ScanBizCards Features List

ScanBizCards has such a long list of features (we like to say “scanning is only the beginning!“)  that it’s not easy to discover them all! So here is the complete up-to-date list. Truth is we feel ScanBizCards is much (much) more than a “card scanner”. Other card scanning apps cover just 2 or 3 of the 27 features below: scanning a card image for text, then adding to the address book. This is it – most scanning apps actually discard the card image once it has been added to the address book. We could not disagree more. Make sure to read about the Web Sync feature at the end of the list: it dramatically expands the ways you can manage and use your cards and extends your access to them beyond your iPhone.

Table of Contents:
1. Scanning
2. Importing Photos
3. NEW: Double-sided Cards
4. Cropping
5. Automatic Text Orientation Detection
6. Editing Side-by-Side With Image Preview
7. Custom Fields
8. Notes
9. Adding to the Address Book
10. Adding to the Address Book Optional!
11. Address Book Groups
12. Touch & Go – Active Canvas
13. Quick Intro Email
14. Calendar Reminders
15. Send To Friend
16. Connect on LinkedIn
17. Digital Rolodex
18. 3D Flow Cover View
19. Adjusting Thumbnails
20. Custom Folders
21. Search
22. Export to Excel
23. Web Sync
24. Putting Cards on the Map
25. Skype integration: call contacts from your iPad or iPod Touch!
26. Evernote integration
27. NEW: Import from Clipboard (email signatures)

1. Scanning It all starts with a photo of a business card, this is the input for everything else the application does. Taking good images is very important for getting good results and it’s all up to you! Please read our photo taking tips for guidance. Note: the iPhone 3G model is not suitable for taking pictures of business cards unless equipped with the Griffin Clarifi close-up lens.

2. Importing Photos ScanBizCards lets you chose business cards photos from your iPhone camera roll or any photo album. This means you may take photos with your iPhone before running the app if you wish, or with any camera as long as you get the photos synced-up with a photo album on your iPhone. Some users find it convenient to capture business card images using a flat bed scanner, which also yields sharp and clear images. Note: importing images is a great way to use ScanBizCards on a device without a camera such as the iPod/iPad but also when using an iPhone 3G not equipped with a close-up lens.

3. Double-Sided Cards Support
ScanBizCards is the only iPhone biz card scanner with support for double-sided cards! When you take a new photo or import from a photo album, just touch “Snap/Import Other Side” to add a 2nd side. You can then scan both sides, or just one side. The cards list view shows double-sided cards as animated images showing each side in alternation. Oftentimes you may want to retain the back side visually but not necessarily scan it – your choice. You will find an example of a double-sided card in the Sample Images folder. Suggestion: if there is no back side, how about taking a picture of the person as the back side (just don’t scan it!) ?

4. Cropping Before you start the scanning, you have the option to select only a subset of the image to be scanned. It is entirely optional but presents the possible advantage of eliminating possible spurious characters the scanning might mistake for letters within the image background, and it reduces scanning time. Cropping also sets the looks of the image thumbnail, an aesthetical consideration. Note: adjusting the thumbnail can also be done later even if no cropping was applied before scanning.

5. Automatic Text Orientation Detection Scanning must know what is the text orientation in the photo. When you take photos from within the application and follow the on-screen guidance indicating the “Up” direction we know what the text orientation because you told us! On the other hand when importing images it is imperative to find out what the text orientation is – we make it easy by automatically analyzing the image to make that determination. As of the time of this post, ScanBizCards is the only application incorporating this ability. Note: in about 5% of imported images we may get the text orientation wrong. You can tell this occurred if the text is not shown upright at the end of the scan. If so, just use the manual rotate button provided on the bottom toolbar to adjust the orientation then rescan.

6. Editing Side-by-Side With Image Preview Let’s face it: OCR is far from perfect and there will be cards when corrections are required. We make as easy as possible by presenting a list of the text results at the end of the scan along with a reduced size preview of the photo on the top half. Touch an item to edit and we zoom-in on the area of the card where that item was found. Some would say that this super convenient editing scheme makes it worthwhile to snap a photo of your business cards even if you then want to type everything in manually! Certainly beats having to carry the physical cards around – when you have a moment to process a few cards, just pull out your iPhone and fire up ScanBizCards!

7. Custom Fields You may add any number of custom fields to a card right after scanning it or any time later. For example, a contact’s company name may not appear on the card but you know what it is a wish to add it. Note: don’t tell anyone but on rare occasions there might be a job title, phone number etc on the card yet ScanBizCards missed it – a perfect occasion to add a custom field.

