By Andrew Liszewski
You’d think by now someone would’ve come up with a digital business card standard so we could all pass our details around wirelessly, instead of on small paper cards. But until that happens, devices like this make the whole analog to digital conversion of contact deets a bit easier. Oddly enough the Pitrec comes from a Japanese stationery company called King Jim, and while it looks like a smartphone, its sole purpose is to scan and convert paper business cards into 1s and 0s.
To digitize a card you place it standing in a slot where a photo is snapped of it with a pop-up camera lens. Then using built-in OCR software the important details like names, phone numbers, titles and email addresses are deciphered and filed away for later access. The database is stored on a microSD card, and a 16GB card can hold about 10,000 contacts, so I’m assuming a photo of each card is stored as well. Hopefully your list of contacts can be exported via some means, so it can be accessed from your phone or email client, instead of just being viewed on the Pitrec’s 400×240 resolution display. As for the price? Well this little unitasker will set you back $300+ when it becomes available on August 6 in Japan, but in the long run it’s probably cheaper than hiring an assistant. Although I guess that’s why interns were created.
[ Pitrec Business Card Digitizer ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]
doesn't any smartphone have an app for that?
Very Attractive Pitrec Business Card Digitizer