Buried in Business Cards -- And Rescued by NeatReceipts

It happens at every trade show: I say no, but it doesn’t matter -- everyone I meet sticks a business card in my hand anyway. At this year's CES, I collected over 80.

Coincidentally, every year the NeatReceipts PR people pitch me on their little scanner and software that scans, recognizes, and manages business cards.


Business cards from the Consumer Electronics Show

Each year I find excuses not to try one: I have plenty of things cluttering up my desk already. The device insists on using a USB connection on the back of the PC and I'm running out of free ports. I don't need another contact management application. I'm not particularly interested in scanning or managing receipts, documents, or tax reports, the other three NeatReceipts categories. And even discounted, $200 is too expensive for my budget. (Check for pricing.)

NeatReceipts scanner

Yet I kept looking at stacks of rubber-banded cards -- easily the collected works of a half-dozen trade shows. I felt technologically behind the times each time I manually sorted through the cards looking for someone's vitals.

My latest stack of cards

Neat-O NeatReceipts
I've spent a week with NeatReceipts and most of my fears were quashed on the first day. I ignored the instructions to crawl under the desk and connect the scanner to a USB on the back of the PC. Instead, I used a front-of-the-PC USB port and it worked fine. It also worked on a powered USB hub, and that way I kept the scanner on a side table, out of the way.

My other concern -- about using the NeatReceipts contact management tools -- was baseless. Once the business cards are scanned in, I can export one or all of them to a variety of formats including Word RTF, a PDF, V-card, or a standard, CVS text file.

Tomorrow: The OCR miracle -- almost perfect scans.

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