I admit I have a thing about business cards. Not sure why. I guess I have always loved the graphical representation of a person’s vitals  in two-dimensional format.

I also have a thing about modern iterations of the business card, and have discussed options in previous posts here in the Studio (link here).

Today I found another modern appliance for exchanging contact information: CloudContacts (link here).

CloudContacts is an application that takes your business cards, scans them, and exports them into your email application of choice or whatever system you use for maintaining your contacts.  They also are stored on the web (handy backup). You can see images of your cards on-line. CloudContacts will either return the cards to you or will recycle them (how green!). As stated on their site, CloudContacts accepts cards in the following ways:

Mail – shipped via postal mail, FedEx, UPS, DHL and other package carriers

CloudContacts Mailer – we can send you a postal mailer – U.S. only – small shipping charge applies

NYC Pickup – orders of 300 credits or more – we can pickup your cards at your home or office

Email Upload – cards can be emailed via scan or photo using your custom CloudContacts email address

Mobile Email – cards can be sent using your mobile phone

The really cool part, though, is that CloudContacts will then take that information, go forth out into the wilds of the Social web, collect that person’s social profile information, and bring it back to you. Takes the sleuthing out of your complete connection activity. Available networks included Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Plaxo. Supported email and CRM services included Salesforce, Highrise, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird, Exchange, and Gmail. More are to be added.

CloudContacts costs. One credit is good for one business card. $29.95 gives you 100 credits and economics scale in your favor as you ncrease the number of credits you purchase.

But, if you depend heavily on securing cards and managing that information in a Web 2.0 way, CloudContacts seems a decent investment.