Delicious Library 1.5 Now Available!
Mac OS X Tiger will be on store shelves tomorrow and lots of people are already receiving their pre–ordered copies in the mail. Just in time we have released Delicious Library 1.5. It's a free upgrade and has a bunch of new features that take advantage of a bunch of the cool new Tiger technologies like Spotlight and Dashboard.
Be sure to get Tiger and download Delicious Library 1.5.
We would love to hear what everyone thinks of the Dashboard widget and the release in general — post your thoughts to the comments on this post. Thanks for all your enthusiastic support for the product so far! If you like the release, help spread the word and post about it on your blog If you need any screenshots or have any questions please shoot us an email.
posted by Mike Matas at 6:13 PM
61 Comments:
both are working for me.. but whats up? STILL no smart book shelves? I was realllly hoping to be able to make them like you do in Mail now and iTunes. PLEASE add that soon, it doesn't seem too tough now that you have spotlight built in.
Glad you like tigerwiki :)
1.5 Looks rockin! You mentioned at one point the possibility of offering family packs. Is that still the plan? I'd like that mucho much.
Jon, this was a free point release focused on Tiger and International support. As part of our Tiger spotlight support you can now create Delicious Library smart folders in the Finder, a step towards being able to create them in the applications.
Unfortunately I'm not planning on upgrading to Tiger anytime soon, but I am extremely pleased with the international Amazon results (found more details on an out-of-print French book that I couldn't even discover via Google!) and the contextual menus bug fix.
Ditto Jon's request for smart bookshelves -- I originally purchased DL assuming (without warrant) that it was part of the functionality, so the sooner the better!
Anyway, thanks guys!
David, I am really glad to hear the international importing is working out great. Thanks for sticking with us though our dark US only days.
Finally :-).. I've been a user since day 1 back in november.. but this is the update I've been waiting for !
International support is perfect here in France, and what I did love was that it didn't take long to do a batch 'Reload Details' on my 3000 items library.
I can't wait to get my hands on Tiger tonight to look at the widget and spotlight integration.
Good luck focusing on the next big thing(s) (Smart Bookshelves :-) / Web sharing ?..) !
Got the widget working with no trouble at all. However, having no luck with the Spotlight integration.
Like Vinay, I do not get any Library results in Spotlight searches. Is there something expected form the user in order to enable this functionality? The Dashboard widget, I must say, is pretty slow and it takes just as long to launch the application and perform the search in it. However, the international support is really useful and makes that upgrade worthwhile on its own, thanks!
Mike or anyone else -- under v1.1, most of my textbooks included a number of entries under "genre," i.e. each textbook would be listed under something like 5 or 6 different genres. Under v1.5, when I refreshed these textbooks from Amazon, most of the genre entries were gone, and each textbook was now listed under only 1 or 2 genres.
How come DL is no longer downloading all of the genres for these books? Did Amazon change the data that they send out, or is DL simply ignoring multiple genres and listing only the first 1 or 2?
It was actually quite convenient to include all of the genres, so if this is a DL issue, you should make it a user-settable preference...
Any info would be appreciated. =) Thanks!
--- CG
Loving the improved speed of 1.5 over 1.1. However, the widget isn't working for me. It doesn't show up in the dashboard, even though it's in the Widgets folder with all the others. And my search results never produce anything.
Nice improvements in 1.5!
However... in my case the widget appears but it does not produce any search results. The Spotlight integration doesn't work either.
Do I need installing the Spotlight importer plugin? Placing it in any dedicated folder?
It still crashes trying to import DVDProfiler .xml files
It still doesn't import from DVDPedia.app
I've waited several months, but still have never heard back from the support emails I sent to Mr. Shipley. Even after spending $200+ on the bluetooth scanner and application, he still failed to respond. Then I asked DVDPedia if they could help. In less than 5 days, DVDPedia added the DVDProfiler import feature including cover artwork before I paid them a cent for the app. That's customer service.
Installed Tiger and then 1.5, but the widget doesn't return any results. Also no results using spotlight.
The Spotlight searching isn't working for me at all, nor is the Dashboard Widget. Any troubleshooting suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!
The upgrade is working well and the spotlight integration should be useful but I don't see much use for the dashboard widget.
I don't know if it is just the way I work but I would rather see the real app not quit when I close the window and allow quick access to searching straight in the actual app. When clicking on an item found in the widget just opens the the app anyway, I really don't see the point.
Guys,
The dashboard widget is sweet.. Once again, you set the standard for polishing your user interface.
