[JKT]

Originally posted by Epicurus:
New version ready for download, they also added the ability to look up items from global Amazon stores.

Anyone get it to work - it still directs to the US store for me. I've changed the preference, quit and relaunched and no joy.

[wataru]

I get a lot of bugs relating to scanning, searching, and linking Japanese items. I reported a whole mess of them last night; I hope they take notice.

[the_glassman]

Sounds like there's a few bugs that need to be ironed out. Them seem to respond and update quickly however. I'm going to download the trail and use it with my digital camera. Does anyone think this software would work good for a commercial library?

[kschulhu]

I did get it to work with a Japanese Import "Battle Royale" which would not work before this update. However, it still did not work via barcode, but found it on amazon.co.uk where I bought it via the title search.

The previously mentioned bug in which note sections with too much text (e.g. Star Wars Trilogy box set) cause the app to crash has been fixed in the last update as well.

Originally posted by JKT:
Anyone get it to work - it still directs to the US store for me. I've changed the preference, quit and relaunched and no joy.

[budakhan mp]

Not a bad program, but it's still a bit too quirky with some items not being found the first time around when adding them through Amazon.

[realmeatychunks]

I am having a few issues as well.

1) The owner field isn't sticking. I scanned of my roommates and my DVDs, and put each of our names corresponding to which DVDs were ours. However, upon relaunch of the program the field is empty for every item.

2) Is there anyway to rearrange shelves? I tried just dragging them but they won't move. Any tips?

Suggestions:

1) It'd be great if we could have "Smart Shelves", like iTunes playlists... for example if when the owner's field is fixed we could have a shelf that is all of the DVDs owned by Joe. Or we could have a shelf of all the gamecube games, etc.

2) Some sort of wish-list type function?

Just my thoughts,
Greg

[.saNNic.]

Overall, I really like the app....... Obiously there are some bugs that will be ironed out, but great prog.

I could do without the "wooden shelf" UI though.

[:haripu:]

I scanned in about a hundred items yesterday and today none of those are visible in the main categories. only a few items in my custom collections are left. that is strange because they are supposed to show up as i.E. movies anyway, even if they are added to a custom listing. Hm.

Quite buggy little app.

[samneric]

I've made some custom icons here:
http://www.samneric.com/pLibrary/index.html


Hopefully its not too confusing..... does require some minimal hack-fu

[Oneota]

Originally posted by -Q-:
John Siracusa has been using the beta and has a review up at Ars Technica.

That's one of the most entertaining reviews I've ever read. Thanks for posting it!

[itai195]

The Ars review is a great read. Personally, I tried out DL and I like it, but with a couple reservations. I'd like to use this to catalog my old video game collection, which I primarily keep in a few boxes in the attic. I'm not sure how well the application could handle that task since a lot of those items are unlikely to be available on Amazon, so I'd have to do a lot of manual entry. Of course, if I buy it for this purpose then I will also catalog my DVDs, which always seem to disappear on their own. A link into iTunes for album artwork would also be nice.

The other issue is the cost. $40 is too much money for this kind of application, regardless of aesthetics. I may still bite the bullet and get it, but if it was $25 I'd have bought a license yesterday. I probably wouldn't even use a free, ugly library app, so I don't think $25 would be an unreasonable price for the bright and shiny DL.

[theJoKell]

Originally posted by itai195:
The other issue is the cost. $40 is too much money for this kind of application, regardless of aesthetics. I may still bite the bullet and get it, but if it was $25 I'd have bought a license yesterday. I probably wouldn't even use a free, ugly library app, so I don't think $25 would be an unreasonable price for the bright and shiny DL.

I disagree. I think its current price point is very reasonable. Especially when you think that most DVDs are around 20 bucks. So if you have a couple hundred DVDs, a solution to help you keep track of them for the cost of 2 more DVDs is a pretty reasonable one.

I see it as those who have a real use for DL will think $40 is perfectly reasonable. Those that think it looks nice and would like to try it out without any real *need* for it will complain that it costs too much. I went through a few other DVD cataloging apps (even paid for DVDpedia) and this one blows all of them away.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by theJoKell:
I disagree. I think its current price point is very reasonable. Especially when you think that most DVDs are around 20 bucks. So if you have a couple hundred DVDs, a solution to help you keep track of them for the cost of 2 more DVDs is a pretty reasonable one.

