I’m a firm believer that the more people you connect with, the more opportunities you expose yourself to and the more chance for great things to happen. Because of that, I like to network a lot and meet new people.

And because of that, I end up with a lot of business cards. Previously, I had this little index card holder box that I dumped all of my business cards into.

A couple hundred business cards. Just piled in there, not even nicely stacked or laid out. Impossible to search!

The cards just sat there. I never thought to look somebody up because it was so incredibly hard.  I really wanted some sort of digital solution – something where I could scan the cards and then search them online.  There’s a bunch of services out there but they’re all a bit pricey in my eyes for the functionality offered.  Services where you send the business cards off a bunch at a time, somebody scans them and you log in to search them.

Nothing was quite right.  And then one day I read about LinkedIn buying CardMunch, one of those services that charged per card scanned.  They had a free iPhone app after the LinkedIn deal and all business card scanning was now free.

CardMunch simply rules.  It’s the first app I open after going to any networking event, conference, etc. nowadays.  You simply open CardMunch, take a picture of the business card, and get on with your evening.  A little bit later, the contact is added to CardMunch both on your phone and on the website – digitally transcribed and searchable by name and company.  You can export your contacts at any time to put into Highrise or wherever.  They also have a sweet “many cards quickly” mode which lets you snap card after card (for those really crazy nights).

Long story short: CardMunch is a must have app for anybody who does any degree of networking.  The days of crazy index card boxes holding hundreds of business cards are over for me.  Finally.