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You are here: MacNN Forums > Our Archives > General Archives > Delicious Monster > Delicious Library Plug-ins [WISHFUL-THINKING]

 
Delicious Library Plug-ins [WISHFUL-THINKING]
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Nebagakid
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May 19, 2006, 05:35 PM
 
So, if Delicious Library were capable of plug-ins, for what would you want (that a database already exists already for)?

Comic Books? Wine? Ben+Jerry's Ice Creams?
     
mpmchugh
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May 20, 2006, 04:17 PM
 
Comic Books would be great, but I'd really like to see better suport in DL for comic trade paperbacks — you know, the bundled issues of comic sold in bookstores everywhere.

For some reason they don't seem to ever scan in, so I just gave up.

Full comics support would be awesome as well.

-mpm
     
danmc
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May 22, 2006, 02:11 PM
 
I may not be completely understanding the question but I would want another category of Collections (like Comic Books) called something like "Songs", or maybe "Singles", in addition to the Music Collection that acts as an inventory for complete albums (CDs).

Maybe have this particular collection be built automatically from the "Purchased" Source in iTunes.

I'm not really sure what the best way to do this would be but what I am after is a good way to include the iTunes tracks along with CDs and stuff. Maybe instead of automatically entering the CD's details from Amazon based on the UPC number that gets entered, a person could have the CD's (or a particular song's details) automatically entered into Delicious Library based on the information drawn from iTunes.

I might be headed down the wrong path here because I haven't given it a great deal of thought - maybe just altering the contents of the Details panel based on particular media that is chosen (like a CD, an iTunes purchased song, or an actual record). This would then neccesitate a different graphical display of that particular piece of media.
     
garmonbosia
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May 22, 2006, 06:49 PM
 
This one is easy for me. I'd like to be able to use D.M. for cataloguing my wine collection. Has this beed requested before?
     
krove
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May 22, 2006, 07:02 PM
 
Mmm...I like wine. That would be totally awesome if it had wine collection capabilities. Automation (à la Amazon), on the other hand, might be a little difficult.

How did it come to this? Goodbye PowerPC. | sensory output
     
wjsdelicious
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May 22, 2006, 08:36 PM
 
One of our most common requests is for supporting new types of things in collections. There are usually problems with any of them, although often the problem has just been that we're not sure how to draw the new media and still have them look good. (You'll notice that our DVDs and CDs and books all actually have rendered overlays on top of the covers, which makes them look so lickable.)

There's also the question of focus in the app: should we support every type of object we can, or should we be focussed on supporting actual media (books, dvds, etc) and not try to stretch the metaphor to, say, tools and electronics? Mike Matas, for instance, felt very strongly we should NOT add new category types without a lot of soul-searching.

In 2.0, we're adding at least support for a new "software" shelf, since it's drawn a lot like video games, and is something that, to me, fits in with our current media types.

Here are some commonly-requested items, by how much people seem to want them, and the reason we haven't done them yet:

#1) iTunes integration. We ran out of time in 1.0. Is it in 2.0? We'll see.

#2) Comic Books: we can't look these up on Amazon, although trade paperbacks are on Amazon, and work fine right now. We'd need to find some comprehensive, easily-searchable and willing database before we support comics, but it's something I'd love to have, personally. (Although, honestly, I only 'collect' trades, so I'm ok with our current support.)

#3) Wine: Lots of wine labels don't even have UPCs, especially the stuff I buy, so I don't feel this would be as good a user experience as scanning in, say, books. I also don't know of a comprehensive wine database, and I don't like selling a product where it's going to work, like, 30% of the time. Also, there's a lot of specific stuff you'd want to do with wine that doesn't really fit in with the media interface.

#4) Magazines: Same problem: the UPCs aren't found on Amazon.

#5) Tools: We're messing around with the idea of including some media types that aren't 'supported' but if you scan in an item it'll find it and add a shelf for it -- it just might not be quite as nice of an experience as with music or books or games. I don't know if we're going to include this or not. My advice is, when you download 2.0, try scanning in a couple items you've always wanted in the program, and see if they appear.

