Guest Post – Slife Review

By John Chandler
Like many Mac users, Merlin Mann holds a strange power over me and I am compelled to do whatever he suggests. A few weeks ago on MacBreak Weekly, his pick of the week was Slife. Like Merlin, I had taken a look at the program before and didn’t think it would be of much benefit for me. But Merlin gave it a second chance, and so, like Merlin, I did too. And, like Merlin, I’m glad I did.
Slife is a free program that runs in the background and measures how you spend your time. After it has been running for a while, you can go back and evaluate what you’ve been up to. It gives you a visual breakdown of what apps you’ve been working in, hour by hour, as you can see in the image to the right. It can be helpful…and guilt-inducing.

That was my first impression of the program when I saw it a few months ago. It didn’t seem to offer much…other than guilt. Now that I’m using it, I am finding a lot of benefit to mingle in with my guilt. Besides showing what programs I use, it can also show a breakdown of what documents and websites I’ve been lingering on:

If you do work where you need to track time for clients, this, of course, can be useful. But, it is also helpful to get a good idea of how much time I’m spending on certain things. I can define the values I want to hold, but seeing the reality of where I am spending my time is an opportunity for me to be honest with myself and then begin to grow from there.
All of this is nice, but what makes Slife worth the CPU cycles is a feature called “Activities”. You can lump programs and documents into different activities, or categories. So, for instance, if you want to know how much time you spend social networking, you could lump Facebook.com, Twitter.com and iChat into a single activity. Any combination of apps, websites, and documents can be measured.
Defining activities could become tedious and eat up more time than it is worth. I have found it best to define some general categories to get an idea of where my time is going — creating, collecting, connecting, and planning:

Right now these are activities are defined only by apps. I don’t think I will take the time to define them further by websites or documents. It’s not a perfect system, but it gives me a good opportunity to reflect on how I am spending my time.
I’ve had Slife collecting data for about two weeks now. In another week or two, I’m going to start reshaping my workflow around what I am learning. I’ll share some my journey on Creativityist — you are welcome to come along for the ride.
A special thanks to MacSparky. I stumbled on his blog early this year. I am always pleased to see a new post appear in my reader, and I appreciate the voice he brings as an avid day to day Mac user.
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A note from MacSparky.
I just want to thank John for contributing this post. I’m now in week one of what looks to be a three week trial and having friends like John help keep things interesting on MacSparky is absolutely priceless.

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Sena Macbook Air Pullino Case Review

Sena Cases specializes in high end leather cases for your portable devices like Blackberries and iPhones. These leather cases bear little resemblance to the mass produced cases you are used to seeing in your local big box retailer. Naturally, I was interested in their MacBook Air cases and they kindly agreed to loan me one for a few weeks.
First I must comment on the unboxing. The case came in a cloth bag and makes you feel like you are buying something special. I think a lot of Apple consumers appreciate careful packaging and Sena certainly does that.

The particlar case I reviewed is called the Pullino. It is a sort of leather envelope custom tailored to hold your MacBook Air and nothing else. This is not a case to hold your power supply and other gear. It just holds the computer. I didn’t carry it alone so much as put my computer in the Pullino and then carried the Pullino protected computer in my briefcase or bag. It is tailored from Italian napa leather and sewn up on three sides with the fourth side open for you to slide your computer in. The stitching appeared sturdy and attractive with a contrasting leather color on the edge. Also inside is padding and velvet lining to protect your MacBook Air while parked inside.

The most unique feature with the Pullino however is its design. Built into the case is a wide leather strap that loops to the bottom and up the back side of the case. When you push your computer in, it pushes the strap down leaving just the handle at the top which you can then fold over the open side of the case and tuck into a small enclosure. When you need to get your computer back out, you lift the handle end and pull. The other end of the handle, which is looped under your computer, lifts the computer out of the case for you. It is kind of like those fabric ribbons you put underneath a set of batteries. The whole mechanism is deliciously analog and pulled off with leather strips and some tricky sewing. I get a kick out of the fact that this ultra modern computer has a case using technology that is literally thousands of years old.
My only gripe with the case was the fact that while the handle folds over to protect some of the open end, it does not protect all of it. There are several inches of the edge of the computer exposed on each side of the case. I worried about it damaging the edge of my MacBook Air banging around in my briefcase. It would have been nice if the case were about a half inch deeper so the edges of the computer could have been recessed.
If you are looking for a case that can make a statement, this one is worth a close look. This case retails for $240 and can be found at senacases.com
You can listen to this review on the Surfbits #177 Podcast