8. Notes A custom field of special interest is notes. You can add or edit notes quickly and easily to cards, before or after scanning. You can also add text recognized on a card to notes: to do that, in the card text details view you see after scanning, touch a text item then its type and chose “Add To Notes”. Note: cards with notes show a yellow post-it icon in the cards list view. Touching that icon is a shortcut to open the notes to view/edit without needing to open the card itself.

9. Adding to the Address Book Certainly a popular thing to do with a scanned card even if by far not the only thing you can do … just click “Add To Address Book” after reviewing and possibly editing the text results. This will display the suggested new address book entry, which you can still edit before confirming. Note: the new contacts added by ScanBizCards to the iPhone address book will sync-up with iCal on your Mac or Outlook on your PC the next time you sync your iPhone.

10. Adding to the Address Book Optional! You’d be surprised how many users have praised us for NOT forcing them to add a scanned card to the address book (unlike other scanning app where that is mandatory and imposed). Indeed we don’t think every card you scan necessarily belongs into your address book. All of our features are available regardless of whether a card has been added to the address book or not.

11. Address Book Groups ScanBizCards supports assigning new contacts to iPhone address book groups – which will map to Outlook contact groups or Mac address book categories. Note: ScanBizCards lets you create new groups if needed – a feature oddly missing from the iPhone address book.

12. Touch & Go – Active Canvas ScanBizCards turns a card into an “Active Canvas”! Actionable items such as phone numbers, email addresses and URLs are marked in colors on the card and touching an item acts on it to place a call, send an SMS message, compose an email or browse a web site. This interface is particularly invaluable for cards you just want to use when needed without adding to the address book. Note: it can be hard to touch small text items sometimes. No worries, we also show large shortcut icons on the side of the card view.

13. Quick Intro Email You just scanned a new card and added that new contact into your address book but how about making sure that new contact likewise has YOUR contact information? ScanBizCards prompts you after every scan where an email address was found to optionally send a quick “hello” to that contact with your own VCard attached.

14. Calendar Reminders So you just met someone and exchanged cards. Doesn’t it fall to reason that you might have a follow-up action item with that contact such as calling him to explore a business proposal or sending him a product sample when you are back at the office? ScanBizCards lets you create a follow-up reminder right from within the app, where all that contact’s information is entered in the reminder’s notes so that when the time comes you just have to touch that person’s phone number or email within the calendar reminder itself! ScanBizCards reminders can be synced automatically to the iPhone calendar or even Outlook/iCal on your desktop and Google Calendar on the web. There is lots to familiarize yourself with for this feature, we highly recommend watching this video tutorial. Note: this feature can actually be used regardless of scanned cards with ANY contact in your address book. Touch My Reminders, then tap the “+” icon on the top right of the calendar view, chose any contact from your address book and you’ve got yourself a calendar reminder with all of that contact info right in the notes of that reminder.

15. Send To Friend One touch and you can forward the new contact you just scanned to a colleague. The information is sent in three formats: text, image and VCard. Note: this feature has another usefulness, for sending a card from within ScanBizCards to yourself, for the purpose of storing it elsewhere or even just within the iPhone camera roll.

16. Connect on LinkedIn An absolute favorite with everyone who is using LinkedIn! One touch and you can fire up an invitation to the new contact to join your LinkedIn network – without leaving the app. We even show a little LinkedIn icon on that card to remind you which contact and touching that icon will even show you the status of that invitation … you’ve got to love it. Note: we think you can get a card, scan it, add to the address book, send a quick intro and send a LinkedIn invite in under 90 seconds … if you like to show off, try it while you are still chatting with the new contact then ask him what’s taking him so long to accept your invite.

17. Digital Rolodex Every card you scan is saved with the application. Cards are displayed is a scrollable list with a thumbnail of the photo, contact name, company name, date photo was taken. Status icons are shown when applicable to indicate the following attributes:

Card added to the address book

Card added to calendar

LinkedIn invite sent

Card includes notes

These are “active” icons – touch the notes icon to view/edit notes, touch the calendar icon to view/edit the calendar reminder etc.

18. 3D Flow Cover View Just tilt your phone sideways and you can flip through your cards in a 3D view with reflections – you’ve got to see that! Check-out the top section of the last screenshot on the App Store.