I see it as those who have a real use for DL will think $40 is perfectly reasonable. Those that think it looks nice and would like to try it out without any real *need* for it will complain that it costs too much. I went through a few other DVD cataloging apps (even paid for DVDpedia) and this one blows all of them away.

I think the price is an issue... not so much because it's too much to even consider... but rather that it's beyond the "impulse buy". If it was $14.95 - $19.95, I would probably just purchase it without really putting much thought in to it... but that's my limit. Anything over $19.95 makes me stop and really consider weather or not this program is going to be developed.

Will Delicious Library be here in 4 years?
How are they going to address updates?

So far, I'm very impressed with the software... but I'm still on the fence.

[solbo]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I think the price is an issue... not so much because it's too much to even consider... but rather that it's beyond the "impulse buy". If it was $14.95 - $19.95, I would probably just purchase it without really putting much thought in to it... but that's my limit. Anything over $19.95 makes me stop and really consider weather or not this program is going to be developed.

Will Delicious Library be here in 4 years?
How are they going to address updates?

So far, I'm very impressed with the software... but I'm still on the fence.

I have to agree. One of the things that I keep coming back to when I think about getting a license is that I don't have a whole lot of stuff, but I do have enough stuff that looking it all up via Amazon could take a while. So on top of the $40 it would take buying an iSight or a barcode scanner to really make this thing great. Just not the right price range for everyone i guess.

[wataru]

I'll give it more consideration, despite the high price, when they fix the outstanding issues with international Amazon items.

[itai195]

Originally posted by theJoKell:
I see it as those who have a real use for DL will think $40 is perfectly reasonable. Those that think it looks nice and would like to try it out without any real *need* for it will complain that it costs too much. I went through a few other DVD cataloging apps (even paid for DVDpedia) and this one blows all of them away.

I suppose. I don't have a real need for this program, but it's something I'd like to have. If it was $25 it would just be an impulse buy, though if I had an iSight or digital camcorder I also would have bought it by now.

[GORDYmac]

Hmm, I wrote a FileMaker Pro database a few years ago that takes care of this for me. Also, a shareware app came out last week that scans barcodes--and works with my USB camera. If necessary, I'll augment my existing database for this feature, and pass on DM's offering.

[Arty50]

I'm really disappointed with this app right now.

I own over 1,000 cds, over 50 DVDs, and quite a few books. All of my media is downstairs, but my computer is upstairs. So hauling stuff upstairs to use an iSight would be a pain, plus I don't have an iSight anyway. So, I purchased the $175 Flic bluetooth scanner with the app.

I paired the Flic with my Mac and then scanned all of my DVDs to test it. When I tried to connect to the Flic with Delicious Library, it beachballed and crashed. So I tried it several more times all with the same result. A Google search turned up some software called SerialMagic, which acts as a bridge between the scanner and your destination app. I installed and configured SerialMagic, and finally got DL to import the barcodes I scanned. However it only accepted half of them.

There is no documentation on Delicious Monster's website about how to configure the Flic and no instructions were included with my scanner. They don't even tell you how to pair it with your Mac using the Bluetooth Setup Utility, much less how to use SerialMagic.

I'd tell everyone considering the Flic to wait, but I can't since you can only purchase it at the same time as your license. If you want to buy one later from Delicious, too bad.

Sigh. I've written a similar rant to Delicious and hope they can resolve this both through an update to the software and the inclusion of documentation somewhere, anywhere, Bueller?

Other than that, I like the app. I entered my video games by hand last week before I got the scanner, and despite some minor quirks it went off without a hitch. I love the look of the app and the organization too.

Overall, I just think they rushed it a bit. Between the bugs others have reported and my frustrating experience, it doesn't appear this was a smooth product release.

[Diggory Laycock]

There is a new version - 1.0.5

Still useless for anything other than Books in the UK - I get a whole lot of "Lookup Failed"

[edit] - Argh! it seems to completely ignore the international prefs - It tries to take you to Amazon.com - even if the item doesn't even exist on amazon.com.

[Nebagakid]

the program is nice for looking at your things, and as a nice interface for Amazon.com

I don't have more than 24 items, so I am still on the demo .

why doesn't it have one of those version checking bits in it that will tell you when you can download a new version?

[Casper Crane]

Originally posted by Arty50:
However it only accepted half of them.

