CardHQ a fast, easy way to manage business cards.
CardHQ (not to be confused with Cards HQ, the app to keep you updated on all things pertaining to the Louisville Cardinals) is an app designed to help you keep track business cards. People who might find this app useful include those who have a huge stack of business cards and contact info sheets from a conference a few weeks ago and who have been meaning to go through and add them to their address books but haven’t yet and those who take people’s business cards and immediately lose them in transit.
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I, at times, can be both. My usual mode of keeping track of papers full of contact information is to take a picture of it, which I then store in an album full of similar documents. This is fine to prevent losing things like a stack of business cards, but it doesn’t really do anything with the info. CardHQ uses a similarly simple mechanic. You take a photo of the business card (in the app, as you cannot import photos taken on any other camera app into CardHQ), and CardHQ scans it for information. It separates each identified bit of info in a red text box, which you can tap to use in one of ten application options, including call, text, email, and looking up in your browser, Google Maps, Skype, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The text recognition can sometimes be incorrect (especially when an odd font is involved), so make sure everything is right in the transcription. For example, CardHQ interpreted the word “sources” in the MacSources logo as “Jourrps.”
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Some failings of the app include the inability to edit the text boxes on the scanned card. This proved an issue when I scanned my own business card, as the company address and phone number are on the same line. CardHQ only uses the phone number portion of the line, so there’s no way for me to access the address information in the app. There is also no super easy way to turn the data taken off the business card into a contact entry. That still involves manual input. One last thing is that you send an automatic “introduction email” to every scanned email address unless you go into the settings and turn it off. An incorrectly punctuated email, I might add.
Overall, CardHQ is a fast, free, and easy way to keep track of your business card collection. It has its faults, but it’s still way better than losing all of your important contacts.
DOWNLOAD – CardHQ for iOS – FREE
For more information, visit cardhq.co
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