Living your life the Amazon way with Delicious Library 2

by Joey Celis Jun 15th 2008

Delicious Library offers users the ability to catalog their entire collection of music, movies, electronic gadgets, kitchenware, clothes and most anything else using a web cam onto digital shelves on their Mac.

All you have to do to enter an item in your database is scan the product's PC using a webcam. Delicious Library connects to Amazon to determine what that product is. From there, it will download the cover art, detailed description and a host of reviews and additional information.

The program's been around for a few years, but the developers recently released version 2.0. There's a huge list of changes, including the addition of 5 new item categories, which brings the total to 9. You can also view other Delicious Library users' shared libraries from within the application itself instead of going to the web now. Cover art and graphics have a better 3D look to them and scale a lot better too. In addition, the library performance has been improved.

The move from a flat file system to the SQlite database system allows the library to update or add items in seconds, instead of taking several long minutes like before. If you have a rather large database you will definitely appreciate this performance boost.

While the improvements made from the original version are welcomed one thing still remains, Delicious Library 2 only connects to Amazon for its information. If you attempt to catalog something that isn't available on Amazon, say for instance an iPhone, you're left to enter all the information yourself. It's not difficult to do, but it does detract from the whole automatic experience. Hopefully, in upcoming versions an option to select other shopping sites is included.

If you're looking to catalog all your worldly possessions you might want to give Delicious Library 2 a try. While there are areas for improvement, for the most part Delicious Library 2 does it's job admirably.

Delicious Library 2 is a Mac only program available for $40.

Tags: commercial, delicious-library, delicious-library-2, macintosh

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

mossman93 said 4:31PM on 6-15-2008

If you use Windows, MediaMan does the same exact thing. http://www.imediaman.com

Miguel Marcos said 5:36PM on 6-15-2008

Can't help but mention LibraryThing.com. It's only books, but it works like a charm. I got a $15 cue cat bar code scanner and have been uploading little by little. LibraryThing.com uses lookups from Amazon, the Library of Congress, and a boatload of other sources, many international, 687 sources according to them.

What I find most enticing about LibraryThing.com is the sharing aspect. You can check out the libraries of other users who have one or more of the books you have and you can see what other books those users have read. Social libraries!

Josh said 9:14PM on 6-15-2008

Bought it yesterday and I am absolutely loving the UPC scanner using my MacBook's iSight. It really is awesome being able to look at my computer to decide what I want to watch/read/play instead of going through hundreds of DVDs and Books. It truly is an amazing program and I highly recommend it to anyone with a lot of media that needs to be sorted or just wants extra info on anything they own (because it gives you a -ton- of info about everything you add/scan)

Jamus said 11:10AM on 6-16-2008

WHEN it works, it works great.

I upgraded to 2.0 about two weeks ago. I could not get the Bluetooth scanner to connect up correctly and wrote the support group with details of the problem. Keep in mind this is the scanner that they sell to specifically work with the app. Now two weeks later, still have not heard a word from them, so I have to give it a big thumbs down on support.

No support? said 2:33PM on 6-18-2008

Yes, what is up with support??? I am a Delicious Library 1.6 user, but my media collection is so large that even on an eight-core Mac Pro with 8GB RAM, it takes several minutes just to open, quit or save (which happens automatically every few minutes while the app is open). I tried to upgrade to DL 2, only to discover that the library conversion crashes mid-way through. Not only does it crash, it freezes the entire machine, requiring a hard power off. I created a support ticket on May 31, and have sent urgent follow-ups to the ticket, but not a soul has bothered to reply. I remember support being unresponsive in the 1.x days, but never this bad!

Dan Marino said 11:51AM on 6-16-2008

I didn't even know this type of application existed. I have to try this. i didnt know anybody else owned a RS Cue Cat. I remember getting it when they were handing them off years ago. Now i have a reason to use it.

Patsy Davis said 9:35PM on 7-12-2008

I had a cue cat but may have thrown it away a couple of weeks ago. I didn't ever use it and didn't know there were still apps that used it! I knew I shouldn't ever throw anything away!

What the Frack?! said 3:48PM on 6-16-2008

I bought this a few weeks ago. I was walking around my house scanning just about everything with my MacBook Pro. It's my trophy case. Since I never got anything but a participant ribbon from field day in 3rd or 4th grade.

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