Delicious Library is out

& I must say, it looks every bit as delicious as we’d expected. Barcode scanning is just peachy with my Sony DV camera, its annoying habit of going into standby notwithstanding – it’s fasy and accurate and so much fun, you’ll want to cough up the registration fee just to keep going after your allotted 25 additions. My first impressions of actually using the thing are also good. It’s very much a v1.0 release, and I’ve already filed a few bug/feature/behaviour reports, but… oh, just download it and see.

Delicious Monster’s site is here; Ars Technica, of all places, have an hilariously partisan review of the program here. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Delicious Library is a cataloguing application for your books, DVDs, CDs, and video games. Which sounds mundane; the application is anything but. For those who have been paying attention, yes, I started this post with an ampersand solely because I wanted to see what it looked like as a drop cap. So sue me.

One thing – it’s hard to emphasise just how much fun barcode scanning is practice. If you haven’t got an iSight or a suitable DV camera (or, indeed, a Mac), you’ll just have to believe me.

4 thoughts on “Delicious Library is out”

  1. It may be cool, but what’s the point? You already have the books, DVDs, CDs, and video games, why bother keeping such detailed records?

  2. I found it a chore with an iSight to get it to read the barcodes – some it refused completely.
    My killer/only app would be for my CD collection, just so I had a list for insurance purposes. Unfortunately, it only recognised about 40% of what I tried (and I hadn’t even busted out with any really obscure stuff). It does better with books, it seems.

  3. Harro:

    1. I sort-of collect C.19 & 20 popular science and activity books – ‘Boy’s Own Guide to Lepidoptery and Home Radiology’ sort of stuff. It’s quite hard to remember what I already have, and I’ve been meaning to make a list for a while. Delicious Library is probably the right app to do that.
    2. With more modern stuff, ‘more like this from others’ becomes quite a powerful tool.
    3. I do find myself loaning books and DVDs to people and forgetting who has what. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s nice to know.
    4. But you might be right. I haven’t actually bought it yet.

    Chris:
    Hmm, interesting. I didn’t try and CDs. I did note that the few books my DV camera failed to snag all had very glossy covers. It could be that that extra layer of high contrast sheen scuppers something; lighting will likely be crucial here. But for me, iTunes already has a list of most of the music I own; I’m not sure I’d bother inputting everything into Library also. I note that their FAQ suggests they’re looking to integrate iTunes’ library somehow.

  4. Of course you’re right. I’d totally forgotten about that. I do keep such a list myself.
    Mine’s just a list of titles, though, and only for the hard-to-remember cases, like ‘which 59 of the 62 Tom Clancy books I already have’. I keep it in my Palm, along with the rest of my shopping lists.
    Can Delicious Library sync to portable devices?

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