Cloud Contacts now turns phone pics into online business cards

Cloud Contacts, the online manager for offline business cards, has a new feature for users with camera phones. You're now able to snap a pic of a business card and send it off to get categorized with other contact cards you've sent in. There is no application for this, you simply send off a copy to a special, private e-mail address.

Unlike competing services Evernote and Shoeboxed, Cloud Contacts creator Allen Stern says his system brings more accuracy to the table since each submission is handled by real people instead of machine scanning (update: Shoeboxed has people looking over the data too). This can be far more important with camera phone pictures since your phone's built-in camera tends to focus about two to three feet away, making the text on business cards quite tiny.

If you've got an iPhone and are thinking about using this service, worth checking out is Griffin's Clarifi case, since it lets you focus about four inches away from a business card.

[danenglander]

Shoeboxed uses a combination of OCR and human-powered data entry on every receipt and business card that we process, so the data is extremely accurate, but also processed quickly. Shoeboxed's Classic plan is also the best value available for a by-mail scanning service for receipts and business cards, with our Classic plan coming in at 13 cents per scan.

Dan Englander
Shoeboxed.com

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Thanks Dan, I've added that in an update.

[Voice_Of_Logic]

Sorry, but, you're not getting my contacts. I've worked too hard for anyone "out there somewhere" to OCR them, scan them and/or data-entry them. My sales people dont even share their contacts with each other. Sorry. Some things are just not for everyone's eyes.... like most data.

[Voice_Of_Logic]

Trust nothing to "the cloud" or forever give up rights to your data. Period.

[linjamie]

I thought human beings are more prone to mistakes, say typos, than machines? But I guess they can better parse the crazy layouts on all those "creative" cards?

[techlilly]

I'm with Voice_Of_Logic on this one. I'm not crazy about the idea of sending my contacts off to someone else. Plus, why would I when i have the photo and could catalog that myself or enter it into my contact book when I get back to the office. Not to mention the myriad of mobile devices (both smartphones and not) that can bey synched-up with digital contact books on our laptops, desktop computer, alternate mobile devices, etc ... We can propogate this data everywhere! Maybe I'm being paranoid, but why do I need to send this photo off to someone else and share my important business contacts when I could easily do it myself.

The flip side is that I do collect a lot of business cards, however I like the scan feature of this application (video here: http://www.digitalforumtv.com/Nav_Community_786.aspx) that let's me do it myself, quickly, and keep my business contacts private.