Wifey knocked it out of the park with her gift-giving this Christmas with a gift only book nerds could truly appreciate. She bought me an IntelliScanner.
With its accompanying software, I can scan the ISBN numbers on my books. It then searches the internet, probably Amazon, and then lists the book, author, pages, etc., with a photo of the cover and then alphabetizes them.
With the "search" tool I can look up authors, titles, notes I added. The handiest thing is it then publishes them to a custom website, which I can access from my phone or anywhere.
I'm a bit sad in that it makes my little notebooks and cheat sheets obsolete. I used to stuff them in my pocket when I went to a bookstore, if I remembered. I did that because I have a faulty memory and while trying to fill out my Dean Koontz collection, for example, I would often find myself buying doubles of a book I already have. Those days are over.
If I wanted to, it could also be used for CDs or movies too.
I looked at such software a couple years back and they all seemed to lack something or have some glitch I didn't like. This thing is perfect! It does everything I need it to and more.
My biggest problem is with the bookstores themselves. Sometimes they put a sticker over the ISBN or UPC and I have to pick at it with my fingernails to remove the sticker and get to the code. That slows things down, but I get there.
On rare occasion a book scans wrong and brings up a different book, so I do have to be careful about that. To keep on eye on it I only do about six books at a time, then review them.
I have a couple hundred books scanned so far, mostly from the authors I follow, but have yet to hit the big ones, like Koontz, John Sandford and Lawrence Block, which are quite numerous. It'll be a job but one I'll enjoy.
Assuming the thing works for a while, I give it a five-star review. It's fabulous and I highly recommend it.
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