Delicious Library Thoughts
Posted November 8th, 2004 @ 03:41pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Delicious Library: I've finally managed to register it and I've played with it for, oh, five whole minutes now. If you want a big review that includes far too much opinion on how much Mac users care about packaging (we do, but I know that already), check out John Siracusa's review.
And now, my initial thoughts:
- Pretty, but how do I change what kind of shelf I see?
- Where the hell are the contextual menus?
- No secondary sorting capabilities, like "artist, then release date"? Grrrr.
- Why show sorting options in "Recent Imports" and let me select other methods if I can't actually change it?
- No smart bookshelves? Oh no!
- Scanning with the iSight has proven… to be hit or miss.
- Amazon doesn't have as large a library as you might think they do.
- One guy keeps showing up in my "Borrowers" list in place of my sister. I get my mom, my dad, and this strange guy. Problem reading my Address Book database?
- Why not let me search Google images for replacement cover art or something? Some of Amazon's art is screwy.
- I want to set the size (with the slider) per bookshelf, not app-wide.
- It sure does look nice.
- Oh, there's the contextual menu: it's the action menu. Clue to Delicious: just make this the contextual menu too!
- I want a way to loan an item to someone who's not in the "Borrowers" list - in other words, to select an item, hit some kind of "Loan" button (or contextual menu item), and then be able to select an existing Borrower or to add one on the spot.
I'm sure I'll think of more later, which I may just post to the comments. I've brought in all of my PS2/GameCube games and of the 31, nine lack covers! That's a really high percentage.
Initial impressions, a good portion of which is due to Amazon's surprising suckiness: 5.5/10. Looks aren't everything.
Other thoughts, borrowed from other people.
From Michael:
- Not scriptable = very very bad.
- He's right: the things don't auto-complete. If I start entering "Vid" it should fill in "Video Game" for me.
- Batch assignments would be good. So would freakin' contextual menus.
- Labels: good idea.
And from Sven:
- I agree: the app should either let you put in your own Amazon referral stuff or cost about half as much.
Donate Life
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 7:11pm #
how were you able to finally register, I still can't
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 7:41pm #
Our software, fennel DVDManager (http://fennel.free.fr/dvdmanager/), isn't as cute as Delicious Library, and it only manages DVDs (sigh); *BUT* it's freeware, its .dmg weights 551 Kb (instead of 9+ Mo…), it's available in 9 languages, it requests data from 8 international sources, and does the job in a simple, yet efficient way. You may be willing to give it a try… Thanks in advance. And your feedback is always appreciated 😉 !
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 7:58pm #
I am pretty sure comments weren't intended for advertising...
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 8:07pm #
I was able to register at about 4 pm pst with no issues. It went right through first time.
My initial impression after about 20 min. is that it works well. I added 166 CDs with 24 no being found on lookup. I also had another 28 CDs that I tried that either would no scan correctly (Petty's greatest hits came up as something else) or did not have barcodes.Where the hell are the contextual menus? - This has really annoyed me so far. They really need to turn the action menu into a CM. The other 3 panes need them too. I keep looking for a CM when trying to delete borrowers.No secondary sorting capabilities, like "artist, then release date"? Grrrr. - Another really annoying missing feature.No smart bookshelves? Oh no! - Really needed. At a minimum I want to have sub-categories on the main collection. Both would be ideal. I want to be able to just view PS2 or GC games or Books and Movies by genre.Scanning with the iSight has proven… to be hit or miss. - Takes a little bit of practice. Once you get how to do it, it goes really fast. Distance from the iSight and lighting make a huge difference. The first few CDs I tried would not scan. Once I put a light on the barcode and figured out the distance to hold it away I was able to zip through 200 CDs.Why not let me search Google images for replacement cover art or something? Some of Amazon's art is screwy. - Alternate graphic lookup would be really nice. About 25% of the CDs I scanned came up with Library's generic icon. Checking iTunes for album art if Amazon fails would be nice since I've already spent time adding a lot of art to it.International Amazon stores need to be added quick. I have a ton of imports that don't show up with the US store.Some way to aggregate data, like sum of the retail price of all books. Would be helpful for insurance purposes.HTML export for selection/Collection/all would be nice.Custom fields in details would be another good addition. I want to add things like date purchased.Once they get the Amazon/Importing data things worked out, Library will be a lot nicer. For a 1.0 it's looking good. Hopefully they get the issues worked out quickly.
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 9:43pm #
No, Dustin, they weren't but the app's free so I'll let the comment slide.
Posted 08 Nov 2004 at 9:48pm #
Brad, good point: get the artwork from iTunes!!!
Posted 09 Nov 2004 at 1:09pm #
A biggie here: No way to export to a Web page. Grrrrr…
Posted 10 Nov 2004 at 8:01am #
I was able to register on Monday as well. It was around 4 PM, and I had no problems w/ the registration process. I think the thing to keep in mind is that this is a 1.0 release. This thing can only get better, and I see a lot of potential. Sure it doesn't always get cover art from Amazon, and sure there are other places from which to glean this data. I plan on making some suggestions to the developer, and hopefully they will get added. The iSight integration is awesome. I smell an Apple Design Award winner for WWDC 2005.
Posted 10 Nov 2004 at 12:20pm #
A brief review of Delicious Library...
So today I bought Delicious Library, mostly because I've been wanting to get stuff organised and I'm trying to shed some heavy media matter and I thought being able to see it all in one place might make it easier...
Posted 10 Nov 2004 at 9:12pm #
Now it's just getting to be silly. We sincerely apologize, but we accidentally left some expiration code from our beta program in the final version of the application you bought, so it stopped working today. We feel horrible about letting...