Startups like Bump Technologies, which recently got some funding, and My Name is E are trying to kill the paper business card, but even in 2009, many of us, including myself, still use business cards. The biggest hassle with business cards is getting the contact information into your address book as fast as possible — that’s where Business Card Reader [iTunes link] for the iPhone comes in.
Business Card Reader scans and “reads” the picture using ABBYY’s text recognition technology and enters the data into the iPhone or iPod touch address book. Basically, you open the application, and choose either to take a new picture of a business card, or if you’ve already taken a picture, you can upload that as well. After you take a picture, or upload a picture, the application scans the business card, and after about 15 seconds, you get the address book field to edit the scanned information if there are errors. Once that’s all done, it adds the new contact into your address book. It’s really that easy.
After playing around with the application for a few days and testing out different types of business cards, the accuracy, in my opinion, is about 85%. The only errors I got where if the companies name was in a logo format, and their logo had a weird font, but other then that, the app worked pretty well. If your a mobile networker, this is an app you’ll definitely like.
Business Card Reader is $5.99 from the App Store, where you can buy it today.
Looks awesome. Requires 3.1 though. And if I upgrade to 3.1, I can’t use tethering.
yes you can. install “rock app” and buy “miwy” – works great!
I don’t want to jailbreak my phone. I did that to an old iPhone and it turned into a brick. Never doing that again.
Have fun taking a picture to scan the card with that iPod Touch, oh wait…
This is a really cool idea. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been done before.
Yeah I guess. But because the image needs to be very focused for this to work, it’s not been possible/easy until the 3GS. The app requires a 3GS.
Actually, it has been done before. The Samsung Omnia comes with a program out of the box that does this incredibly well. The phone has been out for at least a year. Oh yeah, and it runs Windows Mobile.
Sorry to say, this has been done before, with CardSnap. Anyway, I downloaded this Business Card Reader app just now to try it and while the little scanning animation is a nice touch, the app loses to CardSnap on two fronts:
1) You have to wait a bunch of time between each card you scan, rather than scanning a bunch in at once then backprocessing
2) It didnt get a single card 100% correct
Compare that to CardScan, which I already had and lets you snap a bunch at a time, and the accuracy is RIDICULOUS (try it if you don’t believe me). Its so good I almost feel like they have to have people involved somewhere. I did A/B test with same cards and lighting and CardScan got them 100%, this new “business card reader” app got them about 60%. Only problem is,Cardscan costs $10:) But for me, the $4 difference is worth it.
CardSnap uses server-side recognition. Business Card Reader recognizes cards on device and does not require internet connection.
There’s no camera on the iPod Touch. You should take that out.
preeetttii awesome…
I’ve been using Cloudcontacts for my business cards.
This is good but have you tried other digital alternatives like http://vcardfile.com?
motoming has the software free with the phone…. its FREE!
Interesting idea. But paper is foreever and digital is not
Paper is forever? Digital is not? That might be the dumbest thing I have EVER heard.
Seriously? What happenned to that big ol’ library full of paper and stuff in Alexandria?
I know CloudContacts (http://www.cloudcontacts.com) seems like a good business card contact scanner.
I know Robert Scoble speaks really highly of it
Why pay cloudcontacts to basically do what this app does? Plus it cuts out having to send your business cards to som company who just do the scanning part for you. Apps like this make cloudcontacts redundant – unless of course you’re too lazy to download the app and scan them yourself.
I downloaded the app and have to say its very good.
Somewhat surprising to read TC suggesting this is the first time for an application like this because TC itself wrote way back in April 2006 (http://www.tech...into-a-scanner/
17 april 2006) about how the then newly launched scanR could generate digital images out of whiteboard notes captured using a mobile phone camera. At least from the time I’d written about scanR in November 2006 (
http://skethara....com/blog/?p=43), it could provide JPG and VCF versions of business cards scanned using any mobile phone that supported a camera with higher than 1 megapixel resolution. I don’t think the iPhone was even launched in 2006!
Sorry guys, when I want to get hundret cards scanned – I don’t like to do this on my own. So CloudContacts is a much better choise here. If you are collecting 2 cards a month – this app is probably usefull. Also, does this app add my contacts to LinkedIn or all the other networks?
“does this app add my contacts to LinkedIn or all the other networks?”
Not yet, but idea is nice.
Maybe I am too simple minded, but I find all these solutions way too complicated.
Certainly not glamorous, but why not having a barcode on a business card linked to a web service?
It would be a perfect additional service for companies like moo.com where people print business cards.
You could provide analytics on how many times your profile is accessed, etc etc. You could then link it to linkedin, etc etc
hahaah. For ipod Touch. That was funny!!
As for iPod Touch. This is possible (in theory). If you have a photo of business card saved on iPod, BCreader can recognize it.
Not very common case, but…
Cool.
Just bought this app recently. Works like a charm. It’s $6 which is pricey for apps. But as Daniel wrote if you’re a networker then it is worth it. This has probably saved 20 minutes of my time so far the brief time I’ve had it.
As it happens, we at http://www.scanbizcards.com launched another iPhone app doing the same, also processing everything right on the phone with nothing sent over the network … 2 days before Business Card Reader. it’s called ScanBizCards, check out http://www.scanbizcards.com, which includes a link to a first review of of the app.
One main difference with Business Card Reader is our acknowledgment that OCR is almost never error free, so we always present our results side-by-side with the original image (or more precisely with the relevant zoomed in portion), to allow for easy editing.
Another way in which we differ: we don’t assume that you always want to add the information into the address book (ever – such as your dry-cleaner’s business card, or just not yet) so we also highlight actionable elements (e.g. phone/email/URL) on the image itself – touch one and you are placing a call, sending an email or browsing a site. This also means that ScanBizCards is not limited to scanning business cards – any street sign, flyer, take away menu is a good candidate to be scanned and acted upon.
Anyone trying ScanBizCards – please forward any feedback!