Digital Business Card Apps Tested: The Future Is Not Quite Ready

Do you have your business card along you? Do you have your phone with you? No and yes? That's what I thought. Of course you commend to carry your business cards for trade shows and industry events–simply what about on a daily basis, for those random java-house encounters, or for those times when you want to connect with someone at a company WHO happens to work for a company you want to do business with?

It may be easy enough to make business cards and print your possess cards, but memory to carry them is an only different matter. With the following free smartphone apps and services, you can carry a digital version of your batting order and easily share information technology with anyone. The populate you cope with don't even need to have the same app themselves, as umteen of these tools likewise appropriate you to send your bill via email.

Many of these apps contribute features that paper business card game can't offer, so much every bit localization and issue tracking–so you potty remember where a reliable card came from–or matching widgets to add to your site. And some will import your information from Facebook or LinkedIn, or allow you to organize your information into multiple cards representing several side businesses or freelance projects so that you can share only the information that's relevant to a particular contact.

CardFlick

A relatively other player in the appendage business card arena, CardFlick scarce launched its iPhone app at TechCrunch Interrupt in San Francisco earlier in September–and it has already seen more 17,000 downloads. An Android app is coming soon. The iPhone app requires iOS 4.0 or later, though I establish it susceptible to crashing on an iPhone 3G (non 3GS). The developers are very active, being a new startup, and the app is already up to version 1.02, so they should fix the crashes and bugs quickly.

You ass produce your CardFlick card by importing your information from Facebook, OR just entering it manually. It doesn't have umteen Fields to make out, however, so entrance your information by hand doesn't take too long. I chose to recruit my information along the CardFlick website, as the iPhone app didn't appear to save my changes. You get only one card, so you experience to decide how ain you wishing the bill to be. Though the app has just 14 card designs to opt from right wing now, wholly of them look pro.

Subsequently you have fixed up your card, you simply flick the menu to the whirligig of the screen to send information technology to any nearby phone that has the app undisguised; the app finds nearby users via GPS, and so sends the card concluded Wi-Fi or 3G. If your intended receiver doesn't own the CardFlick app, you have the pick to send the card via netmail.

Once you receive soul else's card, you crapper add it to your contacts. The cards continue wired to the cloud; when you update your information, the updates push come out to everyone who already has your circuit board.

Just now, CardFlick is a minimal app with a simple website. The options are thin, but the designs are beautiful. Custom designs are approach presently, too. The mind of "flicking" card game over to other users is fun, and you can always email the card as a backup. This is a good app to taste if you habituate an iPhone and indigence to carry only cardinal card.

SnapDat

Visible for iPhone only, SnapDat offers hatful of options for creating business concern cards, including importing data from your contacts, creating a card from a custom play down, or using a scanned image of your prevalent paper carte du jour. SnapDat also holds multiple card game that you can choose from when it's time to commit one; that way, you can keep goin cardinal card with in-person information, another with your business data, and another with your freelance Beaver State consultant information.

The card game take in additional input fields for extra phone numbers pool or netmail addresses. You hindquarters import information from your iPhone address book, and the cards can have links to LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Twitter, operating theatre even up an embedded YouTube video. The service integrates with VistaPrint to provide options for turning your appendage occupation card into the composition kind, equally well.

Inward card game are geo-stamped with location data, and rump admit messages and reminders to help you recall when and where they came from. You can mark out each lineup as public or toffee-nosed to verify whether the recipient of your card can share IT with other populate. The card game are as wel interactive–you can home a birdsong or send an email message from the app.

Transmitted card game go to the other user's SnapDat SnapID (you set up a SnapID when you first open the app), but you can also mail the card to the person's email handle if they don't have the app or a SnapID. You pot take in cards public via Facebook, which puts it on your wall, or done Twitter–although on Chitter the card blasts come out of the closet every bit a public squeeze rather than as a direct message or "@" reply.

SnapDat is a robust app for iPhone users who ask to expect multiple cards, or who want an easy way to turn their digital cards into paper ones.

Cardcloud

The Cardcloud app is open for iPhone, Mechanical man, and other smartphone platforms via a unsettled edition of its website. It allows you to carry multiple business card game, with entropy that it pulls from LinkedIn operating theater that you enter manually when you sign up. You can import information from contacts, merely in my tests this app kept mixing in data from other contacts as well, and I all over up having to create my cards manually.

You can connect your business cards to a wide potpourri of elite group accounts, including (wakeless breath) Nigh.me, Toothsome, DeviantArt, Facebook, Square, GitHub, Google Profiles, Gtalk, Hyves, LinkedIn, Mobypicture, Picasa, Skype, SlideShare, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Chirrup, Vimeo, Xing, and YouTube. Unfortunately, my attempts to add services from the mobile app didn't stick, and I had to add them from the Cardcloud website.

Sent cards channelise as a equal-to-compeer transfer when both parties have the app, or you can electronic mail. The app leave look for people nearby to share with via your smartphone's GPS. You lavatory choose one business wit to be populace; IT gets a URL so that you can point people instantly to a website where they can connect with you or download the card. Cardcloud also provides a few lines of JavaScript thus that you can add your card as a whatchamacallit to your own website.

The Cardcloud website keeps chase after of the business cards you share and welcome. You rear end take notes on the virtual back down of a card, and then add the notice to your phone's contact list.

Cardcloud is a good choice for anyone with a not-iOS smartphone. It's also uppercase for people quest a quick and easy way to add clickable contact information to their website.

Bump

Available for some iPhone and Android, Bulge has an open API (application programing interface) that allows developers to add "bump" functions to any else app. The Bump app shares data when two phones physically bump together. Each phone detects the bump via its accelerometer; victimization timing and location data, Bump's servers then connect those two phones for sharing. The Find app is intentional to share whol kinds of information, including photos, apps, and contacts. When you share striking information, you fundament select which pieces of information to send and which to keep private, so you don't have to share, say, your house phone number with your new business contact.

Once you have "bumped" someone, that person will stay in your Bump contacts list, and you can send them inexperienced information at any time. Bump also has a "virtual bump" feature for connecting with someone far away, but information technology relieve requires that person to have the app. You get no option to send contact information via email if the other person does not have the app.

Bump is a sport right smart to share data, and a great choice for sharing anything with people World Health Organization already have the app on their phones as well.

Are Member Business Cards Better Than Paper?

Having the appendage version of a business card is nice, equally information technology makes entering new contact information directly into your smartphone's contacts tilt easy. Digital cards can also carry more information, much as localization information and actionable links to social networking services. You can never run out of digital cards to give away, while newspaper publisher ones disappear quickly. Sharing cards via smartphone is a novel experience, too, and toilet assistant you suffer call at your new touch's retention.

Despite all of those benefits, I found myself wishing for composition cards at a recent case. I didn't want to have to pull out my phone, unlock information technology, open the app, find the right card, and then terminate up just having to email it anyway. I matte up that I hadn't real connected with people when I just emailed unconscious my card. And digitizing the physical business cards I brought home is so elementary: Every of them wish go straight into my NeatDesk image scanner. The NeatWorks software volition read the text on the cards and import the information into my contacts list, which constitutes only one more stone's throw than receiving a digital card in the first place.

At last, there's still something to embody aforementioned for physical, wallpaper business cards.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/476898/digital_business_card_apps_tested_the_future_is_not_quite_ready.html

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