QuickAdvice: Crunch Down Your Business Cards with CardMunch
CardMunch Free (Free) by CardMunch, Inc. is a business card transcribing app. We've all had those moments where we see a stack of business cards piling up, we want to get all those into our phones, but who wants to go through it all? Well, CardMunch is a new app that will make the task a whole lot easier!
Align a business card in the blue box on the screen when you go into the camera, and it will automatically take the picture when the image is right - though sometimes the camera will not focus, might take a few tries to get good at it. The app will then either automatically take and send the photo to the servers for transcribing, or you can manually send it (green check to ok it, red x to retake it).
Once the picture is sent, you'll be taken to the Recent Activity screen, where you can see your recently submitted cards (and whether or not they're pending transcription). Once a contact goes through alright through the transcription servers, you'll get a push notification or badge on the app icon to let you know you have contacts waiting.
Normally, this will only take a couple of minutes so you can go through a bunch of cards. Since it just came out, servers are a little packed with eager customers, but the results are worth the wait. They're 100% accurate. I even spoke to the lead developer and CEO of the company, it's hard to predict App Store traffic. Traffic should clear up in the next couple of days though.
When you view a contact, you can even view the picture of the business card to compare all the contact details. It's pretty good to know that all you need to do is take a picture of a card and all the contact details will be filled out for you.
Contacts will first be stored in the app's address book, but you can easily add it to your device's address book with a tap of the green card icon. Tap the address book icon to switch it back to the app address book. If you're not satisfied with results, you can reject a contact.
Since the app runs on credits, you can buy as many credits as you'll need. You also get 5 free credits in the Free version and 10 free credits in the paid ($2.99) version. Both are the same app, the difference is just the amount of free credits you receive. But to buy more credits when you need them is the same in both versions. The credits are because of their transcription service.
The 'reject' option I mentioned - if you do this, you'll be refunded your credits. It's like a money back guarantee, which you really don't find too much of in that cluttered App Store.
You can also have some fine-tuning of the app in the Settings, where you can set it to launch on the camera directly, save to iPhone address book first, and even have a 'Desk' theme to remind you of the good old days of filing business cards in a rolodex or something along those lines at your cubicle or desk!
The developers are great with reaching out to customers when there are problems. The results are 100% accurate and amazing. The rejection option to get a credit back is proof that these guys care - they're not out to just take your money.
There is supposed to be a bug where the auto-capture won't work on an iPhone 4, but I didn't have too much of an issue with it. Unless it was something else that I may have tinkered around in the settings with.
I kind of wish that the paid version would just be a bit more expensive but not have the credits system, but I understand since it uses their own transcription service.
If you want a great business card scanner that will more than likely give you 100% accurate results or your money back, then CardMunch is for you.