-jcr
If Spotlight searching and/or Widget searching doesn't work try trashing ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Delicious Library Items/ and then relaunch Library.
Well, I'm sorry to report that trashing ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Delicious Library Items/ didn't help my Dashboard/Spotlight problems at all. Frustrating to say the least, and it sounds like a relatively common problem, too ... :(
What about Italian sources? Wouldn't it be nice to allow users to customize information sources? Maybe an API or some sort of plug-in system?
I really appreciate this new release and its "snappiness." For the Dashboard widget, is there any way a slider could be placed in the prefs on the "flip side" so that the size of the album/dvd covers could be increased/decreased? Thanks for a great product!
the international look up is great especially for CDs- but the file import seems to have stopped working from txt files....
Hey all, I'm Drew from Delicious Monster.
Our Dashboard widget uses Spotlight, so as long as the Dashboard widget is working, Spotlight will be as well (although the control of where results display is another thing - it's usually pretty good though).
My favorite feature is that you can also use keywords in searches: "dvds checked out to Mike Matas" will return exactly what you expect.
Here's two things to try for anyone having trouble with Spotlight or Dashboard:
1) Make sure that you only have only one copy of Delicious Library on your computer (even in your Trash!) - there seems to be a bug in Tiger where multiple copies of our application (and contained Spotlight plugin) will cause the entire importer to stop working.
2) Delicious Library stores it's Spotlight "metadata" in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Delicious Library Items/
Try deleting this entire folder, and re-launching Delicious Library. You can see them populate the index builds. Once it's finished, open Delicious Library's Preferences (in the Library menu) and uncheck "Enable Dashboard Widget."
Next open Dashboard, remove any Delicious Library widgets from the dash, and scroll around until you see that the Delicious Library widget is gone (there is a bug in the current Dashboard that will not show changes until you scroll around once). If your screen fits all of the widgets, you can also reset Dashboard by typing "killall Dock" in the Terminal.
Now back in Delicious Library's preferences, re-check the "Enable Dashboard Widget" preference, and repeat the step of resetting the Dashboard by scrolling or killing the Dock. Now try dragging the Dashboard widget back out onto the dash and performing a search.
--
Hopefully anyone having initial problems with Dashboard or Spotlight should be able to get on board with those two tricks.
If you need additional help, please write us at delicious@delicious-monster.com and we'll deal with your issue as an individual case! Thanks! I'm glad everyone is as excited as 1.5 as we are!
Anonymous (Re: DVDProfiler), This is Drew from Delicious Monster. Delicious Library can't read XML files from other applications. Export your DVDProfiler or DVDPedia libraries to tab-delimited format, and we should be able to import them. Instead of writing Wil, email us at delicious@delicious-monster.com with the files you're trying to import and I'd be happy to take a look at them and see why they're not working, if you're still having trouble. Sorry about that!
cg, we've totally changed the way we handle genres now, and it's *way* better now. Firstly, we now use the new Amazon Web Services 4.0 to fetch information, which means the stuff we get handed right off the bat is better and more accurate. But we also do a bunch of work to get rid of useless genres (stuff like "All DVDs"). One of the complaints we got before with 1.1 was that the Genres were essentially useless, and I think we've done an awesome job to make them a lot better now. If you disagree, you can always edit them by pushing the pencil button and adding your own (use option-return to create a new line).
My library won't save. I get some strange bug when I'm adding items, and the next time I start Library everything I added since I upgraded is gone...
Can't even send a bug report....
Drew, thanks for the detailed troubleshooting instructions for the Spotlight/Dashboard problem with 1.5. After carefully following your instructions, I'm able to report that, well ... it sometimes works. Spotlight will find some items in my library, but not others ... and the repeating the same search twice won't even guarantee me the same result, correct or not.
I even went so far as to remove all traces of Delicious Library from my system, reinstall from scratch, and create a small test database for troubleshooting. Ugh.
Clearly, some things about Apple's spotlight implementation are a bit fragile, but I haven't noticed that sort of inconsistency with non-Library searches, so it also seems pretty clear that there's some fragility involved in your Spotlight plugin, as well. :(
Anyhow, any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Just wanted to say - Awesome job! Nice improvements from the betas to the release - Thanks For the internationalization - now i don't have to enter all my import dvd's, games, and books by hand!! Keep up the good work!
Drew,
Your troubleshooting guide worked for me. Than you vey much. Now Spotlight/Dashboard integration seem to be perfectly working. I've also had some problems with other Spotlight plugins (OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, iFlash, ...).
