How do I use a CueCat to catalog my music?
October 6, 2004 11:05 AM   Subscribe

Let's say that I had an old CueCat. And let us say also that I have a 900+ CD collection in need of being inventoried. Might there be a way for the CueCat to help me with the collection?
posted by grabbingsand to Technology (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Yes, there is. I used to use readerware to catalog my books with an old cuecat until I lost intrest in the process. Easy to use but a bit kludgy, the interface is so-so and the overall speed of the application in terms of looking up meta data could be better. I'd give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
posted by Grod at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2004


luriete is thinking of delicious library, as yet unreleased. It doesn't say that it will have Cuecat support, but it does say it can use an iSight to scan barcodes.
posted by blueshammer at 11:54 AM on October 6, 2004


Library existed as a separate program with the same name before Delicious bought it, and I believe it worked fine with a Cuecat. You might still be able to find a copy of the program floating around somewhere. Maybe a MacAddict monthly shareware disc or the like?
posted by bcwinters at 12:07 PM on October 6, 2004


luriete might actually be thinking of Bookpedia and CDpedia, which are freaking great. Readerware is just crap in comparison (and overpriced!).

I'm talking about Bookpedia here, but CDPedia appears to be essentially the same, only CD-focused. (There's a DVDPedia too.)

The interface is basically iTunes, including smart playlists (libraries, in this case). You scan the book with any bar code reader -- including CueCats, both the regular and "neutered" kind -- and the program automatically grabs the cover art and other info from Amazon (US/UK/DE). You can also get Library of Congress and isbn.nu info automatically. (Oh, I think it can use iSight to scan as well, but I'm not sure since I don't have one.)

It automatically keeps track of your borrowed/lent/sold books, and can be used to send reminder e-mails to borrowers or sales receipts to buyers. (I haven't used this particular feature yet.) It works with the Address Book -- when you loan a book, you can pop up a list of the folks in your address book to post as borrowers.

Anyway, I love this program. I just downloaded it a few days ago, and I paid the program fee the same night, I was so impressed. I am gradually adding all of my books -- it's going to be a while -- but it is so much better than the other programs I tried before. I am thinking of getting the others, CDPedia and DVDPedia as well. But right now my book collection is the priority for cataloging.
posted by litlnemo at 4:11 PM on October 6, 2004


MusicCollector, great family of products. Try it out!
posted by madmanz123 at 5:03 PM on October 6, 2004


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