Real People Transcribe Your Biz Cards, Sync Them to Your Phone [APP]

Credit:

Quick Pitch: CardMunch provides accurate transcription of your business cards, using real humans to verify each card, then sends the contacts to your phone.

Genius Idea: When you attend a business networking event, you acquire a rather large stack of business cards. These contacts can be useful, but those small slips of paper are easy to lose, so you'd be wise to transcribe the names, numbers and titles into your digital contact list on your smartphone.

That can take a long time, though, and it can feel even longer when you've just gotten home from hours of networking. CardMunch makes that process easier by providing human transcription of the cards you get based on photos you take on your iPhone and upload over the wireless network. Once transcription is complete, CardMunch sends the contact data straight to your phone within just a few hours. Here's a very brief video demonstrating the service.

Overview of CardMunch in 21 Seconds from CardMunch on Vimeo.

Once a transcription is complete, it appears in a web-based address book hosted by CardMunch. You can sync that address book to your iPhone. CardMunch gives you the choice to make the contacts appear only in the CardMunch app on your iPhone, or in your phone's regular contact list.

Since the transcriptions are made by humans and not some software algorithm, CardMunch actually guarantees 100% accuracy. That's something automated systems simply can't do. The downside is increased cost, though the costs are quite reasonable — generally around 25 cents per card. This chart shows the different tiers of service and their costs.

Credit:

The CardMunch app for iPhone [iTunes link] costs $2.99 and comes with 10 transcriptions. Since it's an iOS app, it should also run on your iPod touch or iPad, but its usefulness on those devices will be limited since they lack cameras. There's also a free version [iTunes link] of the app; it comes with five complimentary transcriptions.