ABBYY Software House has delivered a free app that does what used to cost a fair dollar for traditional software applications to do: scan your business cards and enter your data into your contacts application.

We tried Business Card Reader Lite for Android on a Toshiba Thrive, which has a 5 MP rear camera. Not only does this app scan the card and convert the data into highly accurate text, it integrates it into your contact application of choice. You then have the option of “looking the contact up” on Facebook.

If you want to pay $9.99 for the full version, you receive additional features including the ability to look a contact up on LinkedIn or Twitter, an address search on Google Maps and the ability to recognize multiple languages.

Business Card Reader Lite, though, illustrates the sheer power of mobile computing devices from both hardware, networking and software perspectives. Integration of a camera, network connectivity and a snappy, highly accurate and effective app provide all-in-one power over contact management that just didn’t exist three years ago. It’s also another example of how software continues to turn mobile devices into data capture and creation tools.

Business Card Reader Lite, a free download from the Android Market, is an app that’s well worth your time to consider.