-W
     
milfli
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May 22, 2006, 09:13 PM
 
Comics would be great
also
Precious Moments
Boyd's Bears
Transformers (points to TFU.info (hint hint))
Lego (brickset.com)
Marvel Legends
Barbies (GF loves Barbies)

I am not a matchbox car fan but I am sure there are those out there
Stamps
Magazines works (Maxim, Playboy, MacAddict)
Apple Computers & Accessories (ipods, cameras, computers, phones, hardware) Cool to keep track of what you have for insurance purposes or what have you

Do the above and you have a new customer (might even get the BT scanner cause that is dang cool)
It just works so I don't have to
;-)
     
SirSam
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May 23, 2006, 06:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by wjsdelicious
#2) Comic Books: we can't look these up on Amazon, although trade paperbacks are on Amazon, and work fine right now. We'd need to find some comprehensive, easily-searchable and willing database before we support comics, but it's something I'd love to have, personally. (Although, honestly, I only 'collect' trades, so I'm ok with our current support.)
I registered just to leave this note ...

There's a large comics database called The Grand Comic Book Database or GCD for short at http://www.comics.org. It currently has about 230.000 comic book issues entered, of which 90.000 are fully indexed and 120.000 have scanned covers. Unfortunately, the indexed data does not include ISBN or anything like that, but it's probably hte biggest *open* comics database on the net.

There's also a small app called "Comics 2" that uses the GCD to retrieve info on comic books. It works pretty well, but isn't as cool as DL and has a few bugs/limited functionality. Please buy their code and insert into DL2! Browsing graphically though your comics in DL would be awesome! (Though you could consider using something similar to the "stacks" used in Apple's Aperture to group comic books of the same series.)

Comics 2 places some limits on retreiving data from GCD to prevent their servers to be overloaded. I don't know if this is true, though. Having a function where you can submit your own comics data to GCD would be clever, to give something back to the database.
     
steampowered
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Oct 11, 2006, 12:21 AM
 
Originally Posted by wjsdelicious
One of our most common requests is for supporting new types of things in collections. There are usually problems with any of them, although often the problem has just been that we're not sure how to draw the new media and still have them look good. (You'll notice that our DVDs and CDs and books all actually have rendered overlays on top of the covers, which makes them look so lickable.)
I'm interested in developing a plugin for a particular, little-used medium. It would have it's own rendering (would be similar to LPs) and medium type. The search interface would be to a non-Amazon, private service possibly requiring authentication. Preference retention which could be separate from DLs. And could be privately distributed because of the small audience. The plugin itself could break on any point release or patch of DL without warning. If DM is interested in such a candidate to test interfaces, etc., I'd like to get something going. (The medium would be laserdiscs.)
     
Delicious Monster
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Oct 13, 2006, 03:26 AM
 
Well, I mean, it wouldn't be a plugin per se, as there's no actual plug-in architecture. It would be more like a third party application, of which there have been a few, but none actually adding a category or anything like that, which would be cool.

We actually talked about this yesterday. It went something like:
Mike: I wonder why nobody like, makes a third party application that expands Sandra Day O'Connor's functionality? (All our products are code-named after Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.)
Wil: That's a terrible idea. I'm going to go get more tacos. I expect you to be punching yourself in the face when I get back.
Lucas: How's Delicious Sandwich coming along?
Mike: Not ow very ow well ow ow.

But, uh, anyway we're not likely to break the schema during a point release, unless we're feeling feisty. Though, as mentioned in a previous discussion, be prepared to transition to an SQLite database.
     
ReggieX
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Oct 14, 2006, 05:51 PM
 
How about just a better way of switching locations to look stuff up? If Amazon.ca has no info, make it easier to look up at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk for the same CD.
The Lord said 'Peter, I can see your house from here.'
     
Galley99
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Oct 15, 2006, 09:57 PM
 
The ability to track software (and their associated serial numbers) would be most welcome.
     
Delicious Monster
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Oct 16, 2006, 02:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by ReggieX
How about just a better way of switching locations to look stuff up? If Amazon.ca has no info, make it easier to look up at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk for the same CD.
That already happens. All Amazons are searched all the time, and if your preferred Amazon doesn't have information, you'll get it from another Amazon that does.