19. Adjusting Thumbnails We know aesthetics matter … Card images often include background material you really don’t need to see. Sometimes you also want to view only a portion of the card itself. You can set the looks of the thumbnail you see in cards list view – 2D and 3D – to any portion of the original image. To do this, under the cards list view (for example when touching My Cards then opening Recent Cards) touch the “Edit” button on the top right, select the image then touch “Adjust Thumb” on the bottom toolbar. Tip: an optional setting lets you get to that function more easily by just touching the card thumb in cards list view. Touch any help button within the app, then “Settings” on the top right, set “Touch Thumb to Adjust” to ON.

20. Custom Folders ScanBizCards lets you store cards in related groups such as investors, friend or customers, based on events where you got the cards – or any category you’d like. Just touch the “+” sign in the folders list view, give it a name and start saving cards in it.

21. Search Having in excess of 1,000 cards, this is the feature I use most often. Just type any text string and it returns the list of all cards containing this text in any field (including notes). Note: the search box is found on the top of the folders list view which you get when you touch My Cards from the main screen.

22. Export to Excel From the cards list view, for example when you touch My Cards then Recent Cards, touch the actions button on the bottom left, select Export to Excel, chose some/all cards then confirm. This will attach an Excel CSV file to an email you can address to yourself. This is of particular interest to CRM users as the way to export contacts into their CRM backend. Exporting to Excel is of great usefulness for many other tasks around contacts, such as building a email blast list and more.

23. Web Sync Never lose a card again! ScanBizCards includes a service to automatically upload new cards or edits to existing cards to a web-based personal account. But this is just the tip of the iceberg … Web Sync includes so much more:

Backup: had to replace your iPhone? Just sign-in to your Web Sync account and all your cards are downloaded back into the app

Keep multiple devices in sync: just sign-in to a same Web Sync account on both devices and the become “paired”, always showing the same set of cards. This is a great way to keep an iPad synced with an iPhone running ScanBizCards, so you can view/manage your scanned contacts from the iPad as well.

Web-based cards management: access your cards from any browser at http://my.scanbizcards.com. Even better: you can edit your cards on the web and changes flow back to your iPhone! A convenient way indeed to manage your cards on a larger screen.

The web-based interface is really a full-blown application in its own right and justifies having its own list of features … or how about taking a peek right now? Click http://my.scanbizcards.com/demo and see for yourself. Make sure to click MapIt on the top left! Click any card to see the card edit screen. Note: to learn more about the Web Sync service, please consult the help pages within the application. To get started, touch “Web Sync Settings” on the main screen.

24. Putting Cards on the Map Using the web-based interface, you can view all cards with an address on a map of the World. Yes, we admit it, it’s a gimmick – but we love it. Take a look: click http://my.scanbizcards.com/demo and then click MapIt on the top left. We also map cards one-by-one: click a card on the web to open the card details view, then click “Map This Card” on the top right. This will take you right to that address on a Google map. Click the pin, then “Street View” and it’s almost like you were standing in front of the building!

25. Skype integration – call contacts from your iPad or iPod Touch! Previously, the ScanBizCards “Touch & Go” interface (feature #11) worked only with emails and URLs on the iPad and iPod Touch. Version 2.74 changes all that – you can now touch a phone number to call or SMS and ScanBizCards will pass the request along to Skype to make the call or send a text message. Just install Skype and you are good to go!

26. Evernote integration Starting with V2.74, ScanBizCards is fully integrated with Evernote: touch My Cards and look for a large Evernote button at the end of the list of folders. Touching that button will enable you to provide your Evernote credential, then search for photos of business cards in your Evernote account. Import the image(s) you want, scan them then optionally store the contact info scanned by ScanBizCards back into the Evernote record. But that’s not all: you can also export any scanned card into Evernote, not just those imported from Evernote.

27. Import from Clipboard (email signatures) When you receive a person’s contact information as text (and don’t need to scan anything), it can still be a bit of a hassle to add all the info as a new contact. We have a button for that!

Copy the text into the iPhone clipboard.

Start ScanBizCards, touch the “Import from Clipboard” button.

Review/edit text items and associated type, touch “Add To Address Book” when ready.

This feature is particularly useful with signatures found at the end of emails! Note: if the contact’s email address is not in the signature, we recommend opening that email again after adding the signature to the address book and chose the option to merge with that existing entry.

ScanBizCards V2.73 Update

Version 2.73 – both Lite and Premium – was approved yesterday evening. Our previous update was exactly one month ago on May 3 – a relative long hiatus between updates but for good reasons! We spent that time on two things: a new image preprocessing engine and (finally) a “web sync” feature to backup cards to the cloud. See below for more details.