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RapidWeaver 4 Review

There really are two kinds of web designers: the ninja coders and the unwashed masses like myself who actually loose IQ points just from looking at css code. Strangely, I’m okay with that. While I like tinkering with Applescript and Cocoa, I’ve got no interest in learning to code websites. So, as I thought, I was left with one option, iWeb. Don’t get me wrong. I really like iWeb. It can take you from zero to fifty very quickly. But what if I want to go faster than 50? Enter RapidWeaver.
Booting up RapidWeaver I did my usual bit of zero preparation. I didn’t read any manuals or watch any tutorials. I just went for it. Once opened I quickly was able to open pages of various design types and templates at will. You can make a blog or add static pages. You can quickly fill your site with pages and sub-menus to your heart’s content. Additionally I was able to drop in html snippets that I dowloaded from RapidWeaver’s site. This runs deeper though. You can also add custom javascript, CSS and PHP to your RapidWeaver pages.

Once you are ready to publish, RapidWeaver 4 again rescues us neophytes. You can publish directly from RapidWeaver to .Mac, FTP, SFTP or even your local drive. You simply fill in your details and click the publish button. It even does this cool bit of coverflow animation where it shows you each element being published.
A lot of people don’t realize that different browsers have different standards. Internet Explorer, for instance, does not read all the wizbang features in the most current versions of Safari or Firefox. This fact drives web developers crazy in that they must code their sites so they may be read by all browsers. RapidWeaver takes care of this problem for you, publishing your site to work exactly the same in every browser, even Internet Explorer.
RapidWeaver 4 ships with 40 templates and there are a great many more available for download and purchase. The RapidWeaver web site is nicely organized with available themes, css, code snippets and other addons that allow you to improve your site. Some of these require purchase. Others are free.
Version 4 is uses several of the most recent OS X technologies and requires that you run Leopard. The interface is pleasant and intuitive. I spent very little time looking for options. Everything I needed was where I would expect it to be. I think the ideal customer for this product is anyone who feels constrained by iWeb but doesn’t want to consume a 1,000 page CSS treatise to do it. RapidWeaver is a chocolate coated iWeb, with sprinkles.
A license for RapidWeaver 4 will cost $79. You can learn more and purchase RapidWeaver at realmacsoftware.com.

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Noise Ninja Review

I hate using my flash. Nothing destroys a picture more then the shiny foreheads, reflective eyeglasses, and the nuclear glow that show up in my pictures every time I pop open the built in flash. Now I know there’s a way to intelligently use the flash in your photographs. My friend, Robert Lachman, is a wizard at it. Unfortunately, I am not. I would like to say this is a result of the fact I’m too cheap to buy a separate flash for my camera but, most likely, it boils down to fundamental incompetence on my part.
So my way to get around this problem is to simply not use the flash. And my number one tool for this strategy is my very favorite lens, a 50 mm 1.4 aperture lens I affectionately call the “nifty fifty.” This lens opens so wide, that I can use it to take dark pictures indoors and usually get away with it. My secret, in addition to the nifty fifty, is my complete lack of respect for the ISO setting on my camera. I often crank up the ISO setting to 400, 800, and even 1600 in effort to avoid using the dreaded flash. The result of these high settings, however, is that the pictures come out noisy artifacts, grain, and otherwise don’t seem to cut the mustard.
Newer cameras address this problem with better software and sensors that take much less grainy photographs at very high ISO settings. While I’m not in the market for a new camera, I sure would like to get rid of that noise. There just happens to be a software package made specifically for this problem. I’m talking, of course, about Noise Ninja.
Noise Ninja is a well regarded stand alone application and Photoshop plug-in that allows you to remove noise from high ISO pictures. Recently, a new version was released that includes an Aperture plug-in. So now, as an Aperture user, I can round trip my photographs through Noise Ninja without exiting the program. Let me just say that this plug-in delivers. It allows you to send and multiple selections of photographs and applying Noise Ninja’s secret sauce that does a very good job of taking noise out of my photographs. It is painless to apply and provides noticeable results.

