Delicious Monster

OK, I just have to rave about this.

In all fairness, it wasn't me who found it. My graphic design prof at SCCC is the one who turned me on to this, and it looked good on paper and is even better in person.

Delicious Library is a software program for Mac which allows you to catalog your media: books, music and movies. Which sounds like a sort of, "Um, ok, that's nice," idea, until you realize that I have to deal with libraries. A lot of 'em.

First of all, I have the book lending library through LLL. I have to keep track of which people borrow which books, and when they're due. That's not all that easy for me, really...sometimes those people don't put down all their information, sometimes I lose the cards, and even more often, I fail to look up who owes what in anything close to a timely manner.

I bought a CueCat (declawed) off eBay a year or so ago. CueCats are barcode scanners that were once given out for free by the millions...part of some marketing campaign where the idea was that you'd see an ad or article in print, and use the barcode scanner (which looks like an elongated cat, with the lasers at the mouth) to scan the code on the ad or article that you found interesting, and it would launch your web browser to an assigned website. All well and good, but those who preferred print...well, preferred print, and those who were techie enough to want web pages looked at them with suspicion...and with good reason, it turns out. Those CueCats were hard-wired to connect anything you scanned with your personal information. Once the geeks of the world realized this, they started picking up handfuls of the CueCats and cracking them open, testing, soldering, and posting their results on geeky usenet groups. This led to more geeks cracking and soldering, so prolifically that the term "declaw your CueCat" came into being, and the company that made the scanners started throwing lawyers around. The lawyers charged that people didn't really OWN the CueCats, and therefore couldn't mess with them, and the company made the fatal mistake of making enemies of the very audience they needed to open the product up to the general users of the world.

The company went out of business, and the world was flooded with CueCats (actually, technically, they were :CueCats) which were now free to be hacked and modified at will. So...long story short, I found 'em cheap ($7) on eBay, and got one for me and one for my prof. (Yes, he paid me back for the full $7, in front of the rest of the class, in fact, so as to circumvent any appearances of bribery, favoritism, or other unseemly acts.)

I JUST got Monster Library last night. I downloaded and installed it in about 3 minutes, went through the easiest registration process I've ever seen in about 10 seconds, and then ran into trouble with the CueCat. Not in the mood to fight with it, I went to bed. Tonight I fired up the software again and the CueCat magically decided to work, and I've been a happy camper ever since.

My LLL library has about 30 or so books in it. So the process for putting them into the software goes like this:
1. Pick book up.
2. Turn book over and look for barcode.
3. Scan.
4. Watch computer think for 5 seconds or so.
5. Book cover either automatically pops up on screen, OR
5a. Pick book cover from automatically-generated list, OR
5b. Rarely, type in book title, hit enter, and drag appropriate result to window.
6. Bask in the light of the book appearing to sit on a library shelf in front of you.

That's pretty much it. The program grabs the ISBN number, and then zips out to Amazon.com and sucks down all the information and puts it in your local library. So you can see the title, the author, the ISBN, the cover, the synopsis and the price. You can also select a book and hit the "Similar" button, and it will make another 10 suggestions on other books you might like. You can look at Amazon.com ratings on the book(s), you can put your own ratings into the program...

...and most wonderfully, it automatically imports your address list into the program. So when Jane Doe asks to borrow the LLL copy of "Parenting Through Crisis," I click and drag the book cover over to Jane Doe's name and let go of the mouse button. The book cover now appears under her name, her name is flagged with the number of books she has borrowed, there's a calendar on the right to tell you when she should return the book, a place for notes, and when you look at your whole library, those books which have been borrowed have a little yellow "OUT" banner on the corners. Those which are overdue have a little red "LATE" banner on the corner.

You don't know how freaking wonderful this is.

I scanned 90 books tonight, at a rate of about 1 per minute. They're divided between LLL, David's books, and Lauren's books. I can even export the book lists into a .pdf format that lists the books in author order, alpha by title, by ratings...you name it.

I already love this thing!

When I told Doug about it in broad terms, he listened politely until I said something about putting it on the laptop. Then he said, "Oh, is this a Mac thing?"
"Yeah."
"Oh! Hell, do whatever you want. You're not installing crap on my machine, so I don't care." and he went back to his WOW.

Tonight he came in as I was scanning barcodes on books. "What's THAT?"
"I told you. Delicious Library."
"Oh, did you get it?"
"Yeah, look." And I turned the laptop around and showed him the screen. I set it down and he looked it over while I got kid drinks for bed.
"OK," he says upon my return, "That's hot."

You know, he said the same thing about the laptop after I first got it, too. He wasn't at all sure about it, but then he sits down and messes with the thing and walks away all impressed.

After 10 years of marriage, you'd think he'd have this figured out, wouldn't you?