You may know this already, but you mentioned you have 1000 CDs, and the Flic scanner only can store 500 in its memory when away from the computer.

[Arty50]

Originally posted by Casper Crane:
You may know this already, but you mentioned you have 1000 CDs, and the Flic scanner only can store 500 in its memory when away from the computer.

Oh I know. I only scanned my DVDs, of which I have around 50. I wanted to test it out before I went through my cds. Which was a good idea, since the setup works so poorly. Also, the scanner beeps and blinks when you fill it up. I wasn't even close.

[Casper Crane]

Originally posted by Arty50:
Oh I know. I only scanned my DVDs, of which I have around 50. I wanted to test it out before I went through my cds. Which was a good idea, since the setup works so poorly. Also, the scanner beeps and blinks when you fill it up. I wasn't even close.

alas, that is disappointing. i would say they have not earned your money yet.

[Arty50]

Originally posted by Casper Crane:
alas, that is disappointing. i would say they have not earned your money yet.

I would agree. The update didn't fix my problems either. And still no response from Delicious; I've emailed them and sent in multiple crash reports.

[JayTay]

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
There is a new version - 1.0.5

Still useless for anything other than Books in the UK - I get a whole lot of "Lookup Failed"

I have the same problem but to be fair I couldn't get it to recognise the barcodes of my Region 1 DVDs on Amazon.com either so I think it has issues with most DVDs.

[edit] - Argh! it seems to completely ignore the international prefs - It tries to take you to Amazon.com - even if the item doesn't even exist on amazon.com.

Yes, this is very annoying. I know you can just change the URL in Safari to .co.uk and it'll find it but it's annoying having to do it all the time.

[DeathMan]

Worked great for me. Makes me wish I had more stuff. And friends to lend it to.

[SubGeniux]

Originally posted by DeathMan:
Worked great for me. Makes me wish I had more stuff. And friends to lend it to.

What I'm using it for, is to catalogue movies I've watched, not just ones I own. Pretty damn good too, since I forget so many of them and end up re-hiring them. I've got quite a number of books, so that part of ot comes in handy.

[hyperb0le]

Originally posted by DeathMan:
Worked great for me. Makes me wish I had more stuff. And friends to lend it to.

Same here. I wish that barcode scanner wasn't so expensive, though. I had to carry my 250 DVDs up two flights of stairs to scan them

[CyberDave]

A friend of mine showed this to me at work. We went and borrowed an iSight from the computer department and grabbed a few DVDs off the shelf ((we work in a college bookstore).

Hot damn were we impressed! This is one slick application, even if it was a bit sluggish on his 1.6 GHz G5. The iSight support was just incredible.

I've been tinkering with it for a bit on my own and I'm damn near ready to buy it.

A few questions to throw out there while I search for the answers:

1) Can this import from DVD Profiler (most of my collection is in there right now, even though I haven't updated it for a couple months; I've also bought and tried DVDpedia, but its interface is very lacking, especially now that I compare it to Delicious Library).

2) How does one make this work with barcode scanners other than the one Delicious Monster sells? Their FAQ says the CueCat I own will work (I've already hacked it to work as a regular barcode scanner), but I haven't had a chance to dig it out of the box of cables where it resides to try it out.

3) Has anyone else been annoyed by it's text-to-speech abilities? I was importing my DVD collection from DVDpedia in the background while working on other stuff and all of a sudden my computer says "Voldemort." Moments later it says "i am your father" and then says "voldemort" again. After freaking out for a moment, I deduced that it had said these phrases when it came across the Harry Potter movies and the Star Wars trilogy box set in my collection while importing.

CyberDave

[CyberDave]

Originally posted by CyberDave:
[B1) Can this import from DVD Profiler (most of my collection is in there right now, even though I haven't updated it for a couple months; I've also bought and tried DVDpedia, but its interface is very lacking, especially now that I compare it to Delicious Library).
[/B]

Replying to my own message with what I just found out by testing my ~300-item DVD Profiler collection exported as an XML file.