When you first activate Noise Ninja, it gives you a variety of sliders to customize the noise reduction. These include luminance, color, after sharpening. After playing with these for some time, I found the default automatic setting to work better than most of my alleged “improvements.”
There really isn’t a lot to say about this application except that it works and is easy. My attempts to repair noise with the built in Aperture filters often noticeably blurred the picture. Noise Ninja does a much better job at retaining the image integrity.
If you are adventurous with the ISO button on your camera, using Noise Ninja, you will be able to recover otherwise unusable photographs and you will find yourself becoming even more liberal with your ISO settings knowing you can remove a lot of the noise back on your Mac. Any pictures I now shoot with 400 ISO or greater now automatically get Ninja’d.
Noise Ninja can be purchased at picturecode.com. There is a free trial and I highly recommend giving this one a try. The Noise Ninja stand alone application can run on OS X, Linux or Windows. They have plug-ins for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Aperture. They also have a variety of licenses ranging from $35 to $80.
You can listen to this review on MacReviewcast #173.

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Hydra HDR Software Review

The latest rage with digital photography is high dynamic range imaging. The problem faced by anyone holding a camera is that the dynamic range of their camera sensor is a fraction of that available to the human eye. Put simply, that gorgeous sunset and dark foreground you’re looking at simply cannot be captured with a single exposure from your camera.
This is where your Mac comes to the rescue with high dynamic range imaging, often referred to as HDR. Using HDR, you can take three shots of the same thing, one that is over exposed, one that is underexposed, and one that is just right. If you are really tricky and there is enough data in your image files, you can even make three copies of a single shot with different exposure levels. HDR software can then take these three images and combine them on your computer. This allows you to combine a gorgeous sunset with a foreground image. The results of this process vary from spectacular too surreal.
This week I’m taking a look at a software application designed specifically for the Mac to make HDR photography available to the masses. I’m talking about Hydra 1.6 from Creaceed Software.

Hydra is unique in that the $60 license gives you both a standalone application and an Aperture plug-in. Interestingly, the two iterations of this application are not identical. While I generally prefer to use the Aperture plug-in for its ease of use, there are a few additional tools in the stand-alone version of Hydra that I really like. Fortunately, the developer informs me that with the next major release of Hydra, the stand-alone tools will catch up with the Aperture plug-in.
One of the first steps of HDR image processing is to make sure the three pictures are aligned. In this regard, the Hydra developers did a very good job. The software or the user can pick specific alignment points and get everything straight. While generally you’re supposed to take HDR bracketed shots on a tripod, this feature allows Hyrda users to process images without assistance of a tripod. The software aligns the images for you. This could be quite handy when sun begins to rise and you realize you left the tripod in your car. My tests with this feature showed that it did actually worked and, generally, the automatic alignment did much better than my manual attempts.
Regardless, once your images are aligned, Hydra combines them into one image with all of the dynamic range data. This is where the fun really begins. The Hydra standalone application has a convenient histogram that allows you to blend the influence of your various images. While it’s not that easy to describe, it is very intuitive when you start doing it. The histogram is not in the Aperture plug-in yet but this is one of the tools the developer assures me will be in the next major update around the new year. Once your images are tweaked just right, you can export it to 8-Bit TIFF, JPEG, or 32-bit OpenEXR.
While the Aperture plug-in does not have the convenient histogram yet, it does have a variety of sliders and checkboxes to customize your HDR image. Because it is part of the plug-in architecture, all of this is done from within Aperture making the process of exporting images out for HDR and then dropping the finished product package back into your library quick and painless.
Creating an HDR images is much more an art than a science. Every picture is different and the tone map balance is never the same. For this reason, the real-time preview is a blessing. Also, like so many up-and-coming image applications on the Mac, Hydra takes advantage of your graphics card. The wait time to combine three RAW images on my MacBook Pro into an HDR image with Hydra’s Aperture plug-in was less than one minute. Obviously, your mileage may vary.
One problem I had was that Hydra stripped some of my metadata from its finished image. My lens information was gone and Hydra appended its name to my camera type. I understand the exposure information is probably no longer relevant but the lens information is very helpful and should remain. Again, the developers are already aware of this and a fix is in the works.
I think some comparison with the other popular HDR applicaiton, Photmatix, is appropriate. I own a license for Photomatix and have used it for some time. At $99, a Photomatix Pro license costs $40 more than Hydra. Having used them both I would say that Photomatix has Hydra beat with respect to the number of controls and adjustments. You can get very specific with the modifications to your image in Photomatix. With respect to the final product however, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference. This may be more a function of my lack of skill with Photomatix’s multiple controls but it also makes a point. If you are not looking for the most complex program but still want to make nice HDR images, Hydra may be in your sweet spot. Another point in Hydra’s favor is that it was created by a Mac developer and looks like it. It has a nice interface and doesn’t feel clunky like so many multiplatform applications. Fortunately, both Hydra and Photomatix have trial versions so you can give both a try and see which works best for you.
Hydra requires MacOS X running leopard 10.5.4 or later. While the developer says it can run on a Power Mac, they “highly recommend” you run it on an Intel Mac. Head over to their website and give it a try.
You can listen to this review on the MacReviewCast episode 172.

