A better way to manage business cards

LinkedIn just rolled out CardMunch Version 3.0, available for the iPhone, which converts the information printed on a business card into digital form and links it to the card giver's LinkedIn profile. The application is the first major development for CardMunch since LinkedIn bought the startup in January. It is also the latest move by LinkedIn to extend its social-networking reach. The new version is available as a free download and is the first app truly integrated into the guts of LinkedIn, which is evaluating when to make it available to other mobile platforms. All you Android and BlackBerry owners will just have to wait. Although there are many other smart-phone business card apps available, few are offered for free and none can offer the depth of integration with LinkedIn. With CardMunch, like other smart-phone apps designed for the purpose, the app uses the iPhone's camera to take a photo of a business card. A short while after receiving a “thank you, your card has been submitted” note, you will find the card added to your CardMunch contact list. If the card owner is a LinkedIn member, the contact list will also display a profile picture and all the information in the member's profile. That contact will be flagged as new until the file has been opened. Once it is opened, you will see all the key contact information from the card — along with the photo of the business card. During my own testing on CardMunch, in which I scanned about 250 business cards, I double-checked quite a few entries and found no mistakes. Over the course of three days and a total of about 90 minutes, I turned a stack of 250 business cards cluttering up my desk into contacts, averaging no more than 10 to 20 seconds spent per card. That is much more efficient than using my old business card scanner, a now ancient Corex Technologies Corp. CardScan 600c. With that system, I would spend about a minute or two per card, depending on the number of manual corrections I would have to type in for a scanned card. Granted, more-recent versions of this or other scanners are far more accurate and faster. For example, the Fujitsu Ltd.'s ScanSnap S1500 is well-suited for the task and already in the offices of many financial advisers. With CardMunch, once the business card is scanned and added to the contact list, you will have as much or little of the person's LinkedIn profile information as you are entitled to, based on your level of connection. For example, with first-degree connections, you will see just about everything, and less data for second- and third-degree connections.

'CONNECT' BUTTON

For those folks to whom you aren't connected at all, there is a blue “Connect” button that you can click right from your phone to send them a LinkedIn invitation. You can also save their contact information directly to your iPhone contacts with just two clicks. One improvement to the 3.0 version is the ability to auto-enable saving of processed cards directly to your iPhone contacts (found in the iPhone Settings application under CardMunch), instead of one at a time. And if you are like me and you have your iPhone contacts synched with Microsoft Outlook and/or Exchange, you will enjoy this. The contacts I scan in with CardMunch are automatically synched with Outlook or Google contact lists. Nothing is perfect, however. If you often scribble notes on the back of a card, as I do, you will still have to go in and add these to your electronic entry. The same goes for business cards with printed information on both sides. For now, you will have to type that information into the contact list. Related links: CardMunch from LinkedIn for iPhone LinkedIn blog announcing the new version (including a video of how it works). Email Davis D. Janowksi at djanowski@investmentnews.com Related stories: Veo Mobile for iPad officially launched WealthCentral Mobile now available for Android Retirement? There's an app for that (Retire Logix for iPhone from Finance Logix) Fidelity rolls out iPhone app for WealthCentral Leveraging the iPad (J.P. Morgan Funds app for wholesalers The Hartford's annuity wholesalers lighten up with iPads Advisers viewing videos in new ways (use of QR codes & readers) iPads taking SageView green, the trees say thank you Reuters Insider technologically impressive [see the last few slideshow images] Thomson Reuters begins the drip of iPad apps Financial application for the Droid NetExchange and iPhone make connection Morningstar application available for iPhone