Short answer: no
Long answer: probably. DVD Profiler stores UPCs as 10 digits (stripping off the first digit of the manufacturer prefix and the check digit, leaving the middle 10 out of a standard US 12-digit UPC barcode--this irks me to no end since I've worked in retail and no way would anyone ever get away with calling a 10-digit number a "UPC" as DVD Profiler does). Since Delicious Library seems to work almost primarily on UPC or ISBN barcodes, this 10-digit abbreivated barcode won't work. However, it may be possible to write a little utility to go through and "fix" the UPC codes in an exported DVD Profiler file (I tried the XML version) by finding the correct UPC manufacturer prefix and recomputing the check digit. In fact I'm going to go tinker with that right now. A few lines of Java to read/write the file, a function to recompute the check digit, and a table of correct manufacturer prefixes ought to do it. If anyone wants to help me test this, email me ([email protected]).

CyberDave

Edit: just learned that the first digit is a "number system" digit that identify the type of barcode. That should make this task a bit easier (and also explains why DVD profiler was stripping it off, though I really think they shouldn't--I guess it helps (slightly) to lock people into their program, since the exported data isn't easily usable in other software).

[theJoKell]

Originally posted by CyberDave:

3) Has anyone else been annoyed by it's text-to-speech abilities? I was importing my DVD collection from DVDpedia in the background while working on other stuff and all of a sudden my computer says "Voldemort." Moments later it says "i am your father" and then says "voldemort" again. After freaking out for a moment, I deduced that it had said these phrases when it came across the Harry Potter movies and the Star Wars trilogy box set in my collection while importing.

CyberDave

I thought this was very cool when I first heard about it. I didn't know it did it for SW too. However I quickly turned off this feature due to the amount of DVDs I had to import. Still a pretty good easter egg IMO.

[naevity]

I found this over on arstechnica, someone made a program to export your Delicious Library to html format keeping the look of the bookshelves. The program is here. There are some examples here.

[theJoKell]

Very cool program (DeliciousExporter) however it really needs some more options. It did a terrible job alphabetizing my collection, some things were WAY out of order, despite having the correct title in the "info."

[torifile]

Anyone else notice that it automatically "checks back in" items after the due date? I don't know if the check out was lost some how or if after the due date passed it automatically checked the items back in, but I sure didn't check them back in.

That's annoying because I don't know which DVDs are out but I know there are 2 out.... Crap.

[mishap]

Originally posted by torifile:
Anyone else notice that it automatically "checks back in" items after the due date? I don't know if the check out was lost some how or if after the due date passed it automatically checked the items back in, but I sure didn't check them back in.

That's annoying because I don't know which DVDs are out but I know there are 2 out.... Crap.

Mine hasnt done that yet, i just have a bunch of late dvds.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Want some shits and giggles. Try scanning the Star Wars DVD and listen to what it says back to you.

[badtz]

does anyone else have problems with CD covers not showing up, even though there's a photo of the CD cover on amazon's website?

[cpac]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Want some shits and giggles. Try scanning the Star Wars DVD and listen to what it says back to you.

mentioned above.

harry potter apparently works too.

[tonton]

Originally posted by badtz:
does anyone else have problems with CD covers not showing up, even though there's a photo of the CD cover on amazon's website?

This happens when the cover on Amazon is just a thumbnail, without a link to the larger photo.

I wish there were an icon style for DVD box sets.

And of course, international support needs to be ironed out.

Right now, by far the easiest way to import titles is to look them up by title in Amazon, then drag the correct link directly to the data field. So if you have lots of books by the same author, look up the author on Amazon under "books", then simply drag the links from the list for each correct edition.

The beauty of this is that it doesn't matter which Amazon you're using. the down side is that Amazon doesn't always have the high-res covers in the database, so you have to copy them over individually.

[Gee4orce]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Want some shits and giggles. Try scanning the Star Wars DVD and listen to what it says back to you.

I did - it was the first thing I scanned. Unfortunately, no region 2 DVD lookups work ! Grrrr.

[tonton]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
I did - it was the first thing I scanned. Unfortunately, no region 2 DVD lookups work ! Grrrr.

You must use the 4orce, Gee.

[Mithras]

Well, I finally pulled the trigger, to get a handle on our burgeoning book library.
My earlier criticisms stand:
* needs a "bulk add" function, to type many ISBNs at once.
* desperately needs smart collections

but after seeing this lovely app, I just couldn't settle for a more featureful but dry app like Booxter or Readerware.

