I recently discovered this brilliant Mac application called Delicious Library. This program goes down as just another reason why Macs are superior to PCs, but I digress. Essentially as all or most Macs on the market are releasing with built in iSight camera's, this application scans the barcodes of your at home library of books and creates a visually stunning virtual bookshelf complete with all the linked data from Amazon in the field to the right. It actually converts your camera into a scanner. Amazing! It even includes the retail price and what value the book is currently trading at. It takes about 10 minutes to do maybe 50 books and before you know it, you can shop for similar books with a click of a button. I know it sounds terribly clichéd, but I have become a total addict. There are several books I own that I would love to have more like, but rarely can I sort through all the noise.
I love seeing this library of all the books I own on my screen. Sure they are on my shelf too, but you can't really interact with them in the same way. For example, you can recommend a title you own (no matter how old) to a friend and it will build the buy now link and jacket image right into the email. Plus you can make a note of who from your computer's rolodex has borrowed a particular book and get a reminder email in a months time to get that book back! The delicious library will scan the barcodes of your dvds, cds and games. Sick. And for the iPod-geeks, you can sync you iPod notes with this tool and then take your inventory with you when shopping in bricks and mortar stores. I am not sure how this is beneficial yet. Need to mull. I foresee this exploding from RFiD book tagging in the near future. My one qualm is that this really only supports Amazon's sales. Get there faster publishers!
Justin Renard, Puffin Marketing Officer
*Justin does not work for Delicious Library - as far as we know
** Or Apple
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