There seem to be quite a few bugs in Tiger related to spotlight...
Hey Drew,
I followed the trouble shooting for the widget and spotlight searches, and after three attempts I still can't get it to work with words (like pixar, etc...), but if I type in numbers (like 064, 03, 034 etc...) movies will show up in the widget and also spotlight.
Hey all, this is Drew from Delicious Monster again.
Anonymous (Re: Library Not Saving), what error is it giving you? If the permissions at ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ aren't set to be writeable (they are by default), then we won't be able to save our library at all. Make sure that the permissions are all good there and it should work.
Anonymous (Re: Updater Not Working), sorry the updater isn't working for you. It could be related to web cache or something. You can always just download it from our main homepage as well.
For all of the Spotlight/Dashboard issues, I'm glad to hear that my suggestions worked for most of you. I'm still figuring out exactly how Spotlight and Dashboard work myself since they're so new, but I'm doing my best to figure out the best ways to troubleshoot them. If anyone else knows some good troubleshooting tricks, definitely share them as well here. I'm going to talk with Wil, Tim, and hopefully some people at Apple as well this week to try to figure out some additional things you can do if you're still having trouble.
I know Wil and Tim both put in some good time developing the Spotlight plugin and talking to a bunch of guys at Apple as they did it. I think we've done it well and we're doing everything right, so it's frustrating when there's still even a few isolated issues like this. From what I've been hearing, most people get it to work out of the box, but some people are just trying to use it too fast (before Spotlight has indexed, etc.). Hopefully most of these caveats will resolve themselves as Tiger matures, but on the most part, I'm really happy with how well it's working.
Thanks for everyone's great feedback and I apologize that a few of you have been having some difficulty with the new Tiger features. Keep posting if you make new discoveries about any of this stuff and I'll do the same for sure!
for the Dutch there is improvement, but we lost something as well. In the new version (because of localisation) we miss the posibility the choose an online store. The only way is amazon.co.uk :(
Why don't you integrate http://www.nl.bol.com for us ? It's our dutch/german amazon.com...
Another thing I really hoped for was check-out and return via iSight barcode-scanning. Is it coming?
For the rest: good work!!
ps. if you need support for the dutch translation, e-mail me (jandavid@xs4all.nl) ! It's somewhat strange here and there...
Spotlight integration works for me, which is very cool, but I have one request: right now, DL results appear under "Documents" along with all sorts of other stuff. Is it possible to make them appears as "Delicious Library Items," or maybe "Movies," "Books," etc?
Let me know if I'm not making sense here...
Hey all, this is Drew from Delicious Monster again.
Jan, you should be able to check out an in with the iSight really well. When you scan the barcode on an item that's already in your library, we jump to the item and you can easily drag it to a borrower or check it in if it's already out. That works really well - since 1.0! - from my experience with it.
JMG, we'd absolutely love if it we could do this as well. Unfortunately those categorizes are set by Apple and we can't add our own. So "Documents" is unfortunately the best we can get. Definitely go to Apple and suggest that they allow third parties to make Spotlight categories if you want to see this in the future.
For the rest of you still having Dashboard and Spotlight issues, I've talked with Tim about this extensively and I learned a few more tricks for checking debugging and status, but nothing more procedural to tell you guys. What I'm planning to do is post a FAQ question about this. What I describe above really is the definitive Spotlight reset. I've had some issues with it in Tiger myself as well and whenever I do exactly what I laid out above, I can always get it working again. I'm going to write these steps up in a more clear way and get them on the FAQ as soon as I can.
If you've tried my steps above and you're still not able to get Spotlight or Dashboard working, please email us at delicious@delicious-monster.com so we can figure out what's going on case-by-case.
Thanks to everyone else as well - the response we're getting to 1.5 is nothing short of amazing and we're really happy with the positive feedback we've been getting from everyone. Keep sending us your comments!
Hi! Great product, guys! I absolutely love it.
However, I'm having problems exporting. It seems like there is no .txt file generated at all. I go to File > Export... and choose to export it into my home folder under the name test.txt, but no output is produced.
I'm using Tiger, but I was having the same problem yesterday on Panther.
Any ideas what could be wrong?
Thanks a lot.
~Marc
Marc, exporting works for the currently selected shelf. Make sure that you have the shelf selected that you want to export. But that's really all there is to it and it should work great. If you're still having trouble, please email us at delicious@delicious-monster.com for support. Thanks!
