A new Magical way to hand out your business card

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Damian Surr
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A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 10th, 2012, 7:48 am

Hi everyone,

Have you seen this ... www.CardNowApp.com

If you have an iPhone and a business card, you may want to take a look.

The response since we released it just a month ago has been overwhelming. 5 star reviews in the app store and many professional magicians using it daily in their performances.

I hope you like it!
Damian

Jonathan Townsend
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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Jonathan Townsend » December 10th, 2012, 7:57 am

That's more classy than taking out a wallet of cards. Does it have a repeat so you can give out a fixed number?
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time

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mrgoat
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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 10th, 2012, 8:31 am

It's a total rip off of an app called BizCard that I've been using for years.

http://www.mojosoftwareonline.com/bizcard.htm

:(

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Jonathan Townsend » December 10th, 2012, 9:19 am

Thanks for the heads up D.
Is there a windows version of that item?
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 10th, 2012, 9:35 am

Mrgoat, if by 'total rip off' you mean ...
"It's another way to hand out your business card, as BizCardMagic has allowed me do do for years"
.. then I suggest you take a chill pill before throwing accusations around.

We were made aware of BizCardMagic about 3 months into the development of Card Now. We got straight in touch with Carl Andrews (developer of BizCardMagic) back in March and got his blessing to go ahead with it. He is also credited within the app.

If you believe that everyone who sells a new revelation of ambitious card is 'ripping off' the creator of the ambitious card, then there's not a lot I can say. If no one developed ideas further than the place they started, it would be a sad state of affairs.

Card Now is significantly different to BizCardMagic. I have absolutely no problem with you preferring the older app. Please don't accuse us of ripping anybody off.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 10th, 2012, 9:35 am

Jonathan Townsend,
Sorry, it's iPhone only at the moment.

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mrgoat
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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 10th, 2012, 11:39 am

Damian Surr wrote:Mrgoat, if by 'total rip off' you mean ...
"It's another way to hand out your business card, as BizCardMagic has allowed me do do for years"
.. then I suggest you take a chill pill before throwing accusations around.


No, I mean it is a total rip off. The effect, the method, the whole thing.


Damian Surr wrote:If you believe that everyone who sells a new revelation of ambitious card is 'ripping off' the creator of the ambitious card, then there's not a lot I can say.


Oh goody! Straw men already!

No, I don't believe that if someone comes up with a new ending for an ambitious card it is a rip off. But I do believe if you take an existing app and duplicate its method and effect then that is a rip off. Credited or not.

Damian Surr wrote:If no one developed ideas further than the place they started, it would be a sad state of affairs.


Another straw man. Great. Where do I suggest one shouldn't develop an idea?

Damian Surr wrote:Card Now is significantly different to BizCardMagic. I have absolutely no problem with you preferring the older app. Please don't accuse us of ripping anybody off.


How is it different? It looks identical to me.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 10th, 2012, 12:09 pm

How is it different? It looks identical to me.


And you're basing this on what? Watching a 50 second video? I didn't realise you'd done so much research before jumping to opinions.

Even in the short video, there are plenty of differences to be seen, but here are the main ones ...

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. Neither look like an app is running, unlike BizCardMagic.

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 (next version is well into development).

Pretty much all magic effects are built on what went before them. Crediting is important, which is why Carl's name and app are in the acknowledgements.

I completely agree that the fundamental purpose of the two apps are the same. They both 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

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 10th, 2012, 12:21 pm

Damian Surr wrote:
How is it different? It looks identical to me.


Damian Surr wrote:1) It's tricky to get the image of your business card into your phone with BizCardMagic.


It's not tricky at all. And added to which, who wouldn't have a jpg/png whatever of their own business card on their computer? Obviously the image file will be much better than taking a photo and having to use your phone for all the cropping and scaling rather than a computer.

Damian Surr wrote:2) In BizCardMagic, there's only one way to produce the image of the card on your phone. In Card Now, there are currently two production methods.


So, you can use a printing app, or you can suddenly make a card appear over your home screen.

Not really much of a difference, is it?



Damian Surr wrote: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.


Really? Your third "difference" is that the one you ripped off is 'dated'? Really? OK...

Damian Surr wrote: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.


You move the card around with your hand, making it seem much more like a real card, rather than shaking an image of a card around. Not an improvement.

Damian Surr wrote:5) We can add more cool stuff because we coded it


Great. I asked for a list of differences...

Damian Surr wrote:Pretty much all magic effects are built on what went before them.


What was BizCard built on. Oh yes, it was original.

