We may be edging toward a paperless world, but business cards are still the coin of the networking realm. At any given time, you likely have several sticking out of your wallet, spilling from your pockets, and stacked on your deskeverywhere but on your smartphone in your contact list, where you need them most.
Fortunately, theres a range of tools to help you digitize paper business cards for easy organization. Here are five we like most.
CamCard transcribes business cards to your contact list.
CamCard is an app that reads business cards and converts them into digital contacts. Just snap a photo of a card, and the app orients it, reads the text, and transcribes it to your contact list. Contacts are automatically saved to your CamCard digital card file, but you can choose to save them to other accounts, such as email, Facebook, or your phone contact list.
CamCards OCR works fairly well: Its good at reading text, but its not great at deciphering which text should populate which field in a digital contact file, especially when its trying to read a creative layout. For example, CamCard often gets the company name and the persons title mixed up, because many business cards put the title (not the company) after the persons name. The app is excellent at transcribing numbers (and putting them in the correct mobile, work, or fax box) and email addresses, however.CamCard also keeps a photo of the card, so if the OCR fails, you have a backup.
CamCard isnt just for collecting others cards. You can upload your own card to the database and add augmented reality features, such as links to your work, a headshot, or a video introduction. If another CamCard user scans your card, theyll get all this information.
CamCard is available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. It comes in two iterationsa free, ad-supported version that limits the amount of cards you can scan, and a paid premium version that costs between $10 and $20, depending on the platform.
CardMunch makes it easy to connect to your contacts LinkedIn profile.
CardMunch is LinkedIns business card app (iOS only). Although its branded as a card reader, it doesnt use OCR technology to transcribe cardsit employs actual humans. Just snap a legible photo of the card then sit back and wait for one of CardMunchs team members to transcribe it and return it in digital form (the process typically takes less than 10 minutes, Ive found). Youll get all the contacts information from the card, as well as from their LinkedIn account if they have one. You can also send them a Linkedin invitation by tapping the convenient Connect button. CardMunch also stores the original card photos for reference.
CardMunch isnt for everyoneits quite a bit slower than CamCard, and, not surprisingly, its heavily LinkedIn focused. You can store digitally scanned contacts to your iOS phonebook, but you cant export them to your email account or other social networks. But if you want the most accurate transcription of your business cardsand you dont mind waiting a few minutesCardMunch delivers.
Read more from the original source: