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Turn business cards into contacts

The application is available for Android smartphones

Technology bloggers are “in love” with the business card recognition tool offered by Google’s Goggle app.

A new upgrade to the Android application promises to make it easier to turn all those business cards you collect into digital contacts.

Google says that business card recognition is one of the most important uses of Google Goggles so they have rolled out some new updates to make the process quicker.

Instead of simply recognising the content as text, Goggles now recognises the information as a contact, making it easier to add to your phone’s contact list.

"I’ve used and fallen in love with the business card recognition, so it’s great to see it’s still improving," enthused technology blog Lifehacker.

The new release also allows users to suggest better results if Goggles gets something wrong and adds note-making to your visual search history

This technology only serves to highlight how important it is to have business cards to hand, even in this digital world of social media.

Carol Meerschaert is director of marketing and communications at networking organisation the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association.

She says their "number one piece of advice to our members is to bring a generous stack of business cards with you to every event".

"You can tweet, Facebook, blog and be LinkedIn all day long, but nothing replaces the business card for networking success."

Google Goggles 1.4 is available for Android 1.6+ devices. Your printing service may be able to offer advice about other smartphone-friendly business card design features, including QR codes.