As I was troubled in deciding what application that I should choose to start this new post series,I found this amazing application,the one I was waiting for months.Its a Business card reader application,which was first introduced to Nokia devices with “Business Card Reader for N73″,but sadly it worked only on that specific device.OCR(Optical Character Recognition) based Business card readers are not a new concept for mobile phones,I first saw it on Sony Erricson p990i,and now they have found their way to Nokia.It is definitely a good news for all the N-series lovers.The application uses the Camera of the phone to capture(Requires Auto Focus) an clear image of the Business card and then process it using mobile OCR engine.ABBYY Mobile OCR SDK combines powerful recognition functions with a small software footprint to minimize the use of hardware resources, So you’ll get accurate results fast at most of the times and the extracted details can be easily added to contacts with a one key press.Here I’ll briefly go through the application step by step covering everything.
1.The User Interface is very simple,you will see a frame in which the Business card should be placed.It clearly states how to place the card and even if the placement is not exactly correct,it doesn’t really matters,but you have to consider about the right orientation.
2.The Options menu allows you to,
a.)Open Image -can import a image file which is taken earlier or with another phone.
b.)Settings -check the screenshots below.
Recognition Languages-can read characters from 6 different languages(But the SDK supports for 9)
Fields-Allows you to customize the fields of contact details.
More-here you can,Set the sound while snapping on/off,Change the camera frame orientation or set the captured file to be saved or not.
3. You can capture images by pressing either camera button or Middle button of the D-pad.
4. When an image is captured it’ll automatically prompted to a processing screen which will take few seconds.
5. Then the extracted details are shown in relevant field boxes,and before saving them into contacts you can edit them,add a thumbnail,or change the field.
6. Press Done and then the contacts list will be updated with the data on the Business card.
Advantages :
1. If the business card is in correct format all the data will be extracted as it is.
2.Works well even under low light conditions.
3.Can read many types of fonts.
4.Less memory consumption.
5.Can use to extract contact details from other text materials like back-covers of books.
6.Fast processing.
This application works with N73,N82,N95,N95 8GB