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In the course of my career as a technology columnist, I have looked at hundreds of products. Very few of them end up a permanent part of my everyday toolkit. The test for making the cut is very simple: The product has to be the best solution for some basic problem of working life. My Palm (actually, a Handspring Visor Edge at the moment) keeps track of my calendar and appointments. My Research in Motion BlackBerry 957 keeps me up to date on important e-mail wherever I am. And CardScan from Corex Technologies transforms the endless flood of business cards into electronic records.
CardScan's latest offering, CardScan Executive, which combines the latest 600c scanner with new Version 6 CardScan software in a $299 package, is a valuable improvement over its predecessors. The new scanner, which connects to a computer via a universal serial bus (USB) cable, scans cards in color, but given the fact that most cards remain stodgily monochrome, the bigger advantage is much faster black-&-white scanning.
The new scanner is nice, but the greatest value is in the new software, which offers both improved scanning accuracy and better transfer of the data into contact-management programs. (Owners of older editions of CardScan can upgrade to Version 6 for $29 or $39, depending on the version. The software, which will work with most standard scanners, is also available separately for $79.)
AUTOMATIC UPDATES. If your contact-management needs are minimal and you don't need calendar functions, you could use CardScan's desktop software as a phone and address list. It stores both an image of each card along with the information extracted into database fields.
Most people, however, will probably want to move the information into a standard contact management program, such as Microsoft Outlook. The new version of CardScan can transfer the data from each card as it is scanned to Outlook, Lotus Notes or Organizer, ACT!, GoldMine, and others. And when you correct a card -- since scanning isn't perfect, manual corrections are sometimes required -- the updates are posted automatically in your contact manager, too.
For scanning to be useful, it has to be accurate enough for the time it takes to scan. And correcting any errors needs to take less time than it would to manually key in the information. Early card scanners were just a bit better than typing, but the new CardScan beats manual entry by a mile. Not only is CardScan able to read information accurately, even from highly stylized cards, but it has become very good at putting the information into the correct fields. It also offers greatly improved skills in an assortment of European languages for better accuracy on non-English business cards.
NET GAINS. No piece of software, it seems, is complete these days without a Web-based component, and CardScan offers a couple. Click on an address and, if you have an Internet connection, you're taken to MapQuest for a map and driving directions (for Outlook users, however, this merely duplicates an existing capability.) More usefully, CardScan.net lets you copy your card database to a remote server, which provides both Web access to your data and built-in backup of the information.
The improvements definitely help to guarantee CardScan's place in my toolkit. It's worth a look for anyone whose business involves the exchange of cards.
Wildstrom is Technology & You columnist for BusinessWeek. Follow his Flash Product Reviews, only on BW Online Edited by Beth Belton
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