What are we working on?
Or, is it more correct to say, "On what are we working?"
Well, I'm glad you asked that question, whether you did it pedantically or not. It's been almost exactly a month since we released our software, and the response has been beyond anything I'd dared to image. Mike, characteristically, is pretty blasé about the whole thing: "I knew it was going to be huge. Yawn." Ok, he doesn't actually SAY "yawn," but it's implied.
I, on the other hand, assumed he and I would making ends meet by dancing nights at the local Chippendale's a month after release. Instead, well, we've hired a second full-time programmer, Tim, (sweet relief!) and a really great support dude, Drew. Many of you may have noticed that your mail to us does not get ignored! This would be due to Drew's efforts.
Tim playing with adding Tiger features, but his main duty for the next little while is going to be helping me get 1.1 out.
What's in 1.1? Mainly, we'll be trying to support a whole lot more Amazon servers around the world, and doing a better job of auto-selecting among the four we already do support.
Adding servers is tricky because Amazon only offers their convenient XML interface for the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. Their other stores, you're on your own. We've got some tricks up our sleeve, though.
One cool side-effect of this is we've found a more reliable way to change barcodes into Amazon numbers for the existing servers we support as well -- this is a big problem with videogames especially: lots of them are listed on Amazon but the XML interface we use doesn't have their UPC stored, so we don't look them up automatically. Our new hack will help us find more titles that are in Amazon but are mis-listed.
-Wil
Well, I'm glad you asked that question, whether you did it pedantically or not. It's been almost exactly a month since we released our software, and the response has been beyond anything I'd dared to image. Mike, characteristically, is pretty blasé about the whole thing: "I knew it was going to be huge. Yawn." Ok, he doesn't actually SAY "yawn," but it's implied.
I, on the other hand, assumed he and I would making ends meet by dancing nights at the local Chippendale's a month after release. Instead, well, we've hired a second full-time programmer, Tim, (sweet relief!) and a really great support dude, Drew. Many of you may have noticed that your mail to us does not get ignored! This would be due to Drew's efforts.
Tim playing with adding Tiger features, but his main duty for the next little while is going to be helping me get 1.1 out.
What's in 1.1? Mainly, we'll be trying to support a whole lot more Amazon servers around the world, and doing a better job of auto-selecting among the four we already do support.
Adding servers is tricky because Amazon only offers their convenient XML interface for the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. Their other stores, you're on your own. We've got some tricks up our sleeve, though.
One cool side-effect of this is we've found a more reliable way to change barcodes into Amazon numbers for the existing servers we support as well -- this is a big problem with videogames especially: lots of them are listed on Amazon but the XML interface we use doesn't have their UPC stored, so we don't look them up automatically. Our new hack will help us find more titles that are in Amazon but are mis-listed.
-Wil
posted by Wil Shipley at 11:24 PM
13 Comments:
So, dare I ask, what are the changes being made in the current "point" releases? I have 1.0.5 installed and am wondering if it's important that I download 1.0.6. As it stands, there would have been no way for me to know that .6 even came out, had I not been an obsessive user who checks the Delicious Monster website every other day (meaning no auto-check built into Library).
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25067
Checkout our page on Versiontracker. We have some good release notes posted there. We are also going to start posting the release notes on our own website very soon.
One major usability issue, that also slows Delicious Library down A LOT, is that it downloads and stores TONS of covers, and they can take up a LOT of disk space. TaoOfMac has a blog entry showing how his covers take up over 100 megs for about 400 entries (books and DVDs).
It appears that DL also stores all the cover art for the "Similar" items, not just the items in the library itself. The result is *tens of thousands* of cover art files being stored.
I would recommend NOT storing the cover art for "Similar" items, and downloading them on-the-fly when accessed. Further, is there some other way to reduce the amount of storage? For example, storing ONLY the large cover art (when available) and scaling down on-the-fly? It's just very inconvenient for the cover art to take up 100 times the disk space of the library file itself.
Otherwise, an excellent app! =)
Any chance that you are going to allow Delicious Library to sync with a pda? That is a feature that I am interested in, as I do not have an ipod but do use a palm T3.
-Andres
Any chance of context menus any time soon? that's really the only issue i have with delicious library at all. Any plans for tehse any time soon?
God there are times when I wish I had a MAC and this is one of them. But for what I do I cant justify a MAC. I would almost buy a MAC just for this awesome application. Please oh pretty please code this to the windows platform.