New Features

• New image preprocessing: we incorporated a brand new image pre-processing engine provided by a research team at the CMATER Research Center, Jadavpur University. This engine does a better job than our previous algorithm in terms of accuracy but also cuts the image processing time in half (!) and results in an overall reduction of our total scanning time by 30%. Many thanks to the CMATER team!
• Web Sync: we feel this feature has been “long awaited”. Ever since launching ScanBizCards, we have gotten numerous unfortunate reports about the loss of cards following a variety of mishaps with iPhones lost or needing to be reinstalled. In theory syncing your iPhone with iTunes should save application data (for us that means cards) but the practice seems to be very different and more often than not, users just lost all their cards. Well, never again! As soon as you turn Web Sync on by establishing your personal web sync account, each card you scan and any associated scanned data or user edits get uploaded to the web for safekeeping. If your iPhone is offline, changes just accumulate and will flows to the web next time you start the application with network online. Conversely, should you ever need to restore your cards into a new phone, simply sign-in to the same Web Sync account and all your cards will be downloaded back into the fresh installation of ScanBizCards. But wait, there is more … the Web Sync service is not simply a dumb storage for cards, it comes with a full blown web-based card management interface – give it a try. Naturally, changes you make on the web flow back to your iPhone. We feel particularly excited about that feature. Here are additional details and use cases for the Web Sync service:
  • Moving cards from Lite to Premium: if you are a Lite user with cards accumulating in the app and don’t like the icon saying Lite, you can now move all cards from the Lite to Premium on the same device. Please talk to me if you already paid to upgrade the Lite and I may have a promo code to let you do it at no cost (US App Store only). The way to do that is:
    • Sign-up for web sync within the Premium app (to get the 2 weeks free)
    • Sign-in to web sync using that same account in the Lite app, let it upload all cards
    • Run the Premium app: all cards will now get downloaded from the web sync account
• Enjoy a full-screen experience managing your cards, from any browser. Never mind that it’s web-backed and runs within a browser, it feel much like a desktop card management application. For example you may prefer to do some editing or makig notes into cards using a full-screen desktop experience. Better yet: have someone else do that editing for you (if you have an admin assistant)! Note: web changes flow back to the iPhone only when ScanBizCards starts at that time (unlike changes on the iPhone which are immediately uploaded).
• Keep multiple devices in sync: you can keep a copy of ScanBizCards running on the iPad fully synchronized with your iPhone, or likewise have someone at the backoffice keeping his copy of ScanBizCards in sync with yours, or track your cards via the web interface, your choice.
• A nice gimmick: we place every card you open on the web-based interface of a World map – click the MapIt button to view that map.

The web side of the Web Sync service is very much work in progress and is expected to get more functionality every week so please send in your comments!

Reviews

Several nice reviews of ScanBizCards have been posted recently, including:

• Zentrepreneur, from our friends in the North: http://zentrepreneur.ca/2010/04/cardscan/
• MobileCrunch: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/12/scanbizcards-use-your-iphone-3gs-to-organize-your-collection-of-business-cards/
• MobileSlate: http://www.mobileslate.com/blog/scanbizcards-for-iphone/

ScanBizCards V2.72 Update

ScanBizCards V2.72 Premium was approved on Monday – we were waiting for the Lite Update to get approved too but instead that update got rejected (because of a crash in the improbable scenario of an iPod user touching the camera button, getting nothing (no camera) but still trying to scan the “nothing” …). Nostra Culpa and we re-submitted the Lite version. On a related topic, we are almost ready with a migration function to copy all cards from a Lite Upgraded installation to a Premium installation.

What’s New

Quite a lot, in various areas of the app

– UI improvements: rounded corners for card thumbnails displayed in the regular (2D) view of cards within a folder – this is a great example how 60 seconds of work can make a significant esthetics difference – thanks to Michael Melnick for suggesting it. New sort buttons – thanks to Jonathan Moldovsky for providing them. As you can see, we depend heavily on the favor of talented friends for our looks …

– Usability improvement: we added a function to move or delete a card directly from card view, clearly needed – once you scan a card, it very likely that you will want to delete it or move it to an appropriate custom folder depending on the type of contact. If moving to a new folder, that same function now allows creating the new folder as part of the move.