That said, I could see why you would want to be able to switch Amazons more easily, and we are working on something to improve access across available information servers.

Also, software.
     
ajmas
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Nov 6, 2006, 10:12 PM
 
Actually my plugin wish would allow me to retrieve information from other sites, rather than just Amazon. For example support for FreeDB, Fnac (French media store), Virgin, etc.
     
Azumanga
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Feb 17, 2007, 05:33 PM
 
I have a simple XML plugin which changes (for example)

Battle Royale Volume 12 V. 12 (Battle Royale) (what I actually get out of Amazon)
into Battle Royale, popping 12 into volume number and Battle Royale into series.

However, I don't think I'd dare distribute it, as it easily breaks things.
     
SamBuca
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Mar 2, 2007, 02:12 PM
 
Personally, I feel that someone should step up and put some pizazz into searching and cataloging scientific journals. There needs to be a better way to organize the journals, from automated downloading from your favorite scientific reviews, and to searching using a standard search dialog or an iTunes like interface using keywords. Also, perhaps a built in PDF viewer optimized to show short documents in a speedy manner with note taking capabilities and automatic meta-data keywords on your notes so you can remember what you were thinking last time you were looking at the article. I mean, cataloging wine collections is great, but there are more academic needs for streamlined research and data management, not to mention there are large public searchable databases with ID codes for nearly every article. Also, there are databases that can automatically insert references into your document as a works cited/bibliography. All that with a delicious touch. Go ahead Wil, you have your muse.
     
brokenjago
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Mar 2, 2007, 05:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by SamBuca
Personally, I feel that someone should step up and put some pizazz into searching and cataloging scientific journals.
Why don't you do it? As has been mentioned several million times by Mike, DL has a core of easily-hackable XML files.
Linkinus is king.
     
ByronOrpheus
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Sep 9, 2007, 05:45 PM
 
Comic books are the one feature (IMHO) that would move Delicious Library from Great to Godlike. I originally looked into Delicious Library because I was looking for a good solution for cataloging a collection of several thousand comics. While Delicious Library won't do that, the other features made it worth purchasing. Still, I can't find a good solution for cataloging comic books. There are online databases, but if they don't have a listing for a specific book, you're out of luck. There are applications, but they are either expensive ($200+) or Windows-only, or both. What I'm stuck with now is Mobile DB for my Treo 600. I've got a list of all my comics, but it's just a list. And being as I'm about to move from the Treo to the iPhone, this is a big problem. What I really want is an application that will let me import my existing collection without typing in every title/issue/company/etc by hand, and access/update my collection from my phone/PDA.

There are thousands of comic fans out there and most are fairly obsessive about keeping their collections ordered. Furthermore, comic fans are (is?) one of the more tech-savvy subcultures. Adding support for comic books to Delicious Library is a guaranteed winner. Who knows? You might be a featured application at Apple's booth at Comic Con 2008?

Finally, until Delicious Library DOES support comics, does anyone else have a solution?
     
Delicious Monster
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Sep 11, 2007, 04:15 PM
 
Dr. Orpheus,

If you have your comics in a database of some sort, you can just import that into Delicious Library via tab-delimited text file. That will at least save you having to type all that stuff in again.

Comics are a popular enough feature request that I have to imagine someone is going to see the scriptability in Delicious Library 2 as a good opportunity to make a helper application that will use something like the Grand Comics Database to make enable comics into Delicious Library. *inhale*
     
Kickaha
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Oct 5, 2007, 11:15 PM
 
YAPFLIC*

Comics are a bit odd, in that, if I already have issues #37-214 of SuperDuperMan, and I hold up a barcode that tells DL that it's *an* issue of SuperDuperMan, I'm probably kinda almost definitely holding up the *NEXT* issue. An auto-fill based on the last known issue, with the issue number incremented, would go a long ways towards filling in most of the data.

I have yet to see a comics DB that has a simple "Add Next Issue" button. It would save me... well, an insane amount of time. (~12,000 issues and counting...)

