My 2-cents worth

[gslusher]

I posted a reply to a review of Delicious Library on The Mac Observer, pointing out some of the 'pedias advantages.

[Conor]

Thank you, that was a nice reply. I really like the don't-take-my-word-for-it-take-a-look-at-the-facts-on-version-tracker touch. It is through our customers spreading the news that we do our marketing. Thank you.

[ScottH]

Conor,
Over at MacObserver I read the hostile message from the DL developer (the appropriately named "Chief Monster"), and your civilized reply. I've respected you as a fantastic developer and as someone who provides excellent customer support, and now I also respect you as a person for your mature, reasoned response. I think the DL guy is insecure about just how limited and toylike his program is when compared to the pedia suite. His rudeness is yet another strike against his incredibly overhyped program.

Thanks for the great work you do on the pedias, which are worth far more than you charge for them. If there's any justice in the world, your products will get much more media attention and your company will continue to grow, and the DL cult will try out the pedias to learn what they're missing.

[Conor]

Thank you Scott. Can't stop laughing at the chief monster bit. Our marketing is not as pervasive as Delicious, but it's the best kind, sincere and from our users. Like many things in life, it seems it is who you know and not how good your product is that gets you media attention. Our measure of success is happy customers and the fact that we can make a living doing what we love; and it has been a great success.

[gslusher]

After Conor posted his reply to the "Chief Monster," I posted my take on Delicious Library vs the 'pedias, based on about 5-6 hours of direct comparisons, using the demo version of Delicious Library. Use the link above to get to the review and comments and go down to the long message from "gslusher." (Apparently, to the Chief Monster, I'm a "hater" because I prefer another application to his.)

The interesting point, to me, is that Shipley has not replied to my comparison, perhaps because it's mostly objective and basically true.

I referred in my posting on The Mac Observer to another pair of applications, one of which sells many more copies because the company does more marketing, including selling through the Apple online store and commercial box distribution. However, the other application, pure shareware, is much more highly rated on VersionTracker. The applications (which I chose not to name there, given the public nature of that forum) are iSale, which gets mediocre ratings on VersionTracker, and GarageSale, which gets good ratings. I've used both and agree with the relative ratings. iSale gets kudos for its appearance, but that doesn't make up for the functional problems detailed in some of the VersionTracker reviews. I expet that iSale has more sales, but that reflects the marketing and distribution, rather than quality.

FWIW, also note that Delicious Library's awards have been based, in large part, on the UI, iSight capability and iPod syncing, rather than features or functionality. The shelf conceit is attractive, but pretty useless for me--my DVDpedia database has 1892 DVDs.

I don't use my iPod 5G for large text files, as they're difficult to access and read on that tiny screen. I'd much rather use my Palm TX. In DVDpedia, I created a smart collection that has all the DVDs but only shows the title. I save that as a tab-delimited text file and use Documents to Go to put it on my TX. The text is easier to read and I can actually search the file, make notations, etc. With the "old" version of DTG, I can also put AppleWorks word processing and spreadsheet files on the TX. (The latest version drops support for AppleWorks, but does support Excel.) I use spreadsheets as mini-databases to list DVDs and books I might want to get, along with the prices from various sources (including a column to show the lowest price), my priority and whether I've ordered it. (A simple trick--I make the title boldface when it's ordered, then delete the row when it arrives.)

[Conor]

We'd like to thank you and many other anonymous Pedia users who emailed MacObserver; they are now doing a review of the Pedias. Sales don't equal quality, Windows sells quite a lot more than Mac OS X and I don't believe it to be a better product.