31 replies to this topic

[gbarry]

If you're on iPhone, the new Hello 2.0 comes with some extremely slick new features, including an entirely new design. There are two features in particular that I'd like to call out here. From our blog:

3. Premium Feature Preview: Business Card Scanning
Evernote Hello now has a really great Premium feature: Business Card Scanning. For the next couple of months, we’re making this feature available to everyone free of charge. You can try it from the Add Contact menu. Follow the on-screen guides when taking the photo—for best results, keep your phone at a slight angle. As soon as the photo is taken, Evernote Hello corrects any skew and recognizes all the key fields on the card to create a complete profile of the individual. If the email address matches an account on LinkedIn or Facebook, then the app will pull in a photo and other relevant information.

4. Hello Connect
The most magical of our new features, Hello Connect lets you exchange contact info with groups of Evernote Hello users of almost any size instantly through the use of audible tones. It completely eliminates the need for lengthy introductions at the start of a business meeting or meetup. Here’s how it works. Have everyone in the group launch Evernote Hello on their iPhones. When everyone has the app running, one person taps on Hello Connect from the Add Contact menu. That’s it. You’ll hear the tones play in a call-and-response style and, in seconds, everyone will be connected. If your environment is too noisy or you don’t want to disturb the people around you, switch to manual mode and share the Connect Number with everyone in your group.

Emphasis added mine. These two features in particular have been incredible to work with over the past month or so. Use Connect to immediately "meet" a group of people and collect their business info--if you're running a seminar, you can connect with everyone in the room in a single moment. Using the Business Card Scanning, you immediately integrate their card info with live social media info, meaning that data from that meeting is as fresh as it gets.

All good stuff. For the complete story, visit the Hello 2.0 announcement on our blog.

[JerryR]

Hello 2.0 is great. I really really love the business card scanning. Now I can delete the 3 card scanning apps I have been going back and forth with. There are 2 things that I think would make the app even better......

1 - I would love to be able to email the notes right from the application. I often scan a business card then email it back to the office or a coworker with a few tasks inside the note. Yes I know I can email it from Evernote however it would be so much easier to just do so right then and there. Also if I email from Evernote then I have to copy and paste my notes into the email. I could not find a way for the notes to automatically send along witht the contact info. If this is possible and I am just missing it let me know

2 - An iPad app would be very helpful also. I already have my iPad out when I am meeting with customers and it would be easier to use then and there on my iPad instead of having to pull out my phone.

Thank you for all of the great apps. I am slowly but surely turning our office into an "Evernote Office"

[Thorvund]

I upgraded to the new version and now some of my contacts are missing their photos. The notes have photos when I view them in Evernote, but not in Hello on my iOS phone. Any suggestions?


Follow up - Evernote Support assisted me. An uninstall of Hello on my iPhone and then a reinstall fixed the issue.

[Jhannes]

Great step forward.
Some minor notes;
- Facebook doesn't work.
- Biderectional integration with contacts as well as LinkedIn would be nice
- contacts that are merged in phone book still show up as separate ones on Hello

Thanks for the great work.

[gbarry]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's much appreciated

Some minor notes;
- Facebook doesn't work.

We're aware of this and thank you for reporting. It *works* just is inaccessible and we're on our way to fixing.

UPDATE: or you're running into this issue, which Martin walks us through here: http://discussion.ev...ok/#entry187303

[Thorvund]

gbarry,

Is there a way to add a business card to an existing contact?

Don

[mcheng]

Hi Torvund,

Just scan the business card as if it were a normal meeting. If the information matches one of your Hello Contacts we'll automatically group them together and merge their information.

// Martin

[mcheng]

Hello 2.0 is great. I really really love the business card scanning. Now I can delete the 3 card scanning apps I have been going back and forth with. There are 2 things that I think would make the app even better......

1 - I would love to be able to email the notes right from the application. I often scan a business card then email it back to the office or a coworker with a few tasks inside the note. Yes I know I can email it from Evernote however it would be so much easier to just do so right then and there. Also if I email from Evernote then I have to copy and paste my notes into the email. I could not find a way for the notes to automatically send along witht the contact info. If this is possible and I am just missing it let me know

2 - An iPad app would be very helpful also. I already have my iPad out when I am meeting with customers and it would be easier to use then and there on my iPad instead of having to pull out my phone.

Thank you for all of the great apps. I am slowly but surely turning our office into an "Evernote Office"

Hi Jerry,

#1 is on the roadmap.

#2 is also on the roadmap for Evernote. We will continue to refine the interactions on Evernote Hello and once perfected, will start migrating certain functionality where it makes sense into the other Evernote apps such as Hello Connect or our card recognition engine.

// Martin

[mcheng]

Great step forward.
Some minor notes;
- Facebook doesn't work.
- Biderectional integration with contacts as well as LinkedIn would be nice
- contacts that are merged in phone book still show up as separate ones on Hello

Thanks for the great work.

