WorldCard Mobile Lite

I downloaded the lite (free) versions of Cardmunch, CamCard, Scan Biz Cards, and World Card to test each using several cards I had on my desk that I needed to add to my contacts. Quick summary: Card Munch - maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. It is totally integrated with LinkedIn (cannot even open the app without signing in) which makes it useless as a business card scanner. I do not want to link to everyone I meet, just get their info into my contacts. Should be zero stars. Cam Card - did the worst translating the test cards. One of three was correct but still required editing. One required VERY extensive editing. One was totally unusable. Two stars because at least it is not LinkedIn Scan Biz Cards - pretty good - three stars. Got two of three almost perfect. Last one it struggled with company name and lost the person's name altogether. Inserted gibberish into the address. World Card - the clear winner. Initially struggled with one of the three cards but flash was off. When flash was turned on, got every one exactly perfect. Easy to export to contacts. Easy to turn off the useless (at least for me) "card holder" that would just add extra needless data on my phone. So four stars for this because since downloading the full version I have had one card it struggled with (the other software was far worse). This is - according to my test - the best of the bunch.

It has a little bit if a learning curve. The first couple of times I tried it, I failed to get any usable data. Then I realized I was not doing what it said to do. I was lining it up properly to take the photo, but then, for some reason, the image came out sideways from the orientation icon on the Export screen. If that happens, you have to touch the 90 degree button until it is oriented properly before you export it. Also, I was trying to capture the photo while holding the phone above the card, which was lying flat on a surface. That caused a shadow. It seems to capture a better image if I hold the card in my hand so that it is facing me. Good lighting is also critical to achieving the high contrast needed to capture a crisp image so that the text is recognizable. Once I did it right, it performed perfectly, and I have a new contact with all of the data from the card, including the photo!

I just took a picture of a card in not so great light. And it worked pretty well, I have to say. I also have to mention that the card has both black and white letters, very small, thin, sans serif type (think maybe 2pts smaller than iPhone text type) and it recognized the black letters, but not the white--which I had to manually enter. At any rate, it's taken me longer to write this review than type out the white lettering, so not that big of a deal. I'm keeping it.

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For the life of me, I can't figure out why this app gets great reviews. In March 2011, I downloaded WorldCard Mobile Lite and used it with 3 business cards. The first two had a couple of graphics on them, but were nothing elaborate. The third card was the most basic business card possible. All black letters on an all white card with no graphics. This app did not identify the name, title, company name or address correctly on any of the cards. It did get the phone numbers and most of the e-mail addresses right (substituted a "z" for a "2" on an e-mail address). Anyway, I deleted the app because I think it is unusable in its current form. It took me longer to fix the info than it would have to type it all in from scratch.

It's odd how this app got so many bad reviews. I just finished a pile of over 80 business cards with various graphics and had to make very few adjustments. This is a fine product for the price. If you are expecting an OCR software package that is flawless than expect to spend more money. How can you beat a 5.99 app that did all my cards in less than an 45 minutes.