CardMunch – Save Time Managing Business Cards

June 29, 2011 / in General Information, Information Technology, Social Media / by Jason Terry

We are always looking for ways to save time.  Mic mentioned an application to me a couple of weeks ago called CardMunch.  All I can say is that I love it!  I really loathe sitting down to type in the information from the business cards I get on a regular basis.  I used to email the person to ask for their vCard just so I wouldn’t have to type their information in.  (Of course I sent my vCard when asking to save them time as well…)

CardMunch is an application that currently works on the iPhone and BlackBerry with an Android version coming soon.  The thing that CardMunch does is allow you to capture the information on a business card without having to type everything in.  All you have to do is point your iPhone camera at the business card and take a picture.  The image is sent to a processing queue at CardMunch… and believe it or not… a human looks at the image and types the information in for you.  You get an email when the translation is done that your card is ready.

You can do all kinds of things once the card is translated:

– You can add them to your iPhone contacts.
– You can forward the vCard in an email to someone.
– You can invite the person to link in with you on LinkedIn (We think you should personalize the invitation though, so don’t use this!)

The service became popular enough that LinkedIn recently bought them and offers CardMunch as a free service tied to your LinkedIn account!  I have been using the application for 2 weeks and have good success with the business card conversion process.  It has definitely saved me time!  I think it would be worth your time to download this free iPhone app and check it out.

Here is the link to the iPhone version of CardMunch.

Let us know if this application ends up saving you time by posting a comment.  If you know of another good way to manage getting the information from physical business cards into your mobile phone, post a comment!