I’ve all but given up with keeping business cards. My preferred tool for capturing business cards and other bits of paper that float around at meetings and events has been Evernote. The Premium subscription that I pay for lets me scan stuff. The app then performs OCR so the contents can be easily searched. Business card scanning has a nifty feature where it can automatically connect you on LinkedIn and/or send your contact details (a digital business card) over email. Microsoft has now updated their camera app for iOS, Microsoft Pix, so it can recognise documents, whiteboards and business cards.With this latest update, Microsoft has added the ability to recognize and scan blackboards – for students at hipster schools I guess.
There are literally hundreds of camera apps in the iOS App Store so trying to find novel ways to stand out can be tricky. Pix shoots great photos. it actually performs a burst shoot each time, saves the best pic and then uses the others to enhance the best shot.
The thing about Pix is, at least for a business user, is tat it does a great job of detecting and shooting a pic f a business card but it doesn’t do anything else. It doesn’t perform OCR and send the card into contacts. All you end up with is a pile of pictures of cards.
If only Microsoft had a powerful cloud platform where photos could be quickly uploaded and have OCR performed. And if only they owned a business-centric social network for connecting business people.
Oh wait…
You can download Microsoft Px from the iOS App Store.
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