I have posted a FAQ question at the top of our help page at http://www.delicious-monster.com/help. If you are having problems with Spotlight and Dashboard, please read over this FAQ item and email us if you're still having problems.
There are a few known issues with the current version of Tiger that can make Spotlight a bit flakey sometimes. It tends to work really well most of the time though and we hope that Apple will put out a update soon that will address some of the current small limitations.
Thanks everyone for your support! If you have any other tricks for getting Spotlight or Dashboard to work that we're missing, please post them here or email them to us. I'm just as new to this technology as you guys are, so definitely let me know if you know something I don't. :)
Macworld has a cool tip for Spotlight re-indexing your entire hard drive (or any folder) at http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2005/05/reindexspot/
It does work much better, and my classical CD's scan. Plus, imports work much better, so kudos.
One big issue- and that's the growing size of my data files. I've just about got my 1200+ cds cataloged- and have 300 megs of data. By the time I get through the records (8000+) and books (something over 4k, i think) I figure it'll be well over a gig. That's a bit much for data which I never use.
I'm sure somebody out there uses the 'similar items' tab- but for the large numbers of us who don't (I'm better it's a vast majority, but I don't know) PLEASE give us an option to clear out old 'similar items' data.
Now, if there's some way to do it that I missed, boy, am I embarrassed.
Does anybody else have this issue? Or is it only because I have eclectic tastes?
I would love to see an expansion into other types of databases as has been suggested before like: comics, wine, and so on...
Also how about a sync feature so I can use it on my laptop and desktop both.
A very small Spotlight bug: one of the DL search criteria is "Staring." I believe it should be "Starring," with two rs.
Drew - thanks for your response. I don't necessarily have a particular problem with the genres being pruned down, but I guess Amazon may have been a bit overzealous in that regards. =) No matter, it's not a big deal to add my own, and I do agree that removing useless genres is a big help!
Regarding Anonymous' comments about the Similar Items, I **wholeheartedly** agree and this is a suggestion I made for v1.0 and v1.1. I'd go a bit farther and suggest that, in fact, NONE of the Similar Items information should be stored on the hard drive... certainly NOT the cover art, in any case, which is what takes up the most space. Anyone using Similar Items most likely does it sporadically, i.e. they don't look at Similar Items every day and/or for every one of their items. In addition, since Amazon's catalog does change daily, Similar Items may change (increase or decrease) fairly frequently. For both reasons, there's absolutely NO REASON to keep all the Similar Items cover art or other information stored locally, when it would take only a few seconds to download it on-the-fly for the few times someone would use that pane. This would save *hundreds* of megs in storage space, and would most likely make Delicious Library load faster and require less memory. I'd say that's a big benefit on all fronts, to trim down the storage and modify how the feature works without losing any functionality whatsoever.
Regarding deleting the Similar Items, DeliciWeb has an option to do this, however I haven't used it and therefore can't give any personal remarks on whether it works and/or how well. I would really like to see DL modified to free up all this dead storage, though. (And HTML export would be nice, but I'm sure that's coming in v2.0 *grin*.)
--- CG
Thanks everyone for the feature suggestions. We appreciate the feedback.
I may just be blind here, but how can I switch between countries for item lookups? I live in the UK but buy a number of books and DVDs from the US. Previously it was easy to open up the Prefs and change countries but that option appears to have gone now....
Great App!
Problem though...
When I open my database in 1.5 and make a change (add a DVD, check-in a borrowed movie, etc) and then quit, the file isn't saved; everything is as it was originally when I first began. Checking the .xml file, it wasn't updated. The permissions are completely open on the file, too.
When I move all of the files out of the Library folder and open the app, it creates a new xml file which updates fine when I quit out of DL.
Not sure what's going on... any suggestions?
Thanks,
Aidan Chopra
Aidan, very bizarre. I haven't heard of anything like this before. One thing you can do is email us the XML file (at delicious@delicious-monster.com) and we'll see if we can reproduce the issue.
prior to1.5, when iSight read an unsearchable ISBN code. DL would leave a blank entry with the ISBN number in Amazon # field. This is very useful to me because 90% of my book collection is in Chinese, which are not readily searchable in Amazon. However, I can use that ISBN to find all the information from local ebookstore. With 1.5, now the iSight gives me only the UPC code. it is useless in the local ebookstore. Is there a way I can get ISBN as it was?
Your help will be much appreciated. BTW, 1.5, in general, does support Chinese (title, author, description, etc.) much better than before.
