CardScan Executive: so little to be perfect

Cardscan Executive 800c

So little to be perfect

by Dario de Judicibus from Rome, Italy (EU) on December 7^th, 2010.

Designed for the power user and those with more advanced contact management needs, CardScan Executive allows you to scan, drag and drop or import contacts, and manage them with ease. Synchronize your data with Outlook®, Lotus® Notes, ACT!*®, GoldMine®*, Palm® and Windows® Mobile devices.

• Pros: Easy To Transport, Good Resolution, Scans Accurately, Scans Quickly, Easy To Use
• Best Uses: Capturing Images, Syncing Contacts
• Describe Yourself: Technically Challenged

This product is close to be perfect and very useful if you receive several business cards every week, so I will not put in evidence its value but signal three of areas of improvement, all related to the software application.

1. The OCR, usually perfect, works really bad with cards with black or dark background. There would be a simple workaround to fix that, that is, to reverse the image of card. It could be done automatically by the OCR, or you could provide a push button close to Process to Reverse the image after scanning and before processing the card.
2. CardScan can scan the back face of card too, but it does not process it. Often the reverse side of a business card contains additional pieces of information, so it would be nice to have the possibility to process it too and merge data with the ones obtained from the front side.
3. Many business card contains additional data that are not related to phone numbers, e-mail or web sites: for example, VAT number or SSN numbers. Currently, the only lists that we can edit are the ones related to phone numbers and e-mail addresses. It would be useful if we could have an editable list also for the last field, that is, Other.