Business cards are a necessary evil. I hate asking for them at events because I really don’t want to be tasked with the responsibility of doing something with them later, but I feel like a dork if I don’t ask for a card from somebody who just asked for my card. So in my quest to completely get rid of business cards, I have found the Card Scanner Pro app for iPhone that provides quick and easy business card scanning to save directly to your phone’s address book.
Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Card Scanner Pro can recognize, and pull just about any data off of any card and correctly matches contact field data. In other words, it does a good job of reading those weird-looking cards that the owner is SOO proud of.
Before CSP adds the information to your address book, you can review and edit information just in case you get some incorrect data from the scan. The app even shows you a thumbnail of the card on screen and highlights where the data came from so you can manually match the data up. Once you have completed the scan and accepted the data, you can browse previously scanned cards and update with new information, call a number directly from the card, or delete a card altogether.
As far as mobile app prices go, CSP is a whopping $6.99, but if you’re as determined as I am to just toss cards in the trash after an event (no disrespect), Card Scanner Pro may just be a good value. So check it out and let us know what you think in the comments section.