A Northport company has taken a new online tack in executive recruiting.

PeopleComm Inc. has launched a product that offers a computerized spin on a staple of trade shows, networking events and the run-of-the-mill meeting - the exchange of business cards.

The product, CardBrowser.com, lets employers, headhunters and vendors sift through thousands of business cards collected from C-level, sales, marketing and product management executives.

"I'd like to say I'm so smart I thought of this all by myself," said Steven Morgan, chief executive officer of privately held PeopleComm, which also operates another online service called SalesRecuits.com. In fact, he said, CardBrowser began "almost by accident" in response to requests by clients of SalesRecruits.com for "passive" job candidates who were not actively seeking a job change. Specifically, the clients asked for business cards of potential job candidates representing their firms at IT trade shows.

About 1-1/2-years ago, Morgan said, his firm began to collect cards, photocopy them and deliver the copies to clients.

Eventually, however, "we found ourselves with thousands and thousands of business cards which were difficult to sort through," he said.

The 4-year-old company then began to scan the cards into a searchable database and made it available to customers of SalesRecruits.com.

In 2002, CardBrowser had about 40 customers, Morgan said, including Islandia-based software giant Computer Associates International. Now, the 10-person company employs about 40 consultants who scurry about IT trade shows around the world collecting cards.

Morgan said CardBrowser has about 15,000 cards in its database and is adding roughly 2,500-3,000 per month. Just one show, CeBit in Hanover, Germany, yielded more than 1,000 cards, Morgan said.

The service has attracted interest not only from employers, Morgan said, but companies seeking to sell into corporate IT departments and headhunters.

"Headhunters fancy themselves as providers of talent that's not otherwise available on the Internet," Morgan said. "What we're doing is replicating what a search firm might do and placing that information online."

Morgan said the newly launched service will be promoted through print advertising in trade journals and in exhibition guides for trade shows.

Price for the CardBrowser service ranges from $2,495 for a one-year subscription for single users to a corporate license whose price is negotiable.

With such rapid job turnover in the IT business, how will PeopleComm ensure that its card file remains fresh?

Morgan said that the company is able to "ping" the e-mail addresses in its database to see if they're still in operation and it sends e-mails to listees inviting them to update their information.

Further, he said more than half of business cards have cell phone numbers.

"Business cards will outlive a person's employment," Morgan said. "In many cases, a business card is like a bottle of wine. It gets better over time."