Awesome application. Brilliant use of iSight as a barcode scanner. I'm using it for DVDs and for my Cookbooks. I'm still not sure about exporting for my non-Mac friends. I'd like to see a more customizable export funtions (tab-delimited, choose which info to export).
The application is amazing. But oblong books look weird compressed. Is there a way to show them in the right proportions. For instance, by adding the right size in the info?
I think it would be useful with an integration with CDDB.com or Freedb.org.
You put the CD in your drive, Delicious Library connects to CDDB and recieve album info (just like iTunes). Delicious Library creates a new Music item containing the album info from CDDB.
- Emil
Working fine with Tiger, but export just does nothing (French OS). If this cannot be fixed easily could you (or one of your user more able at A'script than me) maybe provide an applescript based XML parser that would turn the xml Library Media Data into a tab or comma separated text file ?
Still this irritating garbage in the info with the "accents" and their &... counterparts
Juts a few steps from ideal
Thanks
Does the submit info actually work? I never get responses.
Does DL1.5 run faster on Tiger, as it's slow to launch etc on 10.3.
My problem now is frequent crashes - eternally spinning beach balls. The only solution is to force quit but then all data entered is lost.
Another query; with 1.5, when I scan a book, it looks it up easily but the format & price fields are filled with Japanese characters, even though the info has come from Amazon UK. Why?
A suggestion: with the format field, can this be made into a pull-down menu so that all of the options are listed? Then you can easilt change a hardback into a paperback, or a CD into an LP etc.
Otherwise, I love it - keep up the good work.
Mark
Are there any plans to allow DL to sync with a palm device. I have my read book list on a palm and would like to have my collection on the same machine. Also, Is there any way to have DL do reports? I would like to pull up the value of my collection without having to manually collect it.
I am really enjoying Delicious Library. I have a pretty good collection of books and the video barcode scanning made it really easy to import all the titles in one evening. I do have a couple of suggestions though...
* It seems like the spotlight search field should be in the top right corner like Safari, Finder windows, and other Apple apps.
* I'd like to see keywords or categories like iPhoto to organize my books. I know I can use the notes field for freeform text, but I'd like to see a simpler UI to assign categories en masse. I could then use searching instead of bookshelves or smart bookshelves.
* I'd like to see a scanning plug-in so that covers could be scanned directly from within the application.
* I have my DVD collection in DVD Profiler (windows only) mostly because of the reports (what I've paid vs retail) and thumbnail sheets that show the slot # of the DVD jukebox where the movie is located. It'll take some more advanced reports and some user-defined attributes for me to switch over to Delicious Library for DVD's.
i ran across this by chance and am quite amazed that something like this exists. i'm really happy with it so far, but a feature that struck me as missing almost instantly is the absence of a wishlist. i'd like to see something that keeps track of a wishlist on my own computer with (crosses-fingers) an html/text file export function! (so i can publish an html list on my blog or website or email a text file to family members). thanks for your time and thank you very much for the software!
Modified cuecats work great with delicious library... and 2 million of them are available for only 30 cents (see the bottom of the page at http://www.spintradeexchange.com/liquidation.htm ) should we get delicious users together and bid on one lot....
I have two problems with DL 1.5
1. Export does not work for me. (German Mac OS 10.4.1)
2. It frequently freezes (endless spinning beachball) when I scan barcodes using my iSight (every 20 Books or so) and all input is lost. That's most annoying.
Greetings,
I don't seem to be loading the covers for anything (books, dvds, games) anymore. Not on import, not on 'reload from Amazon', and not even in the 'Similar' section.
Did Amazon change something...?
Yes, i'm also not getting images loading in DL, though they appear in amazon's entry for the DVD in Safari. (29-July-05). Was working the other day, both UK and US amazon
Meant to include the fact that i'm running DL 1.5 on OS X 10.4.2
Hi guys,
Yes. Great app and very slick. My only comment... what about the ability to search for Region 4 DVD's? For those who don't know where region 4 is, it's Australia. There is already a free database that one of your competitors is accessing - dvdezy.com.au
Please provide this to your list of database searches, as the cover art of DVD's does differ by region, as does the price.
Also, what's the chance of plugin's and the option for third party develops to create them? Open it up to the community, with strict guidelines. This will provide an opportunity for the pooling of a lot more creative genius.
Thanks for listening and PLEASE add a database for Region 4 lookup. Cheers,
Chris
ditto - please ad support for Region 4 DVDs. It's not just Australia, but a lot of other countries as well.
Thanks
Mark.
Post a Comment
<< Home