We just released version 4.2 of the Pedias - you can download it from our website or through the built-in update function in each program. This release includes Cover Flow (for Leopard users) and the long-awaited new iSight code among other goodies, improvements and fixes. For a full list of release notes, check out the individual “What’s new?” pages: DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia, Gamepedia
You can sort the author or director column by last name first without having to change the order from “Steven Spielberg” to “Spielberg, Steven”. Just hold down the Option key and then sort the column again.
When you click on the little magnifying glass in the toolbar search field you can change the search parameters. So in CDpedia, for example if you want to only search your song titles, click on the magnifying glass and choose ‘Track Names’ to let CDpedia know that it should only search the track titles and nothing else.
If you want to include the artist field on track level in the search as well then choose ‘Track Others’.
1. Download the ‘ThreeViews’ template from our Extras page.
2. Export your DVDpedia library using the ‘ThreeViews’ template.
3. Watch your friends turn green with envy.
Check out this video for a little taste of one of the three views.
Did you know that you can link text files, PDFs, movies, images and URLs to a Pedia entry? To do so, select the entry in the table view, make sure the info view at the bottom is showing (you can toggle it with the ‘i’ button in the toolbar) and drag whatever file or URL you want to link over the info view of the entry.
That’ll create a link in the info view which you can click to open the file or URL again at a later point (or if it’s a movie, to start playing the movie).
Even better, you can also link Pedia entries to each other. This is great for DVD box sets for example. You can add each movie separately to keep track of information that might be different for each movie such as credits, features or release date, but you can still see that the entries belong to each other thanks to the links.
When you link different entries to each other, make sure you hold down the Option key while you drag the entries over the info view. Otherwise the entries will only be linked to the entry that was selected last, i.e. the one showing in the info view. With the Option key held down though, the entries will automatically link themselves back to the other selected entries.
You could go even further to keep your box sets together and add a common title before each individual movie so they will be sorted together in the table view. 
Or if you want to go the whole nine yards (as suggested by Pedia user Rigido), you can create a box set entry with the box set cover image and all the other information pertaining to the box set and then link all the individual entries to that entry. (If you use the status bar view at the bottom of the main window, remember to set the ‘# of discs’ field to 0 either for the box set entry or the individual entries so the discs aren’t counted double.)
Computers are getting more and more reliable but backing up your data on a regular basis is still vital. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things we often forget until it’s too late, like going to the dentist.
If you’re a .Mac user then you can delegate that hassle to Backup 3, the aptly named backup program integrated with .Mac. And even better, all the Pedias are integrated as QuickPicks so you can pick them out of the list quickly (they really have a knack for nailing program names over there in Cupertino) and have Backup 3 include the programs’ data in your regular backup.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 
Now that your friends have seen your cool Gamepedia collection, they might want to borrow a few games. You probably know how the borrowing feature works already (just drag entries from the Library into the Borrowed collection) but did you know that you could create a separate Pedia group in your Address Book to make the borrowing process even simpler and faster?
This is especially useful if you have a lot of entries in your Address Book but only a handful of those are friends with borrowing privileges. With the Pedia group, the autofill feature will respond quicker to your suggestions and load faster too.
To create a Pedia group in your Address Book, open Address Book and choose ‘New Group’ from the File menu. Name the new group ‘Pedia’ and drag the address book entries you want into it. After that restart your Pedia application.
And don’t worry if people who are not in your Pedia group want to borrow something at some point - you will still be able to choose them by clicking on the Address Book icon when you mark an entry as borrowed.
One of the reasons we collect things is of course to impress others. So what’s the best way to impress your friends with your latest Super Nintendo Space Invaders? If they’re Mac users, and of course any real friend of yours will be, send them a gcard.
Gcards are files that you can quickly create by dragging an entry from Gamepedia’s table view to your desktop. Attach the resulting file to an email and send it off to all your Mac-loving friends. All they have to do is download the demo version of Gamepedia, double-click the gcard to open it and marvel at your latest aquisition.
(Of course the other Pedias have this feature as well, only the files are called bcards, dcards and ccards, depending on the program.)
To really bowl your friends over, send them whole collections. What the heck - go for your entire library! For that, use the .gamepedia export format found in the export feature.
For the coders: gcards are standard XML and could be used by any program or scripting language, including web servers. Furthermore, they use the Apple Property List style, making it a snap to use in a Cocoa environment. They can be imported to any program with the following line of code:
NSDictionary *importedGCard = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:pathToGCard];
If you’re looking for some quality Mac software at reduced holiday prices, check out MacSanta. Each day several different companies offer a 20% discount on their programs. If you should miss a day, you can still get a 10% discount until December 24th on the extended deals page.
Today is Bruji day so if you’re looking for a special gift for that Mac-lover in your life, head on over to MacSanta and buy the Pedias!
What do you do with a Mac Mini, assorted software and a very large DVD library? Why, you build a home entertainment network of course. And to show you just how easy it can be, Ara Derderian and Braden Russell walked listeners through it step by step in the HDTV Guys podcast last March. After the podcast we received lots of great feedback from listeners who got turned on to DVDpedia and its full screen view. Most of that feedback found its way into version 4 of DVDpedia and its redesigned full screen view: filters, multi disc/episode launching, switching collections and a details view. In response to that the HDTV Guys did another podcast about their move to version 4 of DVDpedia on their Mini Video Server. Once again, the feedback was great (including multi-page annotated PDFs that we are still working our way through) and quite a few people have taken Ara’s and Braden’s idea and implemented it in their own home.
For version 4.1 we have taken care of the more frequent requests from HDTV listeners: inclusion of the summary in the details view and multiple lines for the starring information. We had to keep something for future versions so multi-row browsing petitioned by Ara did not make it into this version. We had mentioned to the HDTV Guys that we’re testing out scrolling to make long summaries fit on the details screen. Turns out that reading text that’s not sitting still takes Jedi powers.The biggest request though was customization. Users wanted different information in their details: some wanted just the summary, others were missing the aspect ratio and video format and some didn’t even want the title as they can tell from the cover image. So there was only one solution: let the users choose the fields and their order. Twenty different fields or 550 summary words or a mixture of both fit on the full screen view details page, so get customizing!
Thanks to Braden and Ara for using DVDpedia in their Mac Mini media server as well as all the HDTV listeners that checked out our program. If you have an HDTV and connecting devices to each other is your thing, I highly recommend their show. Like any respectable podcast you can subscribe to it on the iTunes store.
