I think most everyone has a love/hate relationship with business cards.  They represent a quick and easy way to trade contact information, to make a good impression and to show off your style and taste.  They also are small and easy to lose, a pain to organize and convert to electronic contacts, and take up a surprising amount of space. The obvious answer is a simple method of scanning and automatically recognizing the information in the cards, and a number of companies have made hardware/software solutions.  I recently had the opportunity to try out one solution, the CardScan 800c.

Inside of the deceptively large box you’ll find a folder with the software, packaged cards for cleaning and calibrating the device, some advertising materials, a generously long USB cable, and the scanner.  The scanner itself is small enough to pack anywhere a paperback would fit or to fit on even the most cluttered desk.  It’s styled to look good on your desk; the CardScan has no buttons or switches to ruin the smooth lines, just a triangle-shaped blue light to show it’s on and to indicate where to insert cards.

Installing is a snap.  The included CD installs everything you need in a few very simple steps.  The install requires a serial number and, unlike a lot of products, the sticker is placed in a clear and obvious location on the disk folder.  The CD I have is for XP and older and does not support Vista.  However, locating the Vista version on the CardScan website is quick and easy.  It’s a 74 megabyte download that contains a complete new version of the software, so you don’t need to take time to install the XP version if you have Vista.

Setting up the software is also a snap.  CardScan Executive has a very nice wizard that walks you through every step of the setup process, from how your contacts will be stored to online registration.  The registration step is particularly painless: insert your business card into the scanner and it fills in the registration for you.  My only complaint about this process is not the software itself, but an “IMPORTANT” warning card in the box.  The card is intended to inform users that Windows Mobile devices do not support syncing a device to multiple contact managers and that syncing to both Outlook and CardScan can cause data loss.  Unfortunately, the instructions on the card sound appropriately dire, but aren’t very informative.  Fortunately, following the link provided to their support page provides much more useful information.

Using the CardScan is a breeze.  Inserting a card turns the scanner on, feeds the card, scans it, and brings up the scanning dialog, even if the software wasn’t running when you inserted the card.

If you feed in multiple cards, it will save them all and allow you to batch process them.  You can add notes or categories for all cards in a batch, and the interface includes handy icons to add time or date stamps. This can make scanning cards after a business meeting or during a seminar not only much easier but also more organized.  Scan cards by groups and add meaningful notes and tags and following up becomes worlds easier.

Pushing process starts the character recognition, which is quite quick, and displays both the original card and the character recognized results.  When you view the contact in CardScan you see both the text and the scanned image of the card.  If you open the contact in Outlook, the scanned image is attached as a .jpg in the Notes section.

How good is it?  I scanned cards of many shapes and sizes, cards with wrinkles, with coffee spots, odd logos, embossed cards, and cards that were “portrait” instead of landscape.  In virtually every case the character recognition got the information correct.  Once or twice a bit of text on a particularly “artistically” organized card went to the wrong field in the card data.  No problem, data fields support drag and drop, so it’s quick and easy to move it around.  In the unlikely event a field doesn’t read correctly due to an odd font or a stain on the card, clicking on the text field highlights the text on the card, so figuring out what it should say is simply a matter of typing the right information.  Only once or twice did I find myself needing to do this.

The only card I simply couldn’t get to scan was a translucent plastic card. The scanner refused to believe I’d inserted a card, even when I manually pressed Scan.  However, feeding it through with a plain white card under it worked fine, although it took several tries to get the two to feed through straight.

Just on a lark, I scanned a manufacturer’s coupon expecting some really bizarre results.  As you might expect, since it didn’t really follow a format that even resembles a business card, the text was mostly just in one, big block in the address section, but every bit of text, including the UPC codes, was recognized.  Hmmm.  Maybe the CardScan people should think about adding a template for scanning rebate coupons…

Integration with Office Outlook is great, as well.  You can manage contacts from either the CardScan software or Outlook and, since data is synced to the correct locations in the Outlook contacts, contacts scanned in through CardScan behave exactly like any other contact, allowing you to use call and mail functions in Outlook seamlessly.

CardScan also supports a wide variety of other contact managers, so regardless of which one you use, you can sync data to it.

Not that the CardScan software is any slouch, itself.  It also allows you to call or email contacts, organize your cards, copy contacts to the clipboard, etc.  It also has a nice task bar that shows you when contacts were entered, recent changes, recent searches, and any duplicate contacts you have.  It also allows you to mark cards as “verified” to ensure that you are using the latest, most correct data, and lets you display only verified or unverified cards. CardScan also supports syncing contact information directly to a PDAs and handheld devices or allows you to sync to your device through your favorite contact manager.  Add the support for Dymo labeling devices, the ability to map contacts on mapping services like MapQuest, Google Maps and others, plus the ability to download to your Ipod and you’ve got a pretty full featured piece of contact software. 

Just to add the cherry to the top, CardScan offers a free service that backs up your contact data online for extra security.  Called At Your Service (or @your service) the online database will automatically sync with your CardScan database once enabled.  You can restore lost data from the database or access it directly online using a password.  You can also opt to have them send mail to your contacts every three months to verify their current information.

If you collect a lot of business cards, this is a painless, reliable system to convert them to digital and organize them.  The security of never losing a contact is easily worth the price. Especially since they are currently offering a special $50 off price.

Cardscan 800c
http://www.cardscan.com
MSRP $259

Review by: Tucker Hatfield