demonstrates how to use an NFC phone to communicate with tags that are programmed for specific functions. The demo uses an app (NFC Task Launcher) from GooglePlay to program tags in order to perform designated tasks.

Android Home Automation Demo | Voice + NFC demonstrates two technologies: one for speech recognition and one for NFC. Armando Ferreira places NFC tags in different areas and appliances in his house. When tags are requested to perform tasks by an NFC phone, the hands-off automation is demonstrated.

Android provides an NFC framework for app developers to develop NFC mobile apps. NFC Basics  describes the Android framework APIs that support NFC features. For example, the Android app NFC Task Launcher, such as the one used by GeekBlogTV, was developed with Android framework APIs (Application Programming Interface).

The Windows phone Proximity API provides support for NFC communication. In this YouTube video Lumia App Labs #8 – Developing NFC apps in Windows Phone 8, Andreas Jakl demonstrates how one can use Proximity API in a mobile app to communicate with NFC tags and create unique application-launch tags.