Business Card Reader II — There’s a lot of hidden power in this little black box
reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Note: This issue also contains a review of Card 3.0 Business Card scanner software.
I.R.I.S. Inc (561)-921-0847 http://www.irislink.com/c2-295/IBCR-for-MAC-OS.aspx Support: http://www.irislink.com/c2-261/I-R-I-S--Technical-support.aspx $150 USD [Includes Card software] Requirements:Mac OS X computer with a G3 processor or a Mac OS 9.x computer with a PowerPC processor and Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.x. In addition, 32 MB RAM, 80 MB free disk space, and a free USB Port. Audience: All user levels. Strength — The product very easy to use, fast and accurate! You’ll never retype a business card again! Select the country of your business card, slide the card into the scanner: it is automatically scanned, recognized and encoded! Weakness — I’ve found no significant problems when using this product. Although OCR products are supposed to be only 99+% accurate, this product seemed to have a higher accuracy with all but a few of my cards. The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.5. Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. Note to avoid privacy Issues, I have used only commercially available and freely handed out business card as examples. |
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Introduction
As noted in my review in this issue of macC of CardIRIS 3.0 software, I’ve accumulated hundreds of business card a year. Since the only alternative I had to hiring a typist, was to type the data into my address databases myself. So of course I’ve lots of cards left unentered, just sitting at random in a box behind my desk.
Note, the world is not perfect, neither are scanners or data entry typists. There are a few conditions where the card scanner, any consumer scanner for that matter, will not work effectively with some cards because the data acquisition system cant translate the images captured into credible text. Such conditions are mention briefly in this article and are discussed in my review of CardIRIS 3.0 software in this issue. This review is most focused at familiarizing you with the IRIS Business Card Reader II scanner.
Using the Product
Installation and using
the product was simple. Install the Card software; plug in the scanner into an
available USB port. Start up the Card application and start feeding your
business cards. I completed an eight-card scan, feeding in a few of the cards
backward, in only a few minutes. The time from when you place the card into the
scanner until the software has read the card is about 12-15 seconds. The time
varies depending upon the complexity of the card.
Something the otherwise excellent manual does not warn you about is: DON’T feed the cards in the scanner too fast. Let the scan of each card complete, flip the card out of the way with a finger and then slide the new card into the scanner. Otherwise, the scanner reads two cards as one giving you random or mismatched information when the auto OCR process occurs.
The cards are fed into the back of the unit. Then, with a very gentle hum, the cards are self-drawn past the lens.
I’ve illustrated a quick 3-card scan below an image of a set of cards I fed too rapidly. Check it out.
In Cary Coyne’s review of the card software and scanner, [Applelinks, 08-27-04, http://www.applelinks.com/p5/index.php/more/cardiris] he illustrates the results of a scan using his Applelinks card as a sample. The image, below, shows what goes where when you can a card with the card scanner and Card software. The image is what the main window of the software interface looks like. It’s a better image than I could create so I acknowledge and using his fine illustration.
As noted in my CardIRIS
review, the main software window is where you get most of the work of acquiring
business card contents done. On the left hand side are the Card controls, all
straightforward. The data fields obtained from the OCR process are not in the
order I would place such information when developing an address associated PIM
or database. The Acquire region lets you chose the scanner from which you are
acquiring the information (any Twain scanner, an image, or the Card scanner).
Finally, you establish what country the card is from by selecting from 39
countries seen in the "earth" icon. This can be done before or after
the card has been scanned. Since most of my cards follow a US format
convention, I prefer to do this as a means of creating default setting. Such
tweaking is important when scanning non-US formatted cards the issue being how
European phone numbers and addresses are read, not to mention what country is
placed in the "Country" field. However, by quickly sorting cards
before I scan them I can separate the non-US and problem colored cards for
alternate mode scanning or manual input.
IRIS Business Card Scanner Specifications - The hardware for Card is a dark-blue, plastic scanner about 5.5"W x 2.5" high x 1.25" thick. It has a single USB plug from where it gets it power and communicates with the computer. To scan a card, you first start the software. The first time you start the software, you need to calibrate everything, and the software helps initiate this by requesting you run the calibration card (provided) through the scanner. This card is taller than a business card, and white. My only complaint here is that the scanning window is on the base of the unit, so all business cards must be placed upside down. There is a comment and/or warning to the user to place the calibration card upside down and to scan card upside down, but it is hard to notice. However, beyond that, you're done and ready to scan cards.
The accompanying software Card 3.0, makes available customized formats for special scanning needs including B/W or grey scale imaging.
The scanner comes with the excellent CardIris 3 Software – The later uses ’ proprietary Omnifont technology optimized for tiny characters - Character sizes: from 6 to 72 points and is adaptable to 6 user interface languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. CardIris recognizes cards from up to 53 countries allowing their address formatting and phone conventions to be correctly captured by the scanner formatting.
Other Package Features
Allows color scanning, display and archiving |
Output to selected contact database |
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Contains sort, search and selection tools |
Foreign country support |
Print contact information |
Synchronize your contacts |
Export and import your contacts |
Do Batch OCR |
Review Shortcomings
I neither use Apple’s Mail, MS Entourage or any of the standard personal information management programs [PIM] such as NOW contact, therefore except for m dropping a scan resulting vCard into Mail I could not test these features of the scanner/software bundle. Gary Coyne’s does indeed cover these aspects of this product. http://www.applelinks.com/p5/index.php/more/cardiris Check it out.
As an aside Gary Coyne notes “As a side issue, using this device makes one much more cognizant of business card design. One thing to keep in mind is that if Card is having problems figuring the card out, the human brain might as well. Assuming that one hands business cards out to communicate your information to people, anything that impedes that goal should be avoided.” As an occasional designer of business cards, I agree.
A Single Gripe
The one condition with which Card was completely stopped working was when I had a card with white or light text on a dark background. I had one card with a brightly colored background and white text. In this case, although I got the card to feed into the scanner, unlike Gary Coyne’s Argonne National Laboratory example, the software would not acquire the text. I could not even make this card work when I canned the card into Read 11, reversed the field to turn the image into a negative, and tried to scan that image. As a result, I will type the data in such card in the future, since fooling with it with my scanner(s) and the OCR software takes more tin me then typing.
Conclusions
The IRIS Business Card Reader II package is a great tool to scan and automatically encode your business cards. It’s very easy, fast and accurate! You’ll never retype a business card again! Select the country of your business card, drop the card into the scanner: it is automatically scanned, recognized and encoded! On rare occasions you may want to make a correction to the scanned input, after all OCR scanner are not perfect. [See Tom Lewis Images] Choose an export format and directly send your contacts into Address Book, Entourage, Now Contact, etc.
If you deal with as many business cards as I do, use a PIM or a database, and absolutely hate entering in the data by hand, you should strongly consider a Read approach. Also, be aware that the Corporate Edition of the Read OCR software comes with business card reading software as well. With this combination, you can set up, up to ten business cards on your scanner and do them all together. Alternatively you can spend an extra $100 and but the Business Card Reader II which comes with Card and acquire your business card contact that way. I rate this product 4.5 macCs.
