So I tried Delicious Library earlier this week. As John Wiseman points out, this is a beautiful product that many of us will probably never use. And at $40, it's a pretty steep price for a useless toy.
Sure, the use of an iSight as a bar code scanner is cool, and direct integration with Amazon.com is interesting. But this is more like a harbinger of things to come, and an example of stellar design than it is a truly useful application.
I won't be using Delicious Library for a few reasons. There are a couple of missing features that are probably already slated for an upgrade (smart shelves, like smart playlists in iTunes; the ability to drag and drop books on a shelf; all minor features compared to what's in the 1.0 release). Lacking those features is irksome enough that I'd probably wait until the upgrade. But based on the features that are already implemented, I doubt I'd buy a license even if these minor features were added.
In demo mode, you can build a library of up to 25 items (Books, DVDs, Games). Building up a real library requires a registration key, which is fair enough. Registration is a three step process. First, choose the kind of license you're buying (a $40 standard license, or a $30 upgrde from some other library cataloging package). Next, choose how you will be scanning bar codes (with your iSight, or purchasing a Bluetooth barcode scanner, which Delicious Monster resells). Finally, enter all of your credit card information and click submit. The friendly dialog box claims that this will be sent over 128-bit encryption to /dev/vendor.
I never considered myself to be a privacy wonk, but this app really creeps me out. It grovelled through something to get my credit card with nary a dialog box, warning message or a chance to say "no". It's handling its own transaction to purchase a license, so I can't see where it's going, or whether it really is encrypting the transaction. And, now that it's got my credit card information, and sending all sorts of packets hither and yon, I really can't be certain that it's not doing anything nasty with that information. So much for the principle of least priviledge....
Now, I'm not accusing the folks at Delicious Monster of being scammers. They are a bunch of ex-OmniGroup folks, and trustworthy enough that I'm not about to cancel my credit cards immediately. But they really should know better. I understand the desire to streamline interaction design, but this is just plain wrong.
Oh, and when I went to send negative feedback about this direct from the app, it crashed. Not exactly a stunning endorsement. ;-)
At the moment their page appears to redirect to itself infinitely or something.
