Automatically Scan Business Cards into Your iPhone, Unintentionally Spam Your New Business Contacts
As digital as my life has become, I still occasionally get handed a business card printed on cardstock. While I'd love to treat it like the buggy whip that it actually is, not everyone is ready for a virtual business card solution like Bump -- sometimes I have to import contacts into my phone. Here's a way to do it automatically and for free.
First things first. You might already know about Shoeboxed, an excellent service that, among other things, scans your receipts and posts them online for you using a Netflix-like mailing system.
Now, Shoeboxed has rolled out Shoeboxed Business Card Reader and Business Card Scanner, an iPhone app that you can use to scan business cards and import the information into your phone. That's pretty cool, but here's what's better: Your business cards are translated by a human, so you can trust they'll arrive in your contacts list error-free. No more entries for "Michael Scoll at Dumper Mizzlin."
All that's pretty sweet, but there's one downside to all this. When you scan a card, the contact gets an automatic e-mail with your own contact information. In a way, that's nice: It automatically pings your new contact to keep the two of you in sync. But here's the catch: The e-mail your recipient gets has some Shoeboxed ads along with an opt-out link, suggesting that you've just signed your business contact up for spam. And that's not cool.
You can only turn this off if you upgrade to the subscription version of Shoeboxed (prices start at $10/month), which reminds me a bit of a bathroom stall that only takes credit cards. Both kinda stink.
