Delicious Library is Yummy

A new software company called Delicious Monster has created a program for the Mac which has occupied a lot of my free time lately. It’s called Delicious Library, a digital catalog for your personal collections of books, movies, video games and music.

Just by perusing their web site, I was tantalized by look of their software. It’s obvious that they have put a lot of effort into the look and feel of the software. In the case of Delicious Library, this results in great functionality. The items are displayed like they are sitting on a shelf, organized in whichever way I choose, and the detailed information (mostly from Amazon’s database) will appear to the right for each item when selected:

The feature that brought it home for me is the ability to scan titles to add them to my collection. They recommend an iSight camera from Apple, but I have a DV camera, which plugs in via firewire and works just as well. It is as easy as holding the bar code in front of the camera, and watching DL gather the title and all kinds of great info from Amazon. So far, the only books that wouldn’t scan and bring a correct title were the obscure books that aren’t a part of Amazon’s database. These I entered manually. DVD movies were even more compliant for me. Out of 105 titles so far, only 5 movies didn’t bring results after I scanned them. I entered the titles manually, and this brought the results I needed.

Having a catalogue of all your books, DVDs, games, and CDs makes it easy to lend titles to friends and family without losing track of who has what. There is a “borrowers list” which auto-fills with names from Address Book, so its easy to allow anyone you know to “check out” your stuff from your library.

The only items I won’t catalogue are my CDs. iTunes does a fine job of keeping up with that, so I don’t feel compelled to duplicate that effort. Delicious Library is only $40, and if you have any interest at all in cataloging your media collection, I highly recommend it. You can peruse their web site and download the trial version here.

Filemaker Friendly New Database, Bento

Filemaker has released Bento, a new database program for the mac which looks to be a dream come true for dataheads who love to organize information and catalog items. It runs exclusively on Leopard.

According to the press release, Bento uses an iTunes-like interface, making it easy to navigate between projects, libraries, lists, and contacts. Filemaker claims that Bento equips users to “accomplish any of the following in minutes:”

— Manage virtually unlimited contact details
— Coordinate events, parties, and fundraisers
— Track projects, assignments and deadlines
— Connect related information together to see more details
— Prioritize things that need to get done
— Catalog inventory, donations and items for sale
— Record hours worked and payments due
— Assign ratings to service providers and sellers
— Create libraries for music, movies and media
— Store files and photos related to projects and events

It sells for $49, individually priced, and a family pack is $99. Sounds like a great deal for a powerful database program that would cover every possible need for personal cataloging. Leave a comment if you’ve downloaded and tried out the demo. I’m going to give it a whirl over the next week.