– Usability improvement: card thumbnails can be adjusted (for esthetics reason) from the folder view, by touching Edit then selecting one card. Not the easiest way, and I am sure some of you didn’t realize that function existed. There is now a setting (OFF by default) to enable one-touch access to adjusting the thumbnail, in which case just touching a thumbnail in the folder list opens the view to adjust the thumb (touching the area to the right of the thumb opens the card as usual)

– New start options: a setting “Auto-Start in Camera” (OFF by default) will cause the app to start directly by launching the camera (as opposed to showing the startup screen with all the options)start app in camera mode. Another setting (also OFF by default) will auto-start scanning for new photos or photo imported from library. Combined together these two settings can save a lot of time when scanning a stack of cards.

– Accuracy improvements: a permanent fixture in our updates, but a necessary one. Essentially, when we get a card we don’t scan well, we usually fix the causes for all the mistakes we made before moving on. We also continuously improve the image pre-processing and this updates includes some improvement there too.

– On-screen guidance for picture taking: this is less important for experienced users of the app but we noticed that many new users tend to take pictures of cards held horizontally while holding the phone upright. This results in a card image filling less than one third of the viewport – with text too small for a good scan! We added on-screen guidance recommending to place the card with its long sides hugging the long edges of the iPhone to avoid that mistake. Note that we still automatically detect the text orientation, so if you are taking a photo of a portrait-style business card or some non-business card text, just ignore the guidance, we won’t be confused about the text orientation.

– Red laser:  if you ever see a red laser light when scanning a card, it’s an infrequent case when we failed to detect orientation. In most cases, no worries, we will then simply assume you followed the on-screen guidance. If the orientation is still wrong, you have the manual rotate button at your disposal.

– Automatic removal of (0) in phone numbers: we noticed a competing app had this item as the only thing they fixed in an update and we didn’t want to not fix something they did, so there you have it.

Reviews – the good and the funny

Another good review, this time from far-away Singapore: http://mofice.innovatus.com.sg/moapp/point-shoot-and-scan-business-cards/

Notice the friendly jab at the current popular app Business Card Reader: “Get this one if installing an application with the most user ratings makes you feel better” … well, we added a link “Rate this version” within our help pages so you can help fix that J!

And a funny one: http://webtechgadgetnews.com/update-scanbizcards-lite-business-card-scanner-business/

Do NOT spend too much time reading it, it’s just the hilarious consequence of the perils of automated translation. Note among other things how one of our features is described as “Forward a hit to a co-worker or crony” [Note to search engine: please do not associate us with organized crime on account of that alleged feature].

Feedback

Next week will be a good time for us to start taking care of small features we have had on the to-do list so please remind us if there is something you’d like us to add to the app. Hope you enjoy using it!

ScanBizCards V2.72 Premium was approved yesterday – I was waiting for the Lite Update to get approved today but instead that update got rejected (because of a crash in the improbable scenario of an iPod user touching the camera button, getting nothing (no camera) but still trying to scan the “nothing” …). Nostra Culpa and we are re-submitting the Lite version tonight. On a related topic, we are almost ready with a migration function to copy all cards from a Lite Upgraded installation to a Premium installation: when that’s ready, I’ll email this list again and anyone who wishes to do the move will be able to do it fairly easily.

What’s New

Quite a lot, in various areas of the app

– UI improvements: rounded corners for card thumbnails displayed in the regular (2D) view of cards within a folder – this is a great example how 60 seconds of work can make a significant esthetics difference – thanks to Michael Melnick for suggesting it. New sort buttons – thanks to Jonathan Moldovsky for providing them. As you can see, we depend heavily on the favor of talented friends for our looks …

– Usability improvement: we added a function to move or delete a card directly from card view, clearly needed – once you scan a card, it very likely that you will want to delete it or move it to an appropriate custom folder depending on the type of contact. If moving to a new folder, that same function now allows creating the new folder as part of the move.

– Usability improvement: card thumbnails can be adjusted (for esthetics reason) from the folder view, by touching Edit then selecting one card. Not the easiest way, and I am sure some of you didn’t realize that function existed. There is now a setting (OFF by default) to enable one-touch access to adjusting the thumbnail, in which case just touching a thumbnail in the folder list opens the view to adjust the thumb (touching the area to the right of the thumb opens the card as usual)

– New start options: a setting “Auto-Start in Camera” (OFF by default) will cause the app to start directly by launching the camera (as opposed to showing the startup screen with all the options)start app in camera mode. Another setting (also OFF by default) will auto-start scanning for new photos or photo imported from library. Combined together these two settings can save a lot of time when scanning a stack of cards.

