Gets some things right... Most things wrong.
I received a business card scanner as a gift this Christmas. I wanted to save money for the gift giver so I shared with them the myriad of business card reader apps available at the app store for a fraction of the price. Based on the reviews of these applications, they did not come without problems. I ended up settling on WorldCard Mobile because it was 95% less money than the physical scanner, and had the fewest negative reviews associated with it. I tested 3 business cards with the app. All three had major errors that took extensive editing time to correct. In my experience, the software was only accurate with phone numbers, but almost useless with company names, employee names, physical and email addresses. Another major issue that cannot be overlooked is the time needed to line up the camera and take a useable photo of the card.
I would have been better off entering the data manually. I ended up having the physical card scanner returned. I wish I could have done the same thing with the app.
I would have been better off entering the data manually. I ended up having the physical card scanner returned. I wish I could have done the same thing with the app.
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Best in Class app and How to use business card scanners
I have tried both WorldCard Mobile and Business Card Reader. I got better recognition with WCM and (this is an important "and") the ability to rotate 90 degrees until the scan is oriented as the app requires makes capturing the business card image less like a game of Twister than this app's nearest competitor. A very important feature when the orientation required makes it well nigh impossible to keep fingers and/or shadows out of the image area.
Also, it is nearly imperative that one sync immediately after each entry. I scanned in a dozen or so cards only to have the sync fail (probably an stray space somewhere) so i had to begin deleting them one at a time and syncing after each deletion until the sync was successful. I deleted ten contacts of the twelve before I found the erroneous contact. So after that I scanned them in one at a time and synced after each entry. Voila! Twelve scanned contacts added to Address Book!
So far my favorite and quite useful.
Also, it is nearly imperative that one sync immediately after each entry. I scanned in a dozen or so cards only to have the sync fail (probably an stray space somewhere) so i had to begin deleting them one at a time and syncing after each deletion until the sync was successful. I deleted ten contacts of the twelve before I found the erroneous contact. So after that I scanned them in one at a time and synced after each entry. Voila! Twelve scanned contacts added to Address Book!
So far my favorite and quite useful.
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Ideal App For Biz Development Professionals
This is a perfect app if you have a client facing role in your business. If you travel a lot and are in a business development role you'll find this app extremely convenient. It works really well with standard business card with easy to read fonts like Times, Arial, Courier, etc. I've added tons of business cards like that and the app gets it 100% correct 90% of the time or so. When it doesn't translate everything perfectly it's off by one or two letters so you can update it and save it to your contacts in two seconds. It's so much better than adding contacts in manually! Business cards with artsy backgrounds and fancy fonts don't translate with as much accuracy, but that's understandable. Sometimes I can barely read them myself :)
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Brilliant, yet can be better.
Everything else (almost) does not matter so long as the target is reached, purpose served.
This Card Scanning app does what it supposed to do well, I have a high success rate, but a couple of improvements will make this a much better app:
- Default to open camera with overlay of the buttons (settings, help, etc)
- Auto detect card edges (ala RedLaser) and auto capture at best position (sound feedback will be appropriate here)
- Image optimization (contrast, sharpen) and auto recognize without needing to tap the 'recognize' button - text with watermark graphics don't get recognized.
- No manual selection of field recognition (not important but can avoid giving up on difficult/unrecognized card)
- Instead of 'Export' and popup confirmation when done, consider a more subtler cue without distraction.
- Number formatting/clean up (e.g. auto add + to country prefix, remove ( ) and/or '0' β or provide an easier feature to manually correct the OCR-ed text (ala Dragon Dictation).
- Duplicate card detection/merge with existing contact.
- Better icon/UI β pretty please! Looks can be deceiving and your competition is doing a much better job on the experience/graphic part: Business Card Reader, Cardreader has a far more superior interface/icon.
This Card Scanning app does what it supposed to do well, I have a high success rate, but a couple of improvements will make this a much better app:
- Default to open camera with overlay of the buttons (settings, help, etc)
- Auto detect card edges (ala RedLaser) and auto capture at best position (sound feedback will be appropriate here)
- Image optimization (contrast, sharpen) and auto recognize without needing to tap the 'recognize' button - text with watermark graphics don't get recognized.
- No manual selection of field recognition (not important but can avoid giving up on difficult/unrecognized card)
- Instead of 'Export' and popup confirmation when done, consider a more subtler cue without distraction.
- Number formatting/clean up (e.g. auto add + to country prefix, remove ( ) and/or '0' β or provide an easier feature to manually correct the OCR-ed text (ala Dragon Dictation).
- Duplicate card detection/merge with existing contact.
- Better icon/UI β pretty please! Looks can be deceiving and your competition is doing a much better job on the experience/graphic part: Business Card Reader, Cardreader has a far more superior interface/icon.
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They are right. Better than the other. Just less features that aren't needed.
The other reviewers are right. This actually works. Scans in flawlessly. The "other business card reader" does not. Scans in a bunch of nonsense. Tested side by side. This is the way to go. Dont blow $6 on the other. Trust me.
Note this is a down and dirty card scanner. It scans great. You edit if needed Then you export into your contacts. It does not have features as the other to scan an already saved picture or a place to see all the cards you scanned cards. Maybe in the future they will beef up the features especially scan from your photo roll. But if you want a card scanner that works. This is it.
Note this is a down and dirty card scanner. It scans great. You edit if needed Then you export into your contacts. It does not have features as the other to scan an already saved picture or a place to see all the cards you scanned cards. Maybe in the future they will beef up the features especially scan from your photo roll. But if you want a card scanner that works. This is it.
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Great stuff
Found this app by chance. Was very pleasantly surprised by the ease of use. Scanned several cards with no editing whatsoever !!! Only issue was with cards with very light print. Had to tweak a couple of fields but overall very pleased with the app.
Pretty good!
Well so far so good, I've scanned in a dozen or so cards with a good level of success. It's fair to say that the more standard the card the better it works and you do need a good and even level of lighting. I have been pleased with the results so far and often suprised at the level of accuracy achieved. It's always best to run a quick check through the results before finally saving but this is fairly straightforward as when checking you can view the relevant part of the scan and the extracted text together. Certainly quicker and more accurate than my typing!
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