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OmniFocus iPhone Review

This week I’m going to look at the OmniFocus iPhone application. Unless you fit in that narrow wedge of a Venn diagram including both iPhone owners and OmniFocus geeks, these comments will have absolutely no interest to you. So there you have it. You’ve been warned.
Since the first day I took my iPhone of the box a year ago, I’ve been waiting for iPhone OmniFocus to arrive. It was, and remains to be, remarkable to me that Apple still hasn’t created a native to-do list management system for the iPhone.
Well, with the opening of the applications store, and my willingness to part with $20, my wish has finally come true. I have OmniFocus on my iPhone. I have now been using it a few weeks and thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.
The most impressive feature of the iPhone OmniFocus application is the robust synchronization accomplished without use of a cute little white cord. That’s right, you can synchronize your task list database wirelessly. In order to perform this bit of black magic, you need to upgrade your OmniFocus license on your Mac to the sneaky peek 1.1 version. (You can read my MacOmniFocus Review here.) I know most sane people avoid beta software (I frequently install it with reckless abandon), but in this case it is well worth the trouble. The Mac version of OmniFocus 1.1 allows you to sync your data through your MobileMe or other Webdav account. Once you have trained your Mac application to put your data into your MobileMe account, your iPhone will look at the cloud version and update itself. No cord required.
The synchronization process isn’t perfect. It takes longer than a wired-based synchronization. Also, sometimes it runs into snags. In that case, OmniFocus will ask you whether it wants you to use the server or local version. The bottom line is that if you’re going to do this, you need to respect the syncing gods. There are couple ways to do this. First, you tell your Mac software to backup your data every time you close OmniFocus. That way, you have numerous backups of your OmniFocus data in case the gods become angry. Second, don’t tell everything to sync at once. Technically this is possible, but its really like when the Ghostbusters crossed the streams. Very bad things could happen.
With these precautions in place, syncing is great. The Omni people get a MacSparky thumbs up for the sheer moxy to pull it off. I am certain this process will get even easier and better over time but it is entirely workable right now so long as you take a few precautions.

So once I have the data on my iPhone, what do I do with it? This is where the current version of the OmniFocus iPhone software comes up a little short. The application allows you to manipulate the data in your iPhone and make changes to your tasks. Making changes is quite often, however, awkward. For instance, moving the start date on the iPhone requires several button taps and scroll wheels. Strangely, the process of changing the date also changes the start time and requires more steps to set right. Put simply, the interface needs work. The Omni engineers have to figure a way to make data manipulation just as easy on the iPhone as it is on the Mac without benefit of a mouse and keyboard. I don’t envy them. I think what they have is a good start. I hope they continue to refine it. I suspect they will.