– Accuracy improvements: a permanent fixture in our updates, but a necessary one. Essentially, when we get a card we don’t scan well, we usually fix the causes for all the mistakes we made before moving on. We also continuously improve the image pre-processing and this updates includes some improvement there too.

– On-screen guidance for picture taking: this is less important for experienced users of the app but we noticed that many new users tend to take pictures of cards held horizontally while holding the phone upright. This results in a card image filling less than one third of the viewport – with text too small for a good scan! We added on-screen guidance recommending to place the card with its long sides hugging the long edges of the iPhone to avoid that mistake. Note that we still automatically detect the text orientation, so if you are taking a photo of a portrait-style business card or some non-business card text, just ignore the guidance, we won’t be confused about the text orientation.

– Red laser:  if you ever see a red laser light when scanning a card, it’s an infrequent case when we failed to detect orientation. In most cases, no worries, we will then simply assume you followed the on-screen guidance. If the orientation is still wrong, you have the manual rotate button at your disposal.

– Automatic removal of (0) in phone numbers: we noticed a competing app had this item as the only thing they fixed in an update and we didn’t want to not fix something they did, so there you have it.

Reviews – the good and the funny

Another good review, this time from far-away Singapore: http://mofice.innovatus.com.sg/moapp/point-shoot-and-scan-business-cards/

Notice the friendly jab at the current popular app Business Card Reader: “Get this one if installing an application with the most user ratings makes you feel better” … well, we added a link “Rate this version” within our help pages so you can help fix that J!

And a funny one: http://webtechgadgetnews.com/update-scanbizcards-lite-business-card-scanner-business/

Do NOT spend too much time reading it, it’s just the hilarious consequence of the perils of automated translation. Note among other things how one of our features is described as “Forward a hit to a co-worker or crony” [Note to search engine: please do not associate us with organized crime on account of that alleged feature].

Feedback

Next week will be a good time for us to start taking care of small features we have had on the to-do list so please remind us if there is something you’d like us to add to the app. Hope you enjoy using it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I was using the Lite version then installed the Premium version (instead of upgrading the Lite): how can I transfer the cards I had scanned in the Lite app to the premium installation?
A: Easy! Use the Web Sync service to upload your cards from the Lite version then sync-up with these cards from the Premium version. Here is how:

• Register for Web Sync within the Lite app (it’s free for one month and renewal is not automatic, no worries) by touching the Web Sync button on the start page
• Let it upload all cards (watch the Web Sync status message to know when it’s done)
• To make sure all cards are saved in your Web Sync account you can go to www.scanbizcards.com/websync from your desktop, login using the same email & pwd you provided in on the iPhone, all your cards should be right there
• Now run the Premium app, touch the “Backup my cards with WebSync” bar, sign-in (NOT register) with the same credentials: all cards will now get downloaded from the web sync account into the Premium app

Q: I am using ScanBizCards follow-up reminders. Can I sync ScanBizCards calendar reminders with Outlook or Google Calendar?

A: Yes, if you’d like to keep To keep Outlook or Google Calendar in sync with ScanBizCards events, please touch Settings on ScanBizcards’ main screen and look for “Reminders Settings” in the “Features” section. Make sure you really need to establish a subscription: for example, if your iPhone calendar is already syncing with Outlook via iTunes you do NOT need a ScanBizCards reminders. Instead, please follow these two steps:

• Step 1: Add your Google Calendar to your iPhone calendar – see instructions here
• Step 2: Now that your Google Calendar is one of the targets where you can add calendar events from your iPhone, you also need to make your Google Calendar the default calendar for new events – run the iPhone Settings application -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Calendars -> Default Calendar. Note: in a future update we will add a ScanBizCards setting to chose its target calendar for new events.

Q: I am using Exchange Server and have my iPhone contacts syncing to the Exchange address book but not contacts created by ScanBizCards. Why?
A: you need to set the default for new contacts to be created within the Exchange address book:

• Run the iPhone Settings app
• Under “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”, select “Contacts”, then “Default Account”
• Set the default account to “Exchange” (instead of “My iPhone”)

Note: you also have the option to selectively add contacts directly into Outlook or the Mac address book from your desktop, by using the ScanBizCards Web Sync service, which includes a full web-based card management application. Click the Web Sync Settings button on the application start screen to get started!

