App of the Week: Turn Business Cards Into Contacts With CardMunch

Conference season seems to be all year-round these days with mid-year and annual meetings, and a slew of association junkets. It’s where we escape our social networking dungeons and meet, engage and build relationships live and in person.

But what we still can’t escape is the deluge of  3.5 x 2 inches business card. After a recent Association meeting, business cards sprawled across my desk, I looked for a better way and came across CardMunch from the folks at LinkedIn.

Login using your LinkedIn credentials. Snap a picture of a business card from within the app and the information is transcribed by the CardMunch folks at LinkedIn and entered as a contact.

The information includes an image of the contact, phone numbers, and email addresses. You can then add the contact to your iPhone address book or click on another icon to connect on LinkedIn. With another click, you can email the contact directly or forward her contact information. 

One suggestion for the CardMunch folks at LinkedIn: Enable landscape capture of business cards. Some cards have such fine print that it becomes increasingly difficult to snap a legible card in portrait mode.

This is a great free app for managing business card clutter. An added bonus is that it gets you to spend time on the valuable LinkedIn social network.