I’m not a huge business card user. In fact, I carry a few of them mostly so I can throw them into a fishbowl in order to win a free lunch at a restaurant. However, I can imagine how useful it would be to have an application that would take business cards and effortlessly import their information into your contacts list. CardSnap attempts to address this by using a proprietary method similar to OCR but not really (or so says the app’s description).

Upon opening (and waiting for) CardSnap, you are given the option to use the camera to snap a picture of the business card. You can also load photos from your camera roll or from your photo library. However, since the main selling point is to use this application in real time, I wanted to focus on the camera option. After taking a picture, you can move and scale your picture before deciding to upload to the servers at CardSnap. Once you’re satisfied with your business card’s readability (this may take some time with the iPhone’s pitiful camera), you submit the card, and wait for a response. Other options in the application include a menu to review your submitted cards, an info screen that offers a user’s guide, and a settings screen that allows you to use groups with your contacts.

I submitted a few business cards several times and was impressed on occasion with the response from CardSnap. We all know that the camera on the iPhone is not very good, and the picture quality is marginal at best. To the application’s defense, the user guide strongly recommends the use of Griffin’s Clarifi case. I was unable to test with this, so I had to rely on the standard camera app as I imagine most iPhone users would as well. With my work business card, the app said that there were some illegible fields, and I should probably review these before accepting it as a contact. Indeed, there was an error in my name, and a wrong digit in my work phone number. Other than that, though, I was impressed with how many of the details were picked up by the service and assigned to the correct field. On my wife’s business card, CardSnap got everything right, though interestingly, it did choose to skip a few items like a web address and part of her title.

Thankfully, there have been a few updates since CardSnap’s original release. When I first downloaded this app, stability was a major issue as the initial load time was long, and I had to reopen the application quite regularly. If you were to use this application on a regular basis, you might want to invest in the Clarifi case, though there’s no guarantee that the application will still get all of the fields correct. One positive test included a submission that I made using my Nikon D60 camera. CardSnap read this photo within hours and it did a perfect job of interpreting all of the fields correctly. Unfortunately, this is not a practical solution, and you might as well spend the time inputting your business cards by hand.

In the end, I would think the goal for CardSnap is to be an application that can scan business cards efficiently, effortlessly, and accurately. So far, the application succeeds in only some of these areas. It has a very simple interface, so it is possible to scan multiple business cards in a short amount of time. The program integrates well with your built-in contacts list, and it has shown high levels of accuracy when photo quality is high. I would love to see push notifications for business cards that have been reviewed as I had to open the application to check on the status. I understand the high price tag ($9.99) since CardSnap is more of an advanced application that recognizes fields rather than just translating images to text. However, for this price, one needs to demand better recognition for blurry images or wait until the camera on the iPhone improves. Perhaps, the 3GS will have better results. If you would like to try CardSnap before plunking down $10, there is a lite version, but it will still cost you $0.99. The limitation is that the app will only read 6 fields as opposed to 17. My recommendation is that CardSnap will be worth it if you receive and need to store a lot of business cards on a regular basis and you are willing to invest in either the iPhone 3GS and/or the Griffin Clarifi case.

Note: This application is currently only compatible with English keyboards.

ScreenShots

Birthday Cal Push is an application that will put your Contacts’ birthday’s into your stock Calendar application. I was actually totally stoked to see this application. As far as I know, this is the first app of this type.

Once installed, all you have to do is tap on the Birthday Cal Push icon and the application will open and close. In theory, all your contacts’ birthday’s will then be in your Calendar. However, this application did not work for me. I tapped on the icon, it opened and closed, I went to my Calendar and I got nothing. So, I gave it another shot…still nothing. I even tried entering a new birthday for one of my contacts and then running the Birthday Cal Push app.

Well, somewhere along the line, my Calendar application was not happy with the Birthday Cal Push application and now my Calendar no longer functions. If I try to open my stock Calendar, it opens briefly and then closes again and I cannot seem to fix it (yes, I tried respringing, restarting, uninstalling, reinstalling and rerunning the application). So, I would say use this app with caution or maybe just wait for the next update.

Birthday Cal Push is available via the BigBoss source.

ScreenShots

iBirthdays is an application that allows you to nicely keep track of upcoming Birthdays. I have reviewed a few Birthday applications available since the 2.x firmware (QuickBirthday and Birthday Reminder). Like most Birthday applications, the Birthdays are pulled from your Contact List. So, in order for this app to work, you have to have Birthdays assigned to your Contacts (see info below on how to do so).

When you open iBirthdays (which should not be confused for iBirthday), you get a list of your upcoming Birthdays. The list displays the contact’s Photo, Name, Birthday Date, how old they are going to be and how many months/days until their Birthday. There is also a lower menu bar in which you can view the list by All by Date (this displays the Birthdays for all your contacts starting in January and going to December), All by Name (this displays the Birthdays for all your contacts in alphabetical order by the contact’s name) and Setting.

The Setting option allows you to turn on a badge notification for upcoming Birthdays and the option to hide ages. You are also able to tap on a Contact and get their contact info where you can then call, email or text them. However, the features mentioned above (Settings and Contact Info) are only available with the full version of the application which costs $6.99 USD. I can’t tell you how well or even if these features work because…I didn’t buy it!

The application seems to work as it should (at least the parts I was able to test) and has a nice design. One feature that I would personally like to see is the ability to turn off the Contact’s Zodiac sign and symbol…I’m not big into Zodiacs. Also, I think the app is priced too high…I would see them making more money and selling more copies of the app if it was closer to the $1.99 or $2.99 mark. Let me know what you think in the comments.

