« iPhoto ‘09 – Putting Faces Through Its Paces | Home | Playing Along with GarageBand ‘09 »
IntelliScanner Mini Makes Fast Work of Collection Cataloging
By Dave Peterson | January 30, 2009
Maybe it’s just a geek thing, but I love to database stuff. Lists, catalogs, and data sets that can provide good useful reports are catnip to me. Whether it’s a complete rundown of all my DVDs, my books on British history, all the songs I have loaded into iTunes, or the growing stack of comics I haven’t had time to read over the last year, lists make me happy. Computers, of course, are just perfect enablers of this sort of behavior, but entering all the appropriate data into all the fields on a database record can make you go bleary-eyed pretty quickly. My most interesting purchase at Macworld was an IntelliScanner Mini 100, a tiny hand-held barcode scanner about the size of a cigarette lighter, designed for fast, easy data entry of all the items most of us are likely to want to catalog. The scanner has an internal memory, so you can carry it around the house with you (untethered) and quickly scan items (like all the books on your shelf), then return to your computer and download the barcodes to the included database software via USB cable, much like photos from a digital camera.
The basic media database that comes with the minimum model package ($179) is excellent. It covers books, DVDs, music, and video games. Scan your items, connect to your computer, and very detailed record pages (most with cover images and detailed descriptions) are added to your database. Reports and charting are built-in, as is an auction automator tool. If you want more extended database categories, a complete package ($249) of scanner and data sets for wine, grocery items (make a shopping list by scanning the barcodes of things you need to replenish), comic books, and anything else you want with asset tags like corporations use that can be applied to items without barcodes. You can also scan barcodes into entry fields of third party software.
If you have any desire to obsessively track items in your collections, this will save you endless hours (days?, months?) of entering the items by hand. For database junkies like me, I cannot recommend this scanner/software combo highly enough.
Topics: Gadgets | No Comments »