If you have more name cards of business associates than a pack of poker cards, you need something to help you organise them and get those information into your AddressBook quick! Name card scanners “out in the market”:http://www.google.com/products?q=name%20card%20scanner are usually expensive and more importantly, not mobile. Not till I discover “WorldCard Mobile”:http://worldcard.penpowerinc.com/worldcard-mobile-iPhone.html.
This app that costs US$5.99 lets you easily convert those namecards into AddressBook entries with just a snap and a few quick clicks on the iPhone.
To start, you just need to snap a photo of the namecard, or retrieved photos of cards taken earlier. Then just let the app works its magic. The character recognition on the WorldCard mobile app is quite impressive. I’ve tried two cards so far and have gotten 90% success rates! The only misspelling I’ve seen was mistaking a “l” for an “i”. While checking the correctness of the scanned data, you can even go back to the image, and manually select the area to tag to the correct data. Once that is done, you can save it in your iPhone as a new entry, or to append to an existing entry.
Below you can see a test of my own name card.
The app supports multiple languages and even has support for Japanese, Chinese and Korean, although they need to be purchased separately.
Nothing beats watching it in action in this video:
There is a “lite version”:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/worldcard-mobile-lite-business/id369872974?mt=8 which gives you 3 scans during the first week of testing and one scan after that. Try it and if you like it, “Buy it”:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/worldcard-mobile-business/id333211045?mt=8.
The WorldCard Mobile will be updated at the end of May with some new features and once that is launched, we will have a small giveaway to get your hand on the full version of the WorldCard Mobile! Keep a look out!
