Thursday, August 7, 2008

Your Next Purchase Will be This...

A CueCat.


What is that you ask? Why it's a bar code scanner that plugs into your computer. Why do I need a bar code scanner you ask? Well, because you can scan the bar codes on your books and catalogue them all at Librarything.com. that's right. No entering ISBNs or worse, titles and authors. Just scan and you're done!

I learned about it yesterday while lurking at The Well Trained Mind forum. I'm not much for classical homeschooling but shucks, those moms have ALL the neatest homeschool gadgets. Now there's a CueCat on it's way to me from Librarything.com.

It's so dangerous to have a Paypal account.

The next toy the WTM women folk have me lusting after?

The Desk Apprentice.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, it's a cool gizmo... but I'm sitting here looking at it and thinking "self, wouldn't it take an equal amount of time to sit here and enter the isbn?" Would it perhaps take less time, I mean you've already gone and gotten the book(s) off the shelf anyway haven't you, cuz the barcode isn't on the spine. And that site only lets you record 200 books for free, after that you pay yearly. Yah, I know, big party pooper me.

What I really need is someone to come here and catalogue my books BY CHAPTER so that when I want to find all the references to the plague or solar dimming (or even happy subjects) I can pop up a list of every single book I own that has it and what page its on. Now that I would pay for! (interested?)

Dawn said...

Pay yearly or a one-time $25 fee. Not bad.

I suspect that entering a couple of isbns is as quick as scanning. I also suspect that when you have a pile of 50 books it will be the CueCat for the win!

molytail said...

aaaaaaaaah! That is SO CUTE!! :-D

I don't do the whole Librarything.com site, but I love cat shaped stuff. How could I not, with six cats LOL..

I used to have a phone that meowed instead of ringing - "mrrrrow!" "mrrrrrow!" went my phone. :-D

It quit mrrrrowing one day though. Still worked to call out, but it never uttered another mrrrrow. RIP kitty phone.

Frankie said...

I have a desk apprentice. At first, we used it in the school room. It hold *a lot* of stuff. But the problem is it's big. Really big. So now it sits in my basement next to my printer, and holds only my colored paper and a few pens and pencils and scissors.

If I had a bigger school room, I'd love to use it again. It just takes up so much space.

If you have the room, you'll love it.

Dawn said...

I do have the room. :D I've got a huge bit of badly used space where on a desk that adjons mine that's just begging for a new toy to be placed on it.

It'll have to wait though. the CueCat was my ridiculous impulse purchase for this month.:D

Anonymous said...

How long a cord does it have? :D I've been wanting to put my books on LibraryThing, but it is too time consuming without a laptop and possibly even with a laptop.

It would be so nice to search our own little library first though. We miss great books that fit what we are studying because I forget I have them. :(

Dawn said...

Haven't got mine yet so I can't comment on the cord. :D

I do the same thing in terms of forgetting what we have. My son is interested in animals and pet care and I was going through the bookshelves looking for books and was stunned by the amount of related stuff I could find!