Q: how do I delete cards from the card folders?
A: deleting a card can be done in several ways:
1. From card view, for example after you take a new photo, scan it, possibly add it to the address book, then touch back to the screen where the card is shown full screen:
– touch the “actions” button (bottom left)
– select “Move to Folder/Delete”
– first option is “Delete”
2. From the folder level view. For example, from the startup screen touch Explore My Cards, then touch All Cards. From that screen, there are two ways:
– To delete a single card, the easiest is just “swipe delete”, i.e. sliding your finger across the card entry. This brings up a red delete button.
– To delete multiple cards, touch Edit on the top right, then select multiple cards, then touch Delete at the bottom

Q: Sometimes at the start of the scanning process ScanBizCards is warning that it failed to detect orientation. What does it mean?
A: ScanBizCards automatically detects orientation to enable you to take photos in any direction. This process occasionally fails – but even in such a case, if you followed the on-screen guidance on how to position the card when taking a picture, ScanBizCards will still orient the card properly. If the scanning process still fails to orient the text upright, please use the rotate button then rescan.

Q: So what’s this new Web Sync service all about?
A: this is a long awaited features requested by several customers. It means never losing a card again. It also provides you with web-based access to your rolodex of cards from any browser and you may find it convenient to edit card info through that web-based interface sometimes. And it also enables you to keep multiple devices running ScanBizCards fully synced! read more about it here. Just touch “Web Backup Settings” on the main screen to get started.
If you are curious what a Web Sync account looks like, check this one (and make sure to click MapIt on the top left!)
Note: www.scanbizcards.com/websync is the web-based interface to your cards, from any browser. Sign-in with the same credentials you used to start the Web Back account on your device.

Q: I just took several photos of business cards and ScanBizCards failed to recognize almost any text! What’s going on?
A: Image quality is extremely important and knowing what to do (or what not to do) when taking a picture can make the difference between perfect results and very poor results! 
We recommend taking a quick look at our Photo Taking Tips – here are the top 3 reasons you might be failing to get good scans:

1. You have the iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 4 or iPad 2: the camera in these devices is not sufficient to take close-up pictures of small text! The Griffin Clarifi case accessory provides a solution for the iPhone 3G
2. The text is too small: text must be as large as possible, which means aligning the long side of the card with the long side of the iPhone and coming as close as possible to the card.
3. The image is blurry: even if it’s readable to the human eye, a blurry image is very difficult to scan. Hold steady and make sure the camera has focused on the text (if not, you can help the lens focus by tapping the screen)

Q: when using the Quick Intro feature or export to Excel, the recipient gets the data embedded as text within the email, as opposed to an attachment.
A: this may be because your default email account on the iPhone is Yahoo. Yahoo email has a bug where it converts attachments to plain text. If you have other email account defined on your iPhone, please set the default mail account to another email account.

Q: I upgraded the Lite version using the in-app purchase option, but the icon on my home screen still has the “Lite” caption. Did the upgrade work?
A: Yes, it’s just that an app on the iPhone can’t change its own icon.

Q: Can I scan cards without adding them to the Address Book?
A: We are glad you asked! Of course – scanning a business card or street sign you want to use but not add it to your address book makes perfect sense. After the scan, you will be presented the recognized text items for verification. On that screen, instead of touching “Add To Address Book”, just touch the Back button. The image will be saved in Recent Cards and you can load it at any time to use actionable items on that card by touching them or add a follow-up reminder to the calendar.

Q: I used the rotate button and then nothing got recognized properly!
A: the purpose of that button is only to rotate the image manually after a scan where we failed to automatically rotate the image so that the text is upright. You should be needing to use it only very infrequently.

Q: How do I crop a card image to eliminate background?
A: Since October 14 (V2.78) the image is automatically adjusted if you crop the image before scanning. Note: if you prefer not to adjust the image to the scanning crop area, you may disable the “Crop on Scan” setting. You can also adjust the image later to a crop area different that what was scanned using the “Crop” button.

Q: I made a change to a card previously scanned yet the address book information has not been changed?
A: we don’t automatically update the address book entry linked to a card. To do that, go to View Details, touch Save to Address Book on top right, choose “Merge with existing contact”, select the previous entry. You can also touch the address book icon for that card in the cards view and repeat the edit there.

Q: The Help pages within the app don’t seem to cover the new calendar reminders feature. Where do I find out more information?
A: The calendar feature results from the integration of the CallMeet iPhone app into ScanBizCards [note: you got two apps for the price of one!] and has its own FAQ page.

