Stop the insanity!!

Dad already has an iPhone right? Sure he does! The iPhone is a great way to store contacts but inputing them off of business cards is a PITA that no one wants to do. Along comes a great solution, Scanbizcards for the iPhone.

Note: I was given a free copy of this software for review. Below is my honest feedback on the product.

ScanBizCards works by taking a picture of the business card using the iPhones built in camera and using OCR technology to extract the person details from the card. When it works you don’t have to type anything in and you have the persons contact information imported into your iPhone.

My experience with Scanbizcards has been pretty good so far. It is not perfect but I think it is going to be hard to be perfect given the huge variety of business card designs and styles out there. It worked best on plain looking business cards like this one.

I blurred out the contact details on purpose.

As you can see it got the name and title correct. There is a small miss on the company name and your going to have to trust me when I say that it got the phone numbers and email correct. This was the best card out of about 10 I tried, that I got. The more ornate or non-standard a card was, the worse it got.

Lighting also plays a huge part in getting a good scan. In my office, which has terrible lighting, the OCR hit rate was not as good. At my desk at home, which has better lighting, the OCR hit rate was much higher. The ScanBizCards folks say this is the most important variable when getting a good OCR read of a card and my experience bears this out.

Bottom line, the best $6 you can spend to get that pile of cards off your desk and into your iPhone. While not perfect it sure as heck beats putting them all in by hand.

Now you can get a copy of ScanBizCards for free! Leave a comment on this post and I will pick 3 people at random to get codes for a free copy of ScanBizCards. The drawing will be held Friday June 11th 2010 at noon PST. Good luck!

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Now there are going to be games, push email syncing, and $100,00,000 in funds from Kleiner Perkins to fund people building iPhone apps. Of all the things announced the fund is probably the biggest deal. This will draw developers like flies. With more developers you have more apps and better apps. We have just witnessed the birth of the next leap forward in computing.

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Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset with Multipoint Technology: For dads with Bluetooth enabled laptops, hookup your Skype or Gizmo Project clients and talk to the family. This headset with pair with two devices, so you can also have it hooked up to the Blackberry or cell phone.

Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision Special Edition: Add some video so the kids can see dad when he’s away on that long business trip. Or, maybe you just like to Video Chat from the office. This camera is Mac and WINDOWS compatible.

Anycom USB 2.0 Bluetooth 400 Foot Range: If you laptop does not have built-in Bluetooth, this adapter will provide full functionality for your devices.

Matsunichi Photoblitz 7-Inch Digital Picture Frame: Give this to dad loaded with pictures of the family, pets and, of course, yourself. A great addition to any hotel nightstand for the traveling father.

Logitech V270 Cordless Optical Bluetooth Mouse- Charcoal: I’ll bet dad could use a nice shiny, new mouse. Make this the Bluetooth themed holiday.

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