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Droid Business Card Reader?

cpetku

Newbie
Nov 14, 2009
47
0
Ordered a Droid yesterday and now I'm starting to hunt down apps before it arrives on Monday. I've read that there is a business card reader out there (assuming I don't receive a phone with a faulty camera), but details on where to acquire it or its capabilities are not forthcoming.

1) Do I need to wait for the phone before I can do any real marketplace searches?
2) Any personal preferences on business card readers (OCR)?
 
Hm maybe BizCardReader?

Not my link, and installed it but haven't actually tried it yet.


http://www.4shared.com/account/file/...ardReader.html


I couldn't get this to work on my droid. Had to manually install and even once I got it running it said initialization failed and the scan/camera button didnt do anything. Tried manually importing a pic of a card too and still nothing.

Sadly I think it was something they wrote in 2008 for G1s/Android 1.0-1.5 ish and wont work on droids though that's just my guess. the company who makes that software has a website that looks dead-ish to me and the app isn't on the market nor is it available for download from them. I think that apk that is floating around is something someone ripped out of their ROM and posted on a filesharing site.


This is the site of the developer: IntSig -- Premier Provider of Mobile Applications


Anyways, I would LOVE to get an app like this. Business cards are such annoying wallet fatteners :p
 
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I don't know if you're looking for OCR to read the info from them or whatnot, but you might try Evernote for taking pictures of them?

Its what I use for things like that, and I couldn't be happier ^_^

Its not in the market yet, but you can get the apk here
http://s.evernote.com/androidbeta

Thanks for that link, evernote is cool for sure and I had no idea they had an android beta. installing it now and will play with it for sure. The one thing I don't like (or maybe haven't figured out how to do -- im new to evernote), is that you can't seem to make the "note" into a contact. Still, this is a big step in the right direction so thanks again for the link :)
 
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Don't know if anyone found another business card reader, but I found this neat app on Mobihand by Intsig Information Co.,Ltd for $2.99. Works just like my Omnia on my HTC Droid Eris. Now everything is right with the world.:)

PS there are two versions, the one that works with other languages is $14.99 both links are below.

CamCard - Business Card Reader (English Only) - Personal Productivity Android Apps

CamCard - Business Card Reader - Personal Productivity Android Apps

Holla,

edit: fab beat me to it. *shakes tiny fist*

Thanks for these. I actually now use Google goggles. I was ecstatic to find out it reads biz cards among 50 other things it can do. It's a bit wonky but it's "beta" and free =)
 
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hello friends,

The Business Card Reader app for iPhone that uses optical character recognition to change physical cards to electronic contact entries has made its way to BlackBerry . As you can see from this demo video, all you have to do is take a picture of a business card with your phone, let the app scan it, and it will do its darnedest to put all of the relevant information into appropriate fields on a new contact.
 
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hello friends,

The Business Card Reader app for iPhone that uses optical character recognition to change physical cards to electronic contact entries has made its way to BlackBerry . As you can see from this demo video, all you have to do is take a picture of a business card with your phone, let the app scan it, and it will do its darnedest to put all of the relevant information into appropriate fields on a new contact.

Uh...wha? :D BlackBerry? We don't need no stinkin' BlackBerry
 
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I grabbed a new app appearing earlier this week, CamCard. $14.99.
CamCard - Business Card Reader v1.0.20100106 Application for Android | Productivity
Among its features: OCR. Once that process is complete, it will toss the info into your Droid phonebook. Predictably, the accuracy of the OCR is fully dependent on the type of card being photographed. Plain white cards, with a standard typeface, are handled well. Fancier typeface will cause problems. Don't even bother with non-pastel color cards, unless you have some Excedrin Extra-Strength handy! Now, lemme try to give you a "you are there" perspective on this app.

Mechanically speaking, I found it best to set the card against a dark background before taking the pic. I placed a card on my desk, hovering over it with the camera turned in landscape mode. Once the card comes into view, the app shows 4 corner handlers. It then made a sort of whirring noise, and within seconds, a green frame appeared around the card. The snapshot was then automatically taken (although there is a button on screen allowing you to manually take the pic). I heard a beep, which apparently signals that the card's contents have been digested. You can then view the associated contact in your phonebook to see what clean-up is required. Oddly, while most cards use a font friendly to number clarity, the app sometimes stumbled. So, I learned to pay particular attention to the phone numbers post-OCR.

You can save the card's image to the SD card, but you can not rename it, absent Astro or another file manager. This proves to be a critical flaw --- the app has a "Load Card" feature. Tap it, and you're dumped into the Gallery, where every other picture also appears. The thumbnails are way too small to distinguish among the business cards. Thus, this particular feature is completely useless.

Another problem: Many cards include a contact name with title. The app has no clue how to properly deal with that info, so I had to continuously revise that specific info per card within my phonebook. Sometimes the name was tossed into the name section of the phonebook; othertimes, it showed up in a weird area, like website. Asurion's AddressBook-Beta allows you to set up customized fields (thereafter viewable in the native phonebook), so I used it to better set up this info.
http://www.asurionmobile.com/addressbook.html
BTW, each and every website appearing on a card was correctly tossed into the website field of the phonebook-- and accurately!

Ultimately, I uninstalled and refunded. At some point, this is likely to be a superb app, but it's just not there yet. Of the 100+ cards I set aside for this experiment, substantially less than half were handled as expected/desired by the app. The rest are now waiting for me to input manually.

As I remain determined to lessen paper within my home/office, for the time being, I've gone back to Scan2PDF Mobile for Android 2.
http://www.burrotech.com/scan2pdfmobile/
No OCR, but the PDFs are faithful reproductions. The built-in mechanism allowing for easy naming of files permitted me to set up an electronic rolodex of sorts, which I review using a file manager, with a PDF viewer installed.

At this writing, there's nothing else in the app store worthy of anyone's time re Business Cards. I say that after having tried each and every one. Suggestion: try CamCard on a day when you have the time to experiment. The images of cards you've added with it will remain after the app is uninstalled. Likewise, whatever was added to the phonebook remains.
 
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