The flashiest feature is the location aware function. OmniFocus on your iPhone can look where you’re at and provide you tasks available for nearby locations. This even works on 1st generation iPhones such as mine. For instance, when you are in front of a market, it can give you your grocery list. A lot of people are excited about this function. I get that this is really tricky, but I’ve yet to really find a use for it. When I want to buy my groceries, I go to the market. I don’t need my phone to tell me. Maybe as I use this more, I’ll find a better use for it. If anybody’s got any ideas, e-mail me. I’d love to hear them.

So despite my gripes about the user interface, I have to say I can’t imagine living without OmniFocus on my iPhone now that I’ve had it a few weeks. Every morning, after I get my daily tasks set up, I sync everything to my iPhone and it is very satisfying knowing that I have that list in my pocket at all times. I can check items off and, with a little work, adjust them on my iPhone and it will integrate with my database on my Mac. I’m convinced this will become even more useful as the Omni gang continues to polish and enhance the application.
At $20, this is one of the more expensive iPhone applications. However, if you’ve made it this far in the review, you probably are an OmniFocus nerd so stop kidding yourself and just go buy it.

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Jumsoft Mail Stationery Review

I am one of “those” people. You know … the kind of people that use Apple Mail stationery. Now before the geek storm troopers raid my house and rip my Apple nerd card from my shaking hands, I don’t use stationary all the time. Just occasionally. Like when a friend invites me over for a nice dinner I’ll send a stationary “Thank You” or when sending out an announcement to family members concerning posting pictures to the web. For occasions like this, the Apple Mail stationery fits the bill perfectly.

The problem is I’ve been using the same stationary for a year now and it’s starting to look tired. Just this week, Jumsoft, the same people who make some great Keynote add-ons, released their own pack of Apple Mail stationary.

The stationary pack includes 50 designs that cover just about every occasion you can think of including themes of “Family,” “Congratulations,” “Invitations,” “Emotions,” “Vacations,” “Seasons,” and “Neutral.”

There are a variety of designs allowing you to send a unique e-mail and even dropping in your own pictures if you like. Using this product I made an announcement for about 40 family and friends. It included a custom font, a very nice background, and a snapshot of my family. Everyone was able to read it.

The developer has samples of the stationary on its website. The stationery offered works perfectly for my intended use. Specifically to send a nice card to someone on occasion that goes beyond the typical blocky text.

This product sells for $39. That may be a little high for the occasional stationary user. If you use stationery repeatedly however, it would not be a bad idea to add some new resources so you’re recipients can see something new.

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Iris Review

It wasn’t so long ago that there were very few options for Mac users in the graphics department. There was 800 pound gorilla, Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Elements for the rest of us. Adobe was behind on its product cycle and for Intel Mac users, Photoshop in any iteration was a slug.
In just one year, this space has completely turned around. Adobe finally got its act together and released CS3 and an Intel friendly Adobe Photoshop Elements version 6. Likewise, Apple beefed up the core animation, core graphics, and other elements of OS X to allow developers to create their own graphics applications. In short, there has been a boom of quality graphics software including Pixelmator, Acorn, and now Iris.
The developers of Iris bill it as a graphical and photo editing application “designed from the ground up specifically for Mac users.” In large part, Iris delivers. It features a simple interface that is much less intimidating than Photoshop. Iris uses a “one window” metaphor for the application. It has simple sliders that are in obvious locations that allows you to adjust color or zoom just like you would in a lot of current OS X applications.

One of my favorite features was the inclusion of a small pane at the bottom of the Iris window that includes thumbnails of all of your current open images. When you’re working on several images at one time, this is extremely convenient.
Within very little time, I had easy access to common tools such as dodge and burn and a decent set of drawing tools. The implementation of layers is both easy to use and powerful once you start using the built-in filters. Iris also accepts and writes a wide variety of files depending on your needs.
Another function that I thought was pretty slick was the inclusion of a “new from clipboard” command. This really made sense to me. In fact, I could see this command being used in a variety of applications.
While Iris does a very credible job of giving you easy photo editing and drawing tools, it is not going to replace Photoshop. Indeed, I don’t particularly see at replacing Photoshop Elements. The selection tools are not as robust and some of the deeper features from the Adobe offerings are simply nonexistent.
Iris fits in that space already occupied by Elements, Pixelmator and Acorn. All of these applications are aimed squarely at that user who does not want to spend the time and money required to master Adobe Photoshop but still wants some photo editing tools beyond iPhoto. If that is you, take a look at Iris. I can’t make a recommendation between Iris, Pixelmator, Acorn and Elements. I think that depends a lot on the user and I simply haven’t spent enough time with the applications to give an intelligent recommendation. Regardless, all of these applications have trial periods available. When making a decision such as this, it’s probably best that you kick the tires yourself.
 
