ask-mark.com

I wish I had a Mac. While I love the "Unix underpinnings," the reason I really want a Macright now is Delicious Library. This software is so unbelievably awesome at managing a personal library of books, movies, music and video games, and it’s only $40!

Using just about any webcam, scan the bar code from the item you want to add to your library. DL will search for your item and add it to your library once it is found. It will also include a lot of meta data about the item, such as cover art, publisher, release date, and retail price. DL uses the cover art to display a virtual shelf with your items.

DL uses a familiar interface for users of iTunes, with your various collections in the left pane of the window, and the contents of those collections to the right. In addition to the top-most level of sorting by type, you can also create collections like you would playlists in iTunes.

On top of the simple organization of your personal library, DL can interface with the Apple Address Book and helps you to manage the items that you have loaned to friends! Not only can you quickly find the things you own, but you can also see who last had that book you’ve been dying to re-read. Now, if only DL could interface with a robot to retrieve my items from physical shelves, it would be the perfect home library management system.

DL is only available for Mac OS X. For Windows, MediaMan is a blatant rip-off of DL, all the way down to the window layout and virtual bookshelf graphics. Libra is also another DL alternative for Windows, and it’s free. If it works well, perhaps that will hold off my temptation to drop $1500 on a new Mac.