Patent ID: 8499046

Claim:
A method for managing contact information, the method comprising: receiving in a server an image of a business card from a device associated with a user that has received the business card from a giver of the business card, wherein the device being a mobile device with a camera is not configured to perform locally optical character recognition (OCR), the mobile device is remotely located with respect to the server and used by the user to take a snapshot of the business card, the image of the business card is automatically transported by way of data transmission from the mobile device to the server over a network when the mobile device detects a wireless link over the network; processing the image of the business card for optical character recognition using an OCR engine being executed in the server and extracting data from the image of the business card; verifying at least contact information from extracted data generated from the OCR engine applied to the image of the business card to ensure that the contact information is accurate to communicate by the server with the giver of the business card before entering the extracted data from the image of the business card as a record into an account of the user established with the server, wherein the contact information includes an email address, the user synchronizes a chosen device with the account on the server to update a local address book in the chosen device, the local address book has the record, a change to the record in the local address book in the chosen device is to be reflected in the record of the account on the server; and notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card that the business card has been entered electronically into the account of the user, wherein the giver is invited to establish an account to be linked electronically to the account of the user when the giver has not had the account with the server, or an account of the giver is set to be linked electronically to the account of the user when the account of the giver is already established with the server so that the giver is able to manage the record to keep the user updated of any change to the record, wherein said notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card comprises sending an email to the giver using the email address extracted from the image of the business card.