Hi,

Can you explain what you mean by

- Biderectional integration with contacts as well as LinkedIn would be nice

Did you want to make changes to your contacts and have them reflected in Hello? Similarly if one of your contacts made changes to LinkedIn, have that reflected in Hello?

- contacts that are merged in phone book still show up as separate ones on Hello

What do you mean by merged contacts?

[Thorvund]

Hi Torvund,

Just scan the business card as if it were a normal meeting. If the information matches one of your Hello Contacts we'll automatically group them together and merge their information.

// Martin

Martin,

Thank you so much. I tried it and it worked perfectly!

Don

[mkoehler]

Trying Hello for the first time. Scanned a card from a meeting yesterday and the LinkedIn integration was perfect. Unfortunately Hello is convinced that the meeting took place in the church across the street. Attempts to correct the location has me frustrated. It seems that I can either have the address with no name or the name of the location with no address.

Is it really this hard?

[mcheng]

Hi mkoehler,

Sorry the location picker is confusing. The location picker is a 2 part control.

When you first tap on the location - you should see a map. You can tap and drag the pin around for small changes or tap into the address field and type in a location, say "San Francisco, CA" and the app will autocomplete for you. You don't have to type in a full address.

If you want to give the location a more memorable name instead of just the address, tap into the name field. This should switch to a list view where the app will show all the nearby places to the address you have from Foursquare. If you select one of these places, the address field should update along with the pin on the map to the actual address of the venue you selected.

You can also start typing in the name field to narrow down the list to the places that have the characters you are typing OR eventually you can type in a name like "Grandmother's House" and add it to a custom list of places. This will take the name and associate it with the location that is shown in the location/address field.

See this set of screens:
https://www.evernote...61136c2618921ba

Hope this helps.

[trbyers]

Hello, first time Evernote Hello user with the new 2.0 version.

 

When I scan a business card, the image looks correct on the iPhone app, but when it syncs over to Evernote and I view it there, the business card image is smushed.  By that, I mean it's compressed left to right, basically it's taller than it is wide, so the image is distorted.  Doesn't seem like this would be correct, but am new to the app, so can't compare it to previous behavior.

 

Is this a known issue, or am I doing something wrong somehow?

 

Thanks,

Tom

[mcheng]

Hi Tom,

 

Are you getting any results from the recognition?  It may be that we aren't seeing the edges of the card and can't tell the orientation.  When we get results from the card, we try to rotate the picture so that it looks the right way in the note and on the phone screen.  

 

Have you tried the tips above to see if that helps?

[trbyers]

Hello mcheng.

 

Yes, the 3 cards that I have scanned so far have all gone through recognition to varying degrees, that actually worked pretty well.  It's just an issue with the image of the card when synced over to Evernote, when viewed in the iPhone app it looks normal.

 

I did try scanning the card in portrait mode instead of landscape as it appears to be intended, but that just didn't work.  It  seems to be detecting the card orientation correctly when done in landscape.

 

I'll see if I can find some additional cards to test with.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Martin Packer]

There might be a duplicate thread out there because I feel sure I've said the following before... :-)

 

I found - on scanning 2 separate cards - it didn't pick up the street address portion of the card. Could be because our corporate standard is italics. The rest of the card scanned fine.

[goldfilm]

Sorry if I posted in the wrong forum before, but how do you turn off the flash to scan business cards? Many come washed out.

 

Beyond that, the new features are amazing! Thanks for the hard work and especially thank you for listen to your community.

[NeuroCM]

From Hello: "Someone is inviting you to share contact information with Hello Connect" What??

 

I'm new to Hello.  It seems like a wonderful app; however, early on it began to provide the above message and ask me if I would allow the connection.  I'm supposed to agree when the requestor is "someone"?!  

 

Does anyone know what will happen with this transaction?  How do I find out who "someone" is before I agree?  Then what will be the consequence of agreeing?

 

Because Hello began to recurrently ask me this question, even though I had turned off the connect feature, I've deleted the app.  Seems a shame.  Can "someone" help me out here with some insight about this feature?

[Martin Packer]

@NeuroCM It wasn't ME. :-) Seriously, that could be a very useful feature if it inserted the name. I'd use it a lot - but wouldn't expect many of the people I rub shoulders with to have it. Still, a great conversation starter. :-)

[NeuroCM]

Thanks Martin.  Yes, it seems that if we are going to share contact information we will want to know with whom we are sharing it.  I'm hopeful Hello will manage this because the app seems like it will be a very good tool; however, I can't use it if sharing is mysterious in any way (with whom information is shared, what is shared, and the consequences of sharing [such as getting access to a contact list or other priviledge] ).  I tried (briefly) to find answers about the previously-noted message in the Evernote knowledgebase; but, I didn't find answers.  And, unless I'm a premium member I can't chat with technical support (but this is a catch 22 because I won't become a premium member if the app seems flawed).