Thanks! Glad you liked it, and proved useful for such time-consuming job
Readerware looks pretty powerful, and its array of data sources is impressive, but it does not click with me. Being Java based, having separate programs for each type of media, lack of more types (games, comics, which I really need), and its price means a no-no.
Also, it seems that without UPC codes you're in trouble if you want to import data, which is also another problem for me, as I have several products that were only released in Spain. Of course, this is not a problem of Readerware alone, most of the other alternatives are geared to the USA market, which is understandable (you'd need separate programs for each European nation :-D)
Barcode scanning is quite useful for sure, but I don't have a webcam, and without it, sometimes I finish faster inputting the data myself than importing it, because most times there is always some cleanup to do (and I'm such a perfectionist :-P). I think that in this particular type of software there is quite some room to ease the chore of introducing tons of new objects, maybe by pulling data from various sources, not only for the sake of completeness, but also to fix that data automatically before storing it in the database, using some data comparison and merging, and also by presenting the user the best options when it comes to scanned covers (image quality, resolution, etc.). Maybe they could look at what some music taggers and rippers are doing, and improve from there. In this case, web-based services like Listal surely have a big advantage, as much of the data is already existing in their databases, and after looking at the bookshelves, I'm tempted
Another thing that I'm concerned about is interoperability between the various programs. Although you can always export database data to .CSV, I ignore if when importing into another app this data, it will be automatically stored in the proper sections, or if some will go into a generic field (or worse, lost in the process). It would be nice to have a universal format, and as a few apps already save its data in SQLite, I guess that would be an option (or something based in XML). Perhaps I'd grab a few apps and test such interoperability myself...
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. But I think you plea could be fulfilled in a near future (Opera 10, perhaps?) if the extension capabilities hinted by Opera's CEO are big enough to let Roboform interact with Opera.