Another couple of issues regarding books:
1) Edition tracking. Amazon often has entries for older editions as well as current printings, and will usually specifically say which edition the book is (next to the Publisher name). DL does NOT store or display the edition, however, so there is no way for me to know which edition I have! It would be VERY useful if DL would download, store, and display the edition information, so I can keep track of whether I have the 1st, 2nd, 6th, etc. edition.
2) Number of pages. Although this field is present in DL, and although Amazon almost always shows the number of pages, DL does not download this information from the Amazon listing. Amazon does show the number of pages for most books, next to the book format (e.g. "Paperback: 225 pages"). It seems very silly that DL includes this field yet does NOT download the info from Amazon - could you update DL so that it will download that info?
(The same gripe applies to total playing time for CDs, although Amazon doesn't always have that info.)
Thanks very much for a great app - I know it's in progress, which is why I'm making these suggestions!
Your app has a nice interface and i love the fact that you have several storage items CD/books/games etc at the very begining in your FIRST release unlike DVDpedia who made 3 seperat apps.
however for your next release
1.Please include IMDB grab information capability as well not just Amazon
Speaking of Amazon you seem to have a tight relation to them an in READAWARE AW they a feature tht import previous purchases at Amazon by putting in your accont info for Amazone and Zip All your previous purchases is imported into the program
To me that was great as it has so far been 1500 DVD and 350 differnt books
an entering this manually is a drag the only thig is that i did not LIKE the layout and interface with READAWARE aplication so it went byebye when you arrived..
2.A WISH-LIST so that ALL the "to-buy" disks can be easily singled out, and /or added to the main list on purchase..
in this regard your "find similar items " is unique and highly appriciate, i also like the smooth look of the covers a lot
what about the possibility to also include BACK Covers ??
3.One thing i miss in the Automatic information GRAB is MULTIPLE down loads and the posibility to search in the titles also with that small cover window that helps you pick the right version of a disk...
As you might have guessed i come from previous "DVDCache" and this feature was really neat for such a small application, so PLEASE add this interface to the next or upcoming release.
4. I would also like to see a way to track and store BOX SETS especially a set like MATRIX with 10 disks. It would be nice to have seperat info tabs vindows, for each disk, yet keep the box as ONE entry on the list itself
Further more if possible please considder not being so tied to Amazon but inclue plug ins for grabing info at
DVD Empire US
DV-Depot.US
Thunder DVD CA
EzyDVD AU
play.com or sendit UK
or other big popular stores
This because these stores tend to list hard to fin titles NOT carried by Amazon specially when it comes to music DED Empire also have RSS feed with woul be a neat feature to have a ticker in program giving you the lastest news
Also direct Trailer link to Apple.com/trailers
This is a very stable site that Dont change URLS and dont block their trailers so you can easily watch from within your app. like in DVDPeia both 4:3 and 16:9 simulaton very neat indeed
Finaly we have a great DATABASE at
http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/dvdlist.htm
that tracks EVRY title piblished in the US with weekly updates a MUST to keep track on for DVD PHILES like myself so a irect import of weekly changes would be neat too
i guess thats about it for now once these features are implimated it would be an almost PERFECT media application for the mac platorm
Oh ye i cant wait for that iTunes compatibility as well
Keep up the good work
It would be cool if there were a way to print out UPC labels, so they can be sticked onto backup copies of a movie, for example. Then I can lend people backups rather than the real deal.
Or, better yet, come up with your own barcode scheme, allowing cataloging of items that don't have UPCs. Say, for example, I want to lend someone my shiny red swingline stapler. I could create a "custom" product, which generates an ID unique to my catalog. I then print out the label, stick it on the bottom of my stapler, and now I can scan it, check it out, etc. with the rest of my stuff.
-Morgan
What about scriptability and automation support? Since you only support Amazon and not everything is there (especially non-English books) I'd welcome the possibility of driving delicious library from a script to generate and populate book data
DivX a Gogo !
I'm concerned that instead you are calling the ISBN number an Amazon number! It makes me wary of the application. Will Amazon be using my library as a market research tool?
I can't make any promises about what Amazon does with your library, but considering we send them the same developer code for every customer we have, they're going to have a hard time pinpointing YOU in particular. (They could, I suppose, track your IP, if you don't move around much.)
We have a field for ISBNs and Amazon numbers in 2.0. In 1.x, we just had ASINs, but items like movies and audiorecordings can have ISBNs which do not match their Amazon numbers, so we've split it into two fields.
If you don't trust Amazon, don't use the automatic lookup feature.
-W
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