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Version: 3.2
License: GPL3
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Chances are, that somewhere in your house, you have a tall stack of music CDs. Perhaps not one, but two, or three, or even more, stacked up all over the place. Maybe you also have a shelf full of DVDs, as well, and a pile of video games next to your game console. Like most people, you probably aren’t very organized, either, and more often than not, you can’t remember which titles you have, much less find them all. And then, maybe, you lend out items from your collection to some of your friends. Can you always remember to whom it was that you gave what? If this is an accurate depiction of your life, then Data Crow is for you.

Data Crow is a database program to help you keep track of your software, music albums, movies, audio CDs, books, and image collections. Installation is very easy; unlike many open source projects that force you to scrounge together a pile of dependencies and compile yourself, Data Crow comes with a self-extracting graphical installer. Both Data Crow and its installer are written in Java, allowing the exact same package to run on any operating system. For it to work, though, you need to have the Java runtime environment already installed. If you have Java on your computer, all you have to do is navigate to the directory where you extracted the Data Crow installer, and run java -jar installer.jar from the shell. In a couple of seconds, the installer will appear, and prompt you through the installation process. One nice thing about the installer is that it can automatically create a desktop icon and a menu item for you, so once the installation is complete, you can run Data Crow with a simple mouse click.

You can use Data Crow to keep track of the content and location of any your collections. To add an item into the database, select the appropriate category from the list on the left, and click the New button. Here you can enter any information about the item that you wish, including its title, year published, a description of some sort, the item’s storage medium, and its location, as well as technical information and a cover image. It is then stored in a “New” subcategory (accessible by clicking on the middle tab of the main view), where you can check to make sure everything is as you want it, and then save the entry. When the item is added to your database, it will be listed with the other items in its category.

If you own every book written by twenty of your favorite mystery authors in the past fifteen years, though, typing this all in could be very tedious. This is where the online search feature comes in handy. With the online search wizard, all you have to do is type in an item’s title, and then select the right one in the list that comes up, courtesy of Amazon.com.

You can keep a list of your friends, too — not to organize them (though that could be fun . . .), but rather to keep track of who you’ve lent an item to. When you give a video or CD to a friend, you merely have to right-click on it in your database, and select Loan Administration. Then mark that item’s state as “lent,” and pick which contact person you’ve lent it to, and Data Crow will automatically keep track of who has it and how long they’ve kept it. No more wondering what ever happened to that favorite book of yours!

Data Crow also allows you to create your own categories of items; so if you’re more into collecting, say, for example, owl lamps or beanbag animals or vintage soda-bottle covers, rather than digital media, you can organize and keep track of them, too. To do this, select Modules -> Create Module Wizard from the application menu, determine your item type’s properties, and you’re good to go! Under Tools on the menu you can also find entries for managing the current item type’s genres, storage media, and states (such as lost, read, unread, and want to have).

In addition to all this, Data Crow comes with excellent documentation, a scheme manager (for changing the program’s appearance), and features for backing up your data and creating HTML and PDF reports on your collection. If your collection is unorganized, Data Crow is a must have!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Database. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.