Iris retails for $79. You can find it at Nolobe.com. You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast episode #167.

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SugarSync Review

I am fortunate enough to have two Macs. I keep one at home and the other follows me around. To make matters even more confusing, there is a PC box on my desk at the office. My challenge was to figure a way to keep the files synced between these various computers without becoming a slave to a thumb drive. These are the kind of problems that make my little geek heart go pitter-patter, obsessing over making sure everything is in sync rather than doing any actual work.
I tried a variety of ways to solve this problem ranging from thumb drives to iDisk and I wasn’t particularly happy with any of them. My biggest problem with these solutions is the way they add steps to my workflow. I don’t want to have to think about copying and synchronizing files every time I move from one computer to the next. I just want it done. Like Picard in his dome-headed glory, I just want to look at my Mac and say “Make it So.”
So in this quest for syncing Nirvana, I came across SugarSync. SugarSync gives you a local client (either PC or Mac) in which you plug in your account information and tell it what data gets synched. I’ve got big chunks of my documents folder going up along with my OmniFocus datafile, Bento database, and several other items I want to have everywhere that are buried on my hard drive. You then log in on the other computers and tell them what parts you want synched locally (you can also leave them in the cloud). Once that is done, you are good to go. If I make a change to that little text file that keeps my grocery list, it goes up to SugarSync and then back down to my other Synched computers lickity split. This is really convenient when you are busy trying to figure out world peace but can’t stop thinking about making ‘smores.
The multi-platform support does not stop with the Mac and PC. They also support the new “third” platform. The iPhone. SugarSync has an excellent iPhone web site that allows you to access all and view most of your files. So when I’m sitting in the market I can pull up the grocery text list. Graham crackers, marshmallows, hershey bars … Check! You can also forward the documents from your iPhone as an email attachments. SugarSync already has Windows Mobile and Blackberry clients and I’m going to assume they’ll prepare a native application for the iPhone but its web interface is already pretty good.
SugarSync also has a photosharing component that will work with your cell phone. I confirmed this does work but I haven’t used it extensively.
Unfortunately, all this syncing goodness comes with a pricetag. There is a monthly fee. The limited number of files I sync easily fit in the 10 GB limit which results in a monthly charge of $2.49. SugarSync has more expensive varieties that scale up to 250 GB for $25 a month. There is also a price in clock cycles. As I sit here writing on my MacBook with 5 applications open, SugarSync is using .3%. Earlier it was at 7% and when it is actually syncing it ramps up higher. I also don’t like the way its icon insists on staying in my dock. This is the kind of application that should stay in the menubar only. Another pestering problem is the inability to remove a machine from your SugarSync list. I had some problems with one of my Macs recently that resulted in it getting several logic boards and eventually replaced. SugarSync treated each of those logic boards as a separate machine and, as a result, I have 3 machines on my SugarSync account that no longer exist. The developer agrees this is a problem and promises to take care of this with an upcoming client. Lets hope that is soon. Another problem with SugarSync is that it doesn’t always play nice with packages like sparse bundles.
You also have to consider the fact your data is going out into the cloud. The developer explains that the transmissions are all done on a secure connection and the data is also kept secure on the SugarSync servers. In terms of stability, I’ve been using it a few months now and not experienced any problems or loss of data. Be warned however there are reports on the web of people losing data. Don’t forget that syncing data through any system without first having a reliable backup is something like parachuting without a parachute.
While SugarSync is doing the job, I think there are going to be several credible competitors in the near future. MobileMe may get it done for its subscribers and I’m currently in the beta for Dropbox which looks very promising and will probably get its own review when it comes out of beta. Dropbox already appears faster than SugaSync although it does not have such a friendly iPhone interface and, in the current form, does not sync folders all over my hard drive. Instead it has its own dedicated folder in which you must keep files. Taking all of this into consideration, I’d recommend the monthly, and not the yearly, SugarSync subscription.
SugarSync has a free 45 day trial and if you are looking for multi-platform syncing bliss, give it a try.