I'll keep my fingers crossed on a plugin or scripting solution, I guess...

*Yet Another Plea For Letting In Comics
     
CaptainHaddock
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Location: Nagoya, Japan • 日本 名古屋市
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Oct 7, 2007, 09:56 AM
 
I'm sure it's far too late for suggestions to make it into Delicious Library 2; however, I can say I'll buy it when it supports all or most of my published materials collection, which includes:
- Japanese manga (indexed at Amazon Japan and other Japanese booksellers, I believe)
- Magazines, foreign and domestic
- Foreign books indexed at regional Amazon sites but not at Amazon.com
     
Delicious Monster
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Oct 7, 2007, 02:09 PM
 
Delicious Library will catalog any media that has a unique barcode and is cataloged on any Amazon site in the world with a web service, so items from Amazon Germany, France, Canada, UK, and, yes, Japan, will work.

Magazines don't have unique barcodes, so they can't be cataloged automatically, but you can add them by hand.

I don't know about manga (though I suppose I could try scanning a few around the house) but you could test it on the demo.
     
Sean Nichol
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Oct 17, 2007, 12:43 PM
 
ComicBookDB is the best.
     
ajmas
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Oct 23, 2007, 02:51 PM
 
What I would want:
- Ability to use other data sources (popular request, from what I can tell)
- actually, on this note, does anyone know of other stores that support returning XML search results?
- Optical character reader, for reading labels and media without UPCs (probably a big project)
- Adding other meta-data, such as book dimensions
( Last edited by ajmas; Oct 23, 2007 at 03:10 PM. )
     
Ptitboul
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Nov 21, 2007, 08:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by ajmas View Post
- Adding other meta-data, such as book dimensions
Book dimensions is clearly a feature that I would like to be taken into account.
I for example have many books whose dimensions does not fit in any of the predetermined formats of DL 1.6.6 (e.g. square books).
I was not able to get any hint on whether DL 2 will handle this or not.
     
Delicious Monster
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Nov 21, 2007, 12:53 PM
 
Yes, Delicious Library 2 supports dimensions on items, so your books look like themselves. See the third and fourth screenshots at Theocacao.
     
agentsarah6
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Jan 1, 2008, 02:16 AM
 
Would it be possible for someone to add support for Magazines, possibly using an ISSN lookup? I'd love to keep track of all my nice design mags. They're like books to me.
     
Morbus Iff
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Jan 2, 2008, 09:41 AM
 
agentsarah6: I want much the same thing but, like comics, the ISSN is keyed to the entire series, not per issue. You wouldn't be able to scan them in and get relevant results. I've also had no luck finding a magazine database, similar to comics.org for comic books, that had some other identifier we could use for organizing.
     
CaptainHaddock
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Jan 3, 2008, 10:26 AM
 
It would probably help if DL got smart enough to read issue numbers and dates off magazine covers (in addition to ISSNs).
     
Morbus Iff
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Jan 3, 2008, 10:33 AM
 
I don't see that voodoo magick happening anytime soon, if at all (DL2 or any other app).
     
Delicious Monster
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Jan 3, 2008, 11:21 AM
 
Definitely not. If anything, I'd see an RSS-style subscription where you would check off magazines you received and receive the latest issue as it becomes available on whatever data source. It would be a completely different way of doing things.
     
Caution
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Jan 3, 2008, 11:45 AM
 
I agree that wine would be extremely difficult in DL since most do not have UPC symbols. However, a very nice solution for those in need of something is Cellar Tracker

Their DB is pretty comprehensive and growing all the time. I've found some very obscure boutique wines listed (stuff with runs of a thousand or even fewer cases). Reasonably priced (I have no affiliation with the site other than as a user).
     
ReggieX
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Jan 5, 2008, 12:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Delicious Monster View Post
That already happens. All Amazons are searched all the time, and if your preferred Amazon doesn't have information, you'll get it from another Amazon that does.

That said, I could see why you would want to be able to switch Amazons more easily, and we are working on something to improve access across available information servers.
It's mainly to be able to switch data sources, some are far better than others.
The Lord said 'Peter, I can see your house from here.'
     
 
   
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