[Arty50]

Well, Delicious just emailed me. Now I have my Flic Bluetooth Scanner working perfectly, and all of the DVDs I had scanned loaded into Library. The key is to hold down the scanner button while pairing/connecting. Hopefully they don't mind me posting this. I've edited it a bit, but here's the pertinent info:

We're hoping to get a more detailed tutorial public about how to set up and connect the scanner and I apologize that we don't have that material currently available. But I'm going to try to walk the process through here. The behavior that we want is the button to light up in blue ("connected") after it lights up in red ("connecting"). So let's start over and make sure we've done this right. If you follow these instructions exactly, you'll either get the scanner working or we should have enough information to rapidly send off a replacement.

Open System Preferences and the Bluetooth pane. Select "Cordless" if it's there and Delete Pairing. Quit and relaunch Delicious Library. Now go back to the Library menu and select "Enable Bluetooth Scanning..." again. Hopefully you see the "Cordless" device and you can push Pair. When asked for a passkey, use 0000. As you push the button to pair, hold down the scan button on the scanner. If pairing fails, really make sure you're holding down that button. Pairing only seems to work when you hold down the button on the scanner as it's trying to connect.

So now that we're paired, you should see the Bluetooth button gray again. Push it and hold down the button on the scanner again. The scanner seems to be really fast to go into "sleeping" modes and holding down the button ensures that it's alive. If the button turns red and then gray, try it again and make sure you've got the button down. If all goes well, it should turn blue after turning red and you're good to go.

Also, one last trick - if you just slightly remove the battery cover (and not remove the batteries themselves), that resets the Bluetooth module without resetting the scanner, so you don't lose the scanner's memory but you can force a Bluetooth "reboot." If the above is failing somewhere, try this and see if it helps at all.

While it took them a while to respond, I'd like to thank them for a sending a very nice email (the whole thing wasn't posted above). And most especially for getting my scanner to work. Now I'm in love with this product. It's gonna be so nice to finally have all my stuff cataloged. A good friend just lost a bunch of cds/dvds in a apartment flood and it was a pain to get everything replaced. Now I'll have a listing of everything for emergency uses.

[OAW]

Love the app. Definitely a tad bit expensive given what it does. After you load everything up the app really won't get much use unless you loan stuff out a lot. Certainly needs iTunes integration for the music. With this and a few extra bells and whistles $40 seems OK ... but as it stands now $20-30 is more like it.

Quality seems very good for a 1.0 release. One very visible and annoying BUG though. The RATING control just doesn't seem to work properly. Star 1 - 2 just don't respond to the one you click. Clicking the first star either ignores you or sets the rating to no stars whereas clicking the second star either ignores you or sets the rating to 1 star. Clicking stars 3 - 5 either ignore you or sets it the rating to the star clicked. VERY FRUSTRATING. Also, it seems to me that there should be an explicit button for NO RATING.

A less visible and annoying bug. If you right click anything in the Collections, Borrowers, or Shelf area and then follow that up with a click the click is ignored. You have to click again to get it to register.

Other than that this app is really nice. Especially with an alternative shelf theme. Brushed metal and wood grain just looks AWFUL together!

OAW

[Mithras]

Update:
According to this article, Delicious Library has been a good piece of business:

Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster Software:
Our new product is a runaway success -- we've sold $350,000 worth of software in the first two months.

Hopefully that will fund some good R&D for future updates!

[mishap]

Originally posted by Mithras:
Update:
According to this article, Delicious Library has been a good piece of business:


Hopefully that will fund some good R&D for future updates!

good for them! it's great software

[wataru]

They still haven't fixed the many, many bugs relating to handling Japanese text and Japanese items. Still pretty useless for me.

[Nebagakid]

whatever, the new social networking stuff in v2 is going to be HUGE

[Mithras]

Neat! Delicious Library is the subject of this week's David Pogue video.

[littlegreenspud]

Well, until it actually takes notice of the settings to import from the UK rather than Amazon.com it is relatively useless to me.

I tried scanning 3 DVDs, 1 playstation game, 1 CD and 1 book. It found only the CD and then it imported the version from Amazon.com rather than Amazon.co.uk. All the scanned items are available in Amazon.co.uk.

Yes I know I can import by finding the item in Amazon.co.uk then dragging the link to Delicious Library, but this is much slower than scanning and it kind of removes Delicious Library's scanning advantage over other library programs.


Still awaiting either a reply to my emails to Delicious, or an ability to import from Amazon.co.uk . . .