CloudContacts announced another level of functionality for their popular business card scanning service today.
While the internet has changed networking rapidly and permanently, even the techiest among us actually meet people in person from time to time. And inevitably, if work comes up, the age-old tradition of the business card swap occurs. With the best of intentions, we collect this information and plan to put it to some good use. And then inevitably, it ends up loose in the bottom of a cavernous laptop slash purse, acting as a number collection surrogate, or forgotten only to surface later with a vague recollection of who that guy was and what exactly transpired between you.
If you don’t make many in person contacts, a business card scanner can be of use. But that information is stored locally, which may not be as handy if you’re not tied to an office or fixed workstation. As someone who has spent countless hours sifting through vendor cards looking for a specific one when all the names are ABC Corp, DEF partners- searchability alone would have been worth it if this service existed in those distant, early 2000s days.
So I was geekily intrigued by the email that arrived in our tips box linking to a blog post about CloudContacts and the bookmark export feature. Again, having to manually search the rolodex of hundreds of cards and find a vendor or supplier while hand-typing in every address, while manually interfacing my forehead with a glass desktop, I can really appreciate this service. Separating and sharing the addresses on the cards you collect is a really cool extra level of functionality.
And while you can upload your cards yourself (even allowing a cell phone pic) or mail them in, they got me with the local NYC pickup service. Nothing’s more frustrating than a company you know is in walking distance (and everything in NYC is in walking distance) that refuses to allow you to forgo next-day ground and won’t take advantage of being all local. Holla!