The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 7 out of 10]
Ever since I've had a computer, I've been looking for the ideal way to catalog our belongings, primarily for insurance purposes. I've used everything from self-developed HyperCard stacks to FileMaker databases (both self-written and purchased). I even tried using Quicken. But in the end, all the tools suffered from one major downside: it was too much work to catalog everything we already had, and adding new purchases was very tedious.
On some fronts, DL scores a 10+ out of 10 -- its use of iSight to read the barcodes is what makes the app work for me.
However, on other fronts, it scores much lower -- it's crashed on me a few times, and there are a number of obvious features missing, although it is a 1.0 release. The most glaring omission is a tie-in to the iTunes library. I have all these CDs already in iTunes; wouldn't it be great if DL could just grab the info from there, then look up the data for me? Also, I'd love the ability to have "smart" collections, much as you can have in iTunes and iPhoto. Finally, the application is (presently) very much US-centric, as it relies heavily on the US Amazon site. It's also tied in from a purchasing standpoint; DL uses its referrer number when you visit Amazon, so any purchases you make will give a commission to the Delicious Monster folks. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I wish they'd been more up front about it on their site. Finally, at $40, it's a tad expensive for something you may not use every day -- and that's a per computer license, not "licenses in use at once" license.
I won't use most of the "borrowing" features that let you track items you've loaned to others, but for use as an app to simply track our growing collection of stuff, DL's speed and interface is unbeatable. Once a 1.1 (or whatever) release comes out to squash the bugs and add a few new features, it will easily become a '10' in my opinion.
Oh yea, about that Easter Egg ... if you want to experience it for yourself, make sure "Speak scanned titles" is enabled in the preferences, and then scan any Harry Potter book or movie. If you'd rather ruin the surprise, just watch this QuickTime movie [558KB]. And turn up the volume before you do so :).
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20041116090142760