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Delicious Library 2 Review

The last few years a term of art has been floating around the Mac community. You may have heard it. “The Delicious Generation” This phrase comes from a specific application called Delicious Library that released a few years ago and made a lot of people rethink Apple software design. Well recently the folks at Delicious Monster released Delicious Library 2 and it certainly lives up to the high standards set by its predecessor.
So what is this precedent setting software you ask? In essence, it is a home inventory system for your books, CD’s, video games, electronics, tools, toys, and other things precious. I know that doesn’t sound all that exciting but that is what makes Delicious Library 2 so impressive. It does home inventory with panache’. So let me walk you through it.
Loading up Delicious Library 2 there is a little scanning button. With a click , Delicious activates your iSight camera. You can then take your toys (such as a DVD) and hold the UPC code up to your iSight camera. You hear a satisfying “beep” and then Delicious goes and fetches your title from the internet. It reads the name of your DVD and literally pours the contents on a virtual wooden shelf showing a copy of your DVD. It just doesn’t pull down an image and name though, Delicious grabs tons of metadata ranging from actors, dates, reviews, and even points you to other similar titles you may enjoy. That really is all there is to it. When I scanned in Star Wars it told me “I am your father.” I sat my six year old at the Mac with a stack of DVD’s taller than her and she had them all scanned into Delicious Library 2 in about 30 minutes. Child labor laws aside, getting your stuff in Delicious Library 2 is easy. It was no different loading up the video games and books. Before long, I had most of the family library recorded. You can purchase a separate bluetooth hand held scanner that would probably be a bit faster, but I found the iSight scanning to be very convenient.

Not all of your stuff is going to have UPC codes however. For instance, some of my movies started out as DVD cases inside cardboard boxes with UPC codes on them. Well the cardboard boxes are long gone along with the UPC codes so I had nothing to show my iSight camera. Delicious Library has a text entry search that found all of them very quickly and added them into the library. It appears you can catalogue just about anything Amazon sells. Likewise, Delicious Library will grab all of your iTunes library. That is not just the music. It also gets movies, TV programs, and audiobooks.
My library currently only holds about 300 items without breaking a sweat. One of the changes made in Delicious Library 2 is the switch from XML to SQL which should make management of large libraries more efficient.
So by now you are wondering why bother with an application like Delicious Library? There are several practical reasons including things like insurance records and personal inventories but I have to admit I am hooked because it is just fun. I’ve set up smart libraries with different genres of books. I’ve also got them categorized by where they are located which is excellent for someone like me who is easily befuddled. You can manually fill your shelves or use the “Smart Shelves” feature which allows you to set up specific criteria very similar to smart playlists in iTunes.
Delicious also allows you to publish your library to the web or share it with friends. I am working on setting up a shared book library with several of my local friends so get our own informal library running. One of the export options is an iPhone or iPod optimized version so you can put it your library in your pocket. This could come in handy for trips to the bookstore if you have a large library. Another nice feature is you can drag a Delicious Library item on a contact in the OS X address book and it will add a note they they have borrowed an item and add an entry to your iCal. I really wish I had that when I loaned my Indiana Jones DVD collection out a few years ago. Delicious Library will also go onto the Interweb and figure out what all of your stuff is worth (in multiple currencies) and even, if configured, help you sell it through the Amazon store.
You can get a free trial at Delicious Monster. A new license will cost you $40 and an upgrade from version one will cost $20. Delicious Library 2 is one of those applications that I feel in my bones could never exist on a windows box. Even if you are not interested in creating an electronic inventory, download the trial so you can see for yourself how software looks when it is done right.

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