So, Delicious Monster finally released their first application, "Library", today. I have been reading some hype about this application on the web for a few months now, so I was eager for a chance to check it out. Basically, it is a really slick way of tracking all of the movies, games, CDs, and books that you own in the physical world. The key thing about it is that you can use your iSight (or any other video camera) as a barcode reader, which simplifies that task of getting information about your stuff into the Delicious Library
So, playing around with the demo, I found that while the iSight barcode scanning does work, it is a little finnicky. Reading the FAQ, it seems like once you get the hang of it, scanning barcodes gets much easier. However, in my testing, I could have gone faster just by typing in the UPC #'s. But other than that, it works as advertised.
The only reason that I can see myself paying $40 for this thing is if I can somehow integrate it with my Blog. I have been fascinated with the idea of automating parts of my blog recently. My idea is that, as the physical objects drift into my life, I'll make some digital record of them, which will be tracked in my blog. In that way, other people can see what I'm buying. This could lead to better recommendations of other things that I should check out. And of course, lots of flames about my poor taste in music (Chris and Steve would vote for "Sleater-Kinney", for example). Also, it'll be easier for me to go in and do reviews of things (which I like to do from time-to-time). The ultimate extension of this idea would be if I were to imprint things that I was only thinking about buying. Then my peer group could comment before I commit, and potentially steer me either towards or away from the potential purchase.
As it stands right now, Delicious Library stores all of its data in an XML file. So, I would have to write some code that parses the file, and posts the interesting bits to my blog. The hard part would be in triggering my little machination -- it doesn't look like there is a way to have Delicious Library fire off external commands whenever you add a new item, for example. Maybe the Automator coming in MacOS X 10.4 could help me out here?
-Andy.
You could just have a cron job parse the xml and put it into a nice html file that you link to from the left bar. It wouldn't be front page but it would be automated.
The other option is to have it parse the actual index.html file and add in the xml junk between a particular space. You'd just have to add something like
[!-- START XML STUFF HERE
END XML STUFF HERE--]
into your main template. Your cron job could then shove whatever text and tags between those two comments and it would be on the front page. It's not quite integrating it with movable type but it's close.