If you travel a lot for business or go to a lot of conferences the one thing that you are sure to collect are business cards. Everyone you meet will hand you one. The question is what to do with it. You stick it in the back of a wallet or maybe a coat pocket and then forget about it. At home you may have a draw or box that you throw them in. Telling yourself that you will add them your address book as soon as you have time, however that time never seems to come. The problem is how to get the information easily and accurately into your address book. If you have an iPhone 3s or above then the app CardMunch maybe the answer you looking for.
The way CardMunch works is you open up the app on your iPhone line the card up between the four corners on the screen and tap on the screen to take a picture. That picture is then sent to actual humans working through the mechanical turk system who read the information and sends it back to you. At that point you have the option to accept or reject it. If you accept it, it will be added to your CardMunch data base. You can keep it in your CardMunch data base or transfer it to your Apple address book. If you choose to keep it within your data base it will sync with an online account. If you loose your phone you will still have access to the information, which you can then sync it back to your new phone.
CardMunch was $2.99 in the App store and then 25¢ per card after the first ten cards. Then in January 2011 CardMunch was purchased by Linkedin. Now both the app and the service are now free. You can also send request to connect through Linkedin directly from a card on the application. CardMunch is only available for the iPhone The better the picture you take the more accurate the information you get back, which is why the app only works with iPhone 3s and above. If you have a lot of business card and use Linkedin then I recommend trying CardMunch.