Damian Surr wrote:I completely agree that the fundamental purpose of the two apps are the same. They both want to put a business card in someone's hand in a memorable way.



So, it's not dated looking (in your opinion), you can shake the card around pointlessly and YOU CODED IT?

Brilliant.

Think I'll pass.

Thanks for trying to justify your unoriginality though. It was funny reading!

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby billmccloskey » December 10th, 2012, 3:59 pm

Jesus, TWO Damians? I wouldn't pay the goat any mind mr Surr, he is the self appointed police of the magic world. Without even seeing his posts (I have him blocked) I'm sure he has accused you of being some sort of scam artist.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 10th, 2012, 5:04 pm

billmccloskey wrote:Jesus, TWO Damians? I wouldn't pay the goat any mind mr Surr, he is the self appointed police of the magic world. Without even seeing his posts (I have him blocked) I'm sure he has accused you of being some sort of scam artist.


Bill, why not put in your sig that you have me on ignore rather than posting once a week about it?

Also, try making some contributions to the forum yourself. I'm sure your insight into magic is well worth reading. Much more so than you continually posting about the little hard on you have for me.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 11th, 2012, 8:36 am

Thanks for that Bill,

It certainly wasn't anything like the incredible reaction that the app has received everywhere else :-)

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 11th, 2012, 8:41 am

Probably the idiots on the other forums are unaware it's not an original idea. I like to make sure people know the reality of the situation.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Pete McCabe » December 11th, 2012, 10:14 am

By physical force, if necessary.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » December 11th, 2012, 10:27 am

Pete McCabe wrote:By physical force, if necessary.


Look, McCabe, the incident at the Castle where I roundhoused you was AN ACCIDENT. I explained this twice, and then again in court.

Now, leave me alone.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Steve Mills » December 11th, 2012, 12:35 pm

Damian,

I bought the app yesterday. Some initial thoughts:

1. It IS very similar to Bizcard and I'm not sure worth the cost of a new app. Maybe the coming features will prove me wrong.

2. Having to position the icon in a certain spot to take a home screen picture is a little annoying.

3. Personally, I found the creation of the card image more tedious than loading a scan of a specified size, but, admittedly, I'm not of the "App Generation". i.e. I'm old!

Good luck with it!

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » December 11th, 2012, 5:25 pm

Thanks for the feedback Steve.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » February 6th, 2013, 8:51 am

We are putting the finishing touches to the new version and the Pro upgrade.

It's looking great!

Steve Mills, your points 2 and 3 have been resolved (number 3 requires an upgrade to the 'pro' version). You'll have to tell me if we've dealt with point 1 when you see it :-)

Cheers all,
Damian

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Marty Jacobs
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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Marty Jacobs » February 22nd, 2013, 8:35 am

For those interested, here are two videos of the apps at work:

BizCard Demo
Card Now Demo

Now, I would not describe Card Now as a "total rip off". After all, permission was granted by Carl Andrews before the app was released. However, it isn't original.

If I had a smart phone I'd use Card Now, simply because the app looks more professional in operation. BizCard looks great too, but I'm not loving the 1990s clip art look of the app's main screen.

Marty

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Richard Tremblay » February 22nd, 2013, 11:33 am

Damian,

Any plan in doing a Android version?

Richard

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Steve Mills » February 23rd, 2013, 3:48 pm

Damian Surr wrote:We are putting the finishing touches to the new version and the Pro upgrade.

It's looking great!

Steve Mills, your points 2 and 3 have been resolved (number 3 requires an upgrade to the 'pro' version). You'll have to tell me if we've dealt with point 1 when you see it :-)

Cheers all,
Damian


Damian,

I might as well state it now - and it's not just you. When I buy a 1.0 of anything and then have to pay for a fixed version - platinum, titanium, pro etc. I lose all interest and feel totally screwed.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby mrgoat » February 23rd, 2013, 5:58 pm

'pro' version is an hilarious new name for a cash grab.

may as well call it 'bug fixed version' or 'gimme some more money' version.

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby GA Eric » April 9th, 2013, 2:34 pm

Richard Tremblay wrote:Damian,

Any plan in doing a Android version?

Richard


I second that...anything in development for us non-Apple people?

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Re: A new Magical way to hand out your business card

Postby Damian Surr » June 6th, 2013, 9:26 am

Card Now for Android?

Yesterday, I posted this link ...
http://www.cardnowandroid.com
... on various networks to gauge interest in Card Now for Android. The response has been much less than I expected.

Unfortunately, that means that it's not worth my investment to convert Card Now for Android. I will be sticking to iOS apps for the time being.

Sorry if this is bad news to some of you.
Cheers,
Damian


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