Raja's dashboard

Tried by voice. – Raja, on November 25, 2009 23:15

Tried by voice. – Raja, on November 25, 2009 23:14

Right after reading your message, I tried with an "appointment" with a time and date. Not only didn't it get tagged as a calendar item, it didn't turn up on my iCall feed as a to-do or anything at all. This got me completely confused. If I don't have a pro account, and I have reqall synced via ical, if I say "appointment" and then say a date and time, should an event show up in iCal at that date and time? Or am I completely misunderstanding? – Raja, on November 22, 2009 18:36

Jessie, yes there is a "location" field, but you have to enter it by hand. If I have 50 books on the top shelf of my downstairs office bookcase, I have to type that in for each book, instead of dragging them to a "shelf" called "top shelf, etc." so the location is entered automatically. Here's the thing. You are making an analogy between iTunes playlists and Delicious shelves. The problem is that if you know the name of a song in iTunes you can find the song and play it. If you know that it's in a playlist, you can't find which playlist it's in, but who cares--you can still play it. With a physical book, it's different. You really need to know which shelf it's on in order to read it. It makes no sense that you can drag all the books to a shelf, but then you can't find which shelf you dragged them to. The only alternative is to type in the location field for each book. That is a very inelegant, very uncomputer-like method. But that's what you get from following the iTunes metaphor. The thing is that in iTunes, if you get info for a song, you can see where the actual file is in your hard disk and you didn't have to enter the information. Are you getting this?

Jessie,
Your comparison to iTunes is just what I wanted to hear. Why? Because there are some very important differences that you are completely ignoring. I don't want to "categorize" my iTunes songs. I want to listen to them. iTunes lets me "find" them, all kinds of ways, and then, most important, it lets me play them. You ask the perfect question: "if you've already located the book in the library itself, why would you want to locate it in another location as well?" The answer should be obvious to anyone who actually has a library: after "locating" the virtual book in Delicious Library, I want to "read" the actual book! To do that I have to "locate it in another location". That location is called the "real world". What good is it to me if I can locate the virtual book, but can't find the real book? Your note reveals the deep problem with Delicious Library. iTunes is concerned with functionality, Delicious Library is concerned with pretty pictures. iTunes is concerned with real music and real satisfaction. Delicious Library is concerned with a virtual world of books with covers, but not with any words inside. Do you get it? Those of us who actually have a lot of books were very happy when Delicious Library came out. Finally, we'd be able to keep track of our very large, dust-covered, chaotic collections of actual books. We could remember what actual shelf they were on so we could take them down and read them. Alas, this wasn't what you guys had in mind. – Raja, on November 20, 2009 03:43

You ask what the program should do if you put the book on two shelves? It should tell you it's listed on two shelves! Simple. How come the program can't do that by itself; it's a computer program, isn't it?
You're using the word "shelf" differently than I'm suggesting using it. I mean an actual physical shelf, e.g. top shelf of living room bookcase, while you mean "category" or "tag", which would be nice also. Delicious Library demonstrates the difference between beautiful eye candy, which it certainly is, and beautifully useful graphical user interface, which the programmers need a little help with. – Raja, on November 09, 2009 15:19