ANTenna Blog -- Apple

This week, CardScan began shipping CardScan Executive for Mac 10.5.3 or later, which includes both the contact management software and business card scanner. What's better, the Mac software syncs with the Mac's built-in Address Book contact manager. That's huge — no more separate CardScan database.

In March 2004, I switched from using Windows as my primary operating system to using an iMac. One of the hardest things to "lost" was my CardScan, an application and scanner that would literally scan business cards into a contact database. It was perfect for when I came back from a conference with dozens of business cards. Alas, CardScan was a Windows-only system. No more!

According to the company, the scanner can read cards at the rate of 20 cards per minute. It's also able to scan in color. That's a welcome improvement from my old black-and-white CardScan scanner, which sits in a box in my closet. With some business cards on colored paper, the black-and-white scans were unreadable.

CardScan says that the new software can assign multiple categories to a contact, search and sort; create, view and print customized contact lists; import and export data in vcard format; displays maps of contact information; access web sites direct from contact data; and print directly to envelopes and labels.

Moving forward, the company will include both the Windows and Mac software with its CardScan Executive system, which costs $259.99 retail — you can find it online for a lot less. If you already have CardScan Executive v8, with its Windows-only software, you can download the Mac software for free.

The bad news is that the company also sells a CardScan Personal, which is a lot less costly than Executive version. It's for Windows only. According to a company spokesperson, "there are no plans to introduce a Mac version of CardScan Personal." Bummer.