You can get iBirthdays via the BigBoss source.

Instructions on How to Add Birthdays to Contacts:

To add a Birthday to a contact….go to your stock Phone application, select Contacts, choose one of your contacts, tap Edit in the upper right corner, scroll down and tap on Add Field, scroll down and tap Birthday, enter the date of the person’s Birthday and tap Save in the upper right corner.

ScreenShots:

ContactFlow is not a new application…we had ContactFlow back in the day (firmware 1.1.4 and below). I’m not sure if this is the same app by the same developer with a slightly new interface or if it is a completely different application! Either way, we have had a similar application in the past (with the exact same title!).

ContactFlow is basically another way to view your contacts. When you open ContactFlow you will get a Cover Flow style list of all your contacts that have images. Note: It will only display contacts that have images assigned to them (see instruction below on how to add images to contacts). You can then scroll through your contacts by swiping your finger on your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen. You can also jump to a certain letter by selecting the little magnifying glass icon…which will then bring up the alphabet and you can select a letter. The two arrows at the top of the screen allow you to quickly go to either your first or your last contact.

To view a contact’s information, you can either tap on the contact or you can select the “i” icon at the bottom of the screen. When you select a contact, the image will flip over and display the phone numbers available for that contact. You can then either call one of the phone numbers or send it a text message. Both features worked flawlessly when I tested them.

I also noticed that when you end a call, it will bring you back into the ContactFlow application. Overall, a simple application but, it is nicely designed. I also found it to be a sturdy app…I had no issues with crashing, all the features worked quickly and correctly and I did not experience any glitching while scrolling through contacts (though, I do not have a ton of them). You will have to let me know in the comment how it works for you.

How to add Photos to your Contacts:
1. Go into your stock Phone application
2. Go into Contacts
3. Select a Contact
4. Select Edit
5. Tap on Add Photo in the upper left corner
6. You can then choose to take a photo or choose an existing photo
*If you choose to take a photo…it will open your Camera…you can take the picture…then move and scale it and then set it as your Photo.
*If you choose to choose an existing photo…it will bring you to your Photo Albums where you can choose a photo and then select Set Photo.
7. Now you will see the added photo and it will show up in ContactFlow.

ScreenShots

Search is an application that allows you to search for keywords in your Mail, SMS, Notes, Contacts and even on the web. When you open Search, you will notice a lower menu bar with the options; Mail, SMS, Notes, Contacts and Web. At the top of the screen is a Search bar. You can select any of the options in the lower menu bar and then use the search bar to search within that application. The thing that I like about this application is that once it has found an entry you can then select it to see the full Email, SMS message, Note, Contact etc. The Web option will search Google keeping you in the application instead of directing you to Safari so…that is also nice.


I did find that the Search is not extremely thorough. When searching in my SMS, I searched for the word “Sorry”, knowing that I was looking for a some specific text messages. It brought up three other text messages but, none of the ones that I had just look at in my SMS. Also, I searched for the keyword “Advertising” in my email and was greeted with one email when we have had a ton of emails lately with the word advertising in them. So, the search works decently well but is definitly not complete. I would also love to see more usability within the application. Like the ability to reply to an email from the app or respond to a text message. You are able to call a contact via the Contacts option which is a nice feature.

Overall, if you are looking for a quick way to search your email, SMS, notes or contacts you might want to check out this application.

Now that your contacts are into Gmail just go to NuevaSync.com and setup an account. Then follow these instruction to set it up.

NuecaSync’s website strongly warns: this site is in beta use it with your data at your own risk. We advise testing with an emulator and test data.

I actually did this to my iPhone and it worked well, I had a few duplicate contacts but that was Gmail’s fault. Also, this wipes out the pictures of your contacts and uses the ones in Gmail. I haven’t used it long enough to see if updating the picture on my iPhone changes the one in Gmail. Just tested and it does change your picture in Gmail if you change it on your iPhone. You can also pick just calendar or just contacts if you want. Since this works with Microsoft Exchange settings you must be on 2.0 for this to work.

UPDATE: This also works for Plaxo Contacts.

First I installed the app on both iPhones. The first thing I noticed was that I could only move one contact at a time to the SIM card. If you want to do more than one at a time you have to pay. It’s $12.95 USD/$9.95 EUR. This should be ok though because we just want to move a few specific contacts. I started tapping some contacts I wanted and it would pop up the Name and Phone Number of the contact and I selected “ok” to transfer to the SIM card. I tried it on a few that just had email address and it didn’t do anything.

I did about 10 to 15 contacts through the letter A and then exited the app. I moved my SIM card to Brooke’s iPhone and all worked fine. Her iPhone is unlocked, so it connected to AT&T just fine. Brooke’s iPhone saw all the contacts on the SIM card right away through iSIM. I copied them all to her iPhone one at a time… I also tested making a call from iSIM which worked perfectly. I closed iSIM and went to Brooke’s contacts to see how things went. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as well as I hoped. For AT&T it only copied the name and work phone number. It didn’t copy the billing number, the image, or the business name field. Here’s a screenshot from both iPhones:

It also didn’t transfer the web address, address, etc. Only the first Phone number and Name. I tried a contact that was already in Brooke’s iPhone and it didn’t make two copies. One thing to be aware of is when you first insert the SIM card you need to wait a few seconds for the iPhone to connect to the carrier before opening iSIM. I had it crash a few times when opening it too soon. So, for basic contact transfer it works well but don’t expect all information to transfer. iSIM is available through the Makayama Source.