I am stupendously happy to announce that "Card Now" is now available in the Apple iTunes App Store.

Take a look at the website for more information ...

www.CardNowApp.com - iPhone business card magic app

The app is a collaboration between myself and Jakob Halskov, author of Card2Phone. We have been working on this for almost 11 months. Jakob has some how managed to keep his patience while coding all of the changes and tweaks I have requested and the result is an app we are both very proud of.

The basic idea is to enable you to do Card2Phone with your business card! We then took the idea quite a bit further.

I'll not list all of the features. I'll let you take a look at the website and look forward to seeing any comments/reviews of the app.

Let us know what you think!
Damian

My BizCardMagic App, that came out two years ago, does the same thing.

Hi Carl,

Good to hear from you again. We found BizCardMagic about 3 months into development of Card Now. That's when I emailed you to discuss the project, back in March. You were very encouraging in the emails that we exchanged and we have mentioned both you and BizCardMagic in the acknowledgements section of the app.

I obviously questioned continuing development of Card Now when I saw a different app who's outcome is fundamentally the same, but continued because of a few key points:

1) It's tricky to get the image of your business card into your phone with BizCardMagic. You need to get an image of your card onto your computer, tweak it there, then transfer it to your iPhone. Too many stages for the app generation. With Card Now, everything is done within the app! Jakob has worked very hard on this. You photograph, crop, enhance and scale the image all inside of the Card Now app!

2) In BizCardMagic, there's only one way to produce the image of the card on your phone. That involves opening the app and keying in a code. In Card Now, there are currently two production methods (many more are planned for future versions of the app). Both of these appear to make your iPhone do something that no other iPhone is capable of. One where your card 'prints out' on top of your home screen. The other makes all of your home screen icons flip over and morph into an image of your business card.

3) I found that even though BizCardMagic could produce my business card, I wasn't using the app. The reason was because it looked and felt a little dated to me. This is obviously subjective, but it was important enough to stop me performing an effect that I wanted to perform.

4) There's no gravity in BizCardMagic. Shaking an object around in Card2phone is just plain fun! That's all built in to Card Now.

5) We can add more cool stuff because we coded it The list of things we want to add to Card Now is long. We think that it's great now and if people buy it then we can justify spending more time on it. We thought that spending 11 months perfecting stage 1 was long enough.

Pretty much all magic effects are built on what went before them. Crediting is important, which is why your name and app have been in the acknowledgements, Carl, since we spoke back in March.

I completely agree that the fundamental purpose of our two apps is the same. We want to put a business card in someone's hand in a memorable way. The list of enhancements above is what makes Card Now different to BizCardMagic.

Cheers
Damian

Damian,
Yes I remember now. Thanks for the crediting, very much appreciated.
Aloha,
Carl

Thanks Carl, No problem.

I'm a happy man today! Just got these results after 1 day in the app store:

Rankings in business categories:
DK best selling : Top #5
UK best selling: Top #14

If seems people like it
Thanks for the support everyone!

Damian

Nice work, this is a very fun app to use, love the interface. I even came up with a nice reveal for predictions, I can see myself using it a lot.

Thanks Mauricio,

I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's getting some great reviews in the app store and on the facebook magicians groups.

Android please...

I ve had Bizcard for a while, and its a very neat app. However I feel this Cardnow app has improved it significantly. Although the premise is the same, I just feel Cardnow looks more impressive.

The way the icons morph into the photo of your business cards is excellent. Having used it last night it gets a great reaction. The way that the card " in the phone" can move around too gives it a more realistic appearance.

The set up is also very good. There is an on screen stencil that allows you to get the correct size photo very quickly, and then there is an option to crop the photo if necessary.

Top marks and for a couple of quid you cant go wrong!!

Hi cupsandballsmagic,
There are no plans for Android at the moment. It's on a list of things to do if the app is successful enough to justify the development.

Rob1973,
Thanks for the review. Very much appreciated!

Best magic app I've seen. Having a blast using this.

Excellent app. Lots of possible promotional applications

Well done.

Thanks Eric and Gerry. Glad you're enjoying it!

Great app guys! I have a couple suggestions that I think would make it even better.

1.) Add a feature so that you can import Business Card photos from the Camera Roll.
I have a scanned photo of my business card that looks much better that the one I took from within the app. Having the ability the import it from the Camera Roll would be great.

2.) Add a feature so that you can save multiple business cards and select the one you need depending on the situation.
Some people (including myself) have multiple cards for different types of work that they do. Currently you are limited to using just one card and if you decide to change it you would have to retake a photo and then crop and enhance it each time. Having the ability to save multiple photos and the select the one you need would would give the user a lot more flexibility.

I really like this app. Although it's geared towards producing your business card, I see a lot of potential for other possibilities. For example, you could also magically produce a credit card or a driver's license. The only problem with I see with that right now, and it's a minor one, is that those types of cards have rounded corners and the app is designed for cards with sharp corners. Perhaps something else to consider for a future update?

Anyway, nice job with the app guys and I really hope you consider incorporating some of my suggestions.

Fantastic app! Just purchased it and cant wait to use it!!!

Also love the suggestion of updating it to use with other cards, drivers licenses, credit cards, etc.

Thanks!

Thanks Damian, I'll keep an eye out for it...

Bri

Outstanding! Gave out quite a few card the 1st 24 hours I had this and it was so visual. Recommended

Thanks for the thoughts and great comments. We've got quite a least of features to build in to future versions

I've just tried this app with a folded 10€ banknote!

It's like having a little money printer, I like it a lot!

Nice idea Er1tro,

Card2Phone has lots of bank notes build into it too, but using it with the printer effect is nice.