Two iPhone apps I’m digging
There are two iPhone apps on my second screen (my test screen) that I played with over the weekend – Highlight and CardMunch.
Highlight has been getting a lot of buzz over the past week, touted as SXSW’s “Breakout Star”. I wasn’t able to attend SXSW, but I heard a lot of people were loving this app. Essentially Highlight lets you find out about the people near you. Here’s what they say on their website:
If someone standing near you also has Highlight, their profile will show up on your phone. You can see their name, photos of them, mutual friends, and anything else they have chosen to share. When you meet someone, Highlight helps you see what you have in common with them. And when you forget their name at a party a week later, Highlight can help you remember it.
I tried it out recently and it was very cool. It showed me that I was near a guy who was a friend of a friend, and told me a little about him and the things we had in common (presumably pulling from our Facebook likes). At a conference or when traveling, I could see this being a very useful app. I must confess, however, after I tested it out I quickly changed my setting to “pause” as I didn’t really want a bunch of people knowing I was near them and knowing all about me. That aspect is a little creepy.
The second app, CardMunch, is LinkedIn’s app that allows you to take a picture of a business card and it will give you the person’s contact info and LinkedIn history, complete with a button to connect with them on LinkedIn and the ability to download that card to your phone’s address book. It seems to take a little while for the card to be processed (someone told me they actually have humans doing this), but when it does come back its a very useful tool. I’ve been snapping pictures of business cards and throwing them away when I get them.
This app probably has a limited lifeline as I would imagine soon our phones will allow us to easily beam our contact info to and from other phones via something like NFC. But until then, its going to come in handy for me.
My second screen - the apps I'm testing
Hi Jeff. Thanks for this article about Highlighted, need to try it too.
Also, I have a question: how do you manage to get 5 icons on your bottom bar? Is it possible without jail breaking your iPhone?
Keep up the good work.
I had to jailbreak it to get Google Voice integrated – https://www.jeffhilimire.com/2012/03/verizon-you-complete-me/
One of the few tweaks I made after jailbreaking was to get 5 icons on the bottom. You might also notice I have the date at the top, that’s a jailbreak tweak too.
I love CardMunch! The Linkedin integration is key. I wish it would allow you to customize your message when connecting with a contact via the app.
Highlight is also great; however, I actually like the UX of Glancee a bit more. It was interesting to see these apps in action at SXSW. I opened the apps to look through my feeds many times, but never walked up to someone and introduced myself in person simply because I saw them pop up in my Highlight or Glancee feed. I am going to challenge myself to use the app to make an in person connect soon ;) It will be interesting to see if the person is creeped out or excited.
Thanks Jeff!
I love CardMunch! I love that you just have to take a photo of a biz card and it’s automatically integrated into your LinkedIn. Who loves to keep up with 100’s of biz cards? The only thing I don’t like is that once you take the pic of the biz card, you toss the biz card away or tuck it away which isn’t very environmentally friendly!
I’m super pumped about apps like these. Yes, the notifications need refinement (which is why you set it to pause), and they need an algorithm to rank likes (e.g. Many friends may like coca-Cola but that’s not as relevant to me as if we share techie things. Here’s my take on it (excited as well): https://bewelldogood.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/app-geekout-trend-real-time-people-discovery/
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I’m done with Highlight. For starters, it’s a huge drain on your battery because it’s always running in the background. Plus, I always found that it would buzz me long after I had been near someone. So by that time I was buzzed, the person I was near wasn’t really close to me anymore and it didn’t make sense to connect with them.
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