Delicious Library

There's some region of my mind that gets all excited when a particularly clever piece of software is published. Delicious Library is such a creation.

Delicious Library's purpose in life is to allow you to visualize your collection of books, movies, music and video games. There are a number of other apps that do this, but none quite like DL. Describing it in detail is silly when you can go download a demo and try it for yourself, but there are a few interesting highlights.

Right from the outset, DL asks you if you want to import your own items or start with a default library to get a feel for the program. There are a number of options for importing items. You can search for a title, enter a UPC symbol, or opt for the the ultra-sexy barcode scanning with an iSight. Once a title has been indentified, DL will download all of the associated info from the internet.

Each item in your library is displayed using a subtle but convincing 3D effect that gives you the impression that it's actually sitting on a shelf. You can use multiple shelves to represent difference physical locations or simply topical associations.

Once you've selected an item from the shelf you can view/edit details about it or click "similar items" and see recommendations from Amazon. There's also an extremely easy-to-use lending system that keeps track of who has what and when it's due back. The borrowing list is smartly pre-populated with people from your address book that share your last name.                                                                                                                      

The only downside to DL is that that it uses system resources like mad. Though considering what it does, it's understandable.

There are all sorts of nice touches everywhere. Did I mention voice search? And DL will generate emails for you that contain information about a particular title. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Delicious Library win at least one Apple Design Award next year. It's an amazing showcase of a plethora of Mac OS X technologies.

UPDATE: I have successfully scanned in books and CDs but couldn't get Mario Golf or Mario Kart Double Dash to be indentified. This is particularly odd because I believe the latter is actually in the default library. So far, haven't gotten any video games to be indentified.

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