Q: If I delete a card, does it also delete the related Address Book contact and calendar reminder?
A: No, it only deletes the card image and saved scan results.

Q: Exporting to Excel creates an email with text embedded in the email instead of a CSV attachment.
A: This is a known problem when using Yahoo as the default email account for sending email, please change the default email account on your iPhone (Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars, touch another email account, make it the default). Note: we have also received one unconfirmed report of a problem with Microsoft Exchange Server as the default email account.

Q:  I edited the text of my Quick Intro e-mails from the settings, but when I go to actually send a Quick Intro e-mail, the formatting is different (i.e. newlines are ignored)? 
A: Versions 3.04 and below have a bug whereby the text you save for Quick Intro emails is treated as HTML. This will be fixed in the next release. In the meantime, if you’d like to get newlines into your saved text, just write <br> instead of a plain newline. Also, for you HTML mavens out there, feel free to use your own basic HTML tags (iPhone doesn’t support many) to jazz up your e-mails. For example: Hi Dave<br>It was <b>GREAT</b> meeting you today!

Still need help? Contact us at info@scanbizcards.com

ScanBizCards V2.70 Update

ScanBizCards Version 2.70 was approved yesterday – this time both Premium and Lite on the same day, unlike the previous two updates.

New Features

Accuracy: only one (important) feature this time: accuracy. We hope and believe that we this update provides a very significant improvement in accuracy. In previous updates we had improved accuracy in several incremental fixes addressing narrow and specific errors in OCR results, this update is very different in that it addresses a core issue even before the OCR stage, namely processing the image and “clean it up” for the purpose of eliminating as much of the irrelevant background and color gradients that would otherwise interfere with the ability of the OCR engine to identify text areas and specific characters. ScanBizCards now preprocesses images prior to scanning – a stage indicated by the progress bar during scanning. You can turn preprocessing OFF and save scanning time in settings, but this is really recommended only for high quality images, such that world-wide business card picture taking experts like myself would take or if you are importing images from a flatbed scanner (who couldn’t take a bad snapshot of a card even if it tried). Actually even that’s a questionable criteria – many cards benefit greatly from preprocessing no matter how well the picture was taken. In particular, casting shadows on the cards posed a vexing challenge to our OCR engine until now. What’s more, we found out that most users actually do cast shadows on cards (a results of needing to come close to the card with a iPhone bigger than the card and the inconvenient fact that light sources are usually above). Trying to scan this image http://www.scanbizcards.com/problem3.php resulted is almost no correct information, now we remove shadows rather well and it’s a perfect scan – in fact, this morning I had to move that card from the “Scanning Failures” section of the sample images page to the “Good Images” section.

Settings: our settings are now in-app, which makes it much more convenient, especially when tweaking a setting before handling a specific card.

Reviews

Two good and thorough reviews were recently published for ScanBizCards, both written on the basis of V2.60 (prior to the introduction of our preprocessing):

–          iPhone Alley (Jim Washok): http://www.iphonealley.com/reviews/apps/scanbiz-mobile-solutions/scanbizcards-business-card-scanner

–          148Apps (Jason Fanguy): http://www.148apps.com/reviews/scanbizcards-review/

“Update Fatigue”?

By that we mean user fatigue (we are never fatigued of updates). Jim Washok recommends spacing updates so that users of iPhone apps don’t end up spending too much time having to learn new features. We promise to take Jim’s advice to heart (but only after V2.71 … see below). Meanwhile at the risk of stating the obvious, please note that you can skip updates and wait for a next one if you’d like, the update emails can help make that decision.

Heads Up

We plan to submit a V2.71 update this week, providing further preprocessing improvements, faster scanning time, an option to automatic scanning and a cool new scanning animation you’ve just got to see.

I’ll close with a personal testimony: up to and including ScanBizCards Version 2.60, I was simply unable to properly recognize the business card of my own brother (!) – now recognized with just a one-letter mistake (working on that letter next). Don’t tell anyone and I hope you experience similar improvements with your own scanning.

ScanBizCards Quick Demo

Quick demo of the basic ScanBizCards usage: scanning a card, adding the new contact information to the address book, followed by a number of unique features such as sending a Quick Intro email, forwarding the information to a friend in 3 formats, “touch & go” – touching actionable items such as phone numbers, email addresses and URLs right on the card image to act on them – and of course, the ScanBizCards signature 3D “flow cover” cards view. Please check the other videos for advanced features not covered here, in particular the demo of the calendar feature.