Keep track of business cards with Flickr

Business card

Business card,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to organize physical objects digitally. Back when I was guest-blogging at Lifehacker I posted an entry about using Flickr to help keep track of wines by taking pictures of their labels and uploading them to Flickr. While a handy tool, I’m not much of a wine fan so it’s not something I’ve been able to use myself.

But now I have thought of a way to apply this method to something that is quite present in my everydays: business cards.

Despite lots of material available about people on the Web, exchanging hard-copy business cards is still something people seem to do quite a bit. There is some value to it. If you add a few notes to the card then the card can help you remember the person. That is, the person may have a Web site with all the relevant contact info, but if you cannot recall their name then that won’t be of too much help. Business cards can help in remembering people’s names and recalling the context in which you met them.

So I started taking snapshots of business cards I have collected recently. I upload these pictures to my account on Flickr. Since people don’t necessarily want their contact info floating around publicly, I have specified these pictures as completely private.

I then add information about the context of the meeting in the notes field and info about people’s affiliation and fields in the tags.

5 Responses to “Keep track of business cards with Flickr”

  1. Jacob Bøtter Says:

    That’s a pretty neat idea, I’ll try using it and respond with some feedback when I have it – thanks for sharing!

  2. Tim Bratton Says:

    A great idea. I tried it with my 3.2 Canon Powershot S30 and couldn’t focus close enough to get a clear picture. Any recommendations on how to take the picture?

  3. eszter Says:

    Tim, I use a Canon Powershot S500. I suspect your camera also has the little flower icon for close-ups, no? I recommend using that. If that still doesn’t work then how about moving a bit further and then cropping the image? I realize that adds an extra step, which is not ideal, but hopefully at least the info will be clear to read.

  4. Tim Bratton Says:

    I used the flower to zoom in and it works great. Thanks so much.

  5. Tokyo Tales Says:

    Clever uses for Flickr #1: Business card archive

    The excellent Lifehacker (my new new favourite – apologies, Hanzi Smatter) pointed me towards this innovative method of indexing your business cards using Flickr. This could be really useful, especially here in Japan where meishi (名刺) are proffered…