Digitize my rollodex!
November 3, 2011 3:04 PM   Subscribe

What are my best options for digitizing a large collection of business cards? Bonus points for being able to integrate into MS Outlook.

I have a large (hundreds) collection of business cards, some as physical cards, some as images of the cards. I'd like to turn this into some sort of searchable electronic system. Ideally, I'd like to import them into my Outlooks contacts.

What are my best options, hardware and software? Something with an autofeeder would be nice---after a meeting or a conference, I can come back with a couple of dozen cards.
posted by bonehead to Work & Money (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Business card reader??
posted by Freedomboy at 3:25 PM on November 3, 2011


Came in to suggest Cardscan. We have one (several years old and a couple of models out of date) that works well.
posted by Lexica at 7:23 PM on November 3, 2011


There are several good apps on mobile phones to scan cards right on your phone (which means anytime and anywhere) and add the new contacts to your address book + at the same time act as a digital rolodex (which means all your cards are always in the palm of your hands). As mobile cameras improve their accuracy is close to that of dedicated physical scanners like CardScan.

One such app you may want to look at in ScanBizCards: if you have hundreds of cards I think you'll find it useful that ScanBizCards will not only organize all your cards on your phone but also make a copy in real time to the cloud and let you manage these cards from any browser. You also have the option to do all the processing on desktop: use a flatbed scanner, upload images, scan online, review & edit. See www.scanbizcards.com

You can find other good apps like CamCard and WorldCard by browsing the paid business section of the App Store: you won't have to scroll much, mobile biz card scanning is a hot category.

Disclaimer: I am a co-Founder of ScanBizCards [and have scanned in excess of 5,000 cards in the last 12 months!] so do form your own opinion by checking the others apps I mentioned, they are pretty good.
posted by patrickq at 4:51 PM on November 4, 2011


« Older Please help me figure out this song!   |   Help this freelance writer in Asia figure out his... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.