WorldCard Mobile App - My New Best Friend

WorldCard Mobile App created by Penpower Technology Ltd. is my new best friend. I love this app! When I was first approached by the developers to try this app and then review it, I wasn't sure how useful it would be. But I'm a huge fan after trying it out.

Basically WorldCard Mobile scans business cards and then using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology, reformats the card information and adds it to your Contact List in your iPhone or iPad. What a time-saver and how I wish I'd had this app when I was at RootsTech in February 2011.

I tested WorldCard Mobile on dozens of business cards. Some were crowded with information or used abbreviations but WorldCard Mobile was able to convert them all and enter them in the correct fields in my iPhone contact list. The only one it had trouble with was a card with the person's name and a fancy character beside the name. WorldCard Mobile thought the fancy stylized character was part of the name but that was a very understandable "mistake" and easily corrected.

After WorldCard Mobile exports the business card information to your contact list you can edit as usual. So a quick Edit then delete of the erroneous character solved the problem.

Olive Tree Genealogy Card

All it takes to use WorldCard Mobile is a simple click of the app's built-in camera - you align your phone with the card using the on-screen image, then click. If the photo is clear and you're happy with it, you choose "recognize" otherwise you redo it. I never had a problem getting a nice clear shot the first time and I don't have the steadiest hands in the world.

After happily scanning all my business cards into my contact list, I checked out their option called "Signatures" Wow. Using this option you can transfer email signature lines (names, URLs, phone and fax numbers, job titles, etc) into your iPhone contact list too.

All you do is copy the signature line(s) you want imported, then follow the simple instructions in WorldCard Mobile and all the information is quickly and easily imported into your contact list. It truly is that fast and easy.

There is also a CardHolder which keeps copies of all the business card images which you can then organize into groups. I didn't play with this option but it looks interesting.

Almost ready to export to contacts

You can also import existing images of business cards from your photo library on your iPad or iPod Touch and they'll be converted and added to your contact list. Your iPhone needs to have auto-focus so this app isn't recommended for 3G but it works great on 4 or 3GS. I used it on my 3GS and had zero problems. It's fast. It's easy. And that makes me very happy.

WorldCard Mobile app recognizes 7 languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish so it would be very handy on a genealogical research trip.

I can hardly wait for my next Genealogy Conference - you know, the ones where we gather business cards like mad! Last conference I was at, I lost some of the business cards I was given. If I'd had this app I would have immediately scanned the cards so no danger of losing that important contact info.

Disclaimer: WorldCard Mobile did not pay me to write this review but they did provide me the app at no cost so I could review it. I tested it on my iPhone 3GS using IOS 4.2.1 and the version of WorldCard Mobile I used is 3.2.0