CardMunch: Free Card-Scanning App
by Beth on April 25, 2011
in Beth Favorite, Free, Smartphone
My husband and I often lose our battle to keep the dining room table clean because of the dozens and dozens of business cards that pile up. We know we need to put them somewhere, but they have no real home and they end up cluttering up our living areas.
Sure, you can buy an iPhone app that scans the card, but you have to double check everything, and it ends up being a pain. And there are several card-scanning businesses out there that will input your business cards, but it’ll cost you $10 and up a month.
But the other day I discovered an amazing free tool that will bring order back to our home. Like other iPhone card management apps, CardMunch lets you take a picture of the card. But the difference is that the picture is transmitted to an actual person who checks the data and sends accurate contact information back to your phone.
It’s free thanks to LinkedIn, who bought the service and did away with the pricing. Thus, it has a one-button system to allow you to request a LinkedIn connection, plus other features let you send emails, download your entire contact list and integrate your contacts with your iPhone address book.
Task.fm: Free SMS and Email Reminders
The web is now full of helpful reminder systems. I like Task.fm because you can write the way you speak and it converts your note into a smart reminder, such as if you tell it to remind you about “my meeting with Scott Thursday at noon.” You can set reminders to come to you via text, email, twitter or a phone call.
The basic level is free, and the deluxe is less than $4 a month.
Want another reminder system? Try my old favorite, Jott.
Task.fm – Free SMS and Email Reminders.
Dropbox: Store, Share and Sync Your Files
It’s about time I profile Dropbox, a great little tool my readers have mentioned several times, and it came up again when I was presenting “Free and Low-Cost Tech Tools Your Organization Can’t Live Without” at the Fancy Food Show this week.
Dropbox allows you to synchronize your files among your computers and also stores them online for access anywhere. This is a fantastic application for those of us who travel and don’t want to deal with throwing files on thumb drives. Its storage capacity matches Mozy.com for backups and its feature set is on par with Live Mesh.
You receive two gigs of storage with the free version, and 50 is only $9.99 a month.
Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy.
