14 DAY TRIAL // The general opinion is that in a couple of years, we won't see any newspapers or magazines, because the Internet-based publications will replace the "real ones" completely. I know there may be a good chance for this to happen in many areas, but as long as people collecting such items will exist, I don't think we won't have printed newspapers or magazines at all. Just think about the comics magazines that most kids enjoy - would you like to see your kids staring at one cold computer screen to watch their favorite heroes, or would you rather like them to hold a magazine in their hands and browse it just like you did?
I must admit I read digital press often enough, but I also have a large enough magazines collection from my teenage days. Unfortunately, I can't use the device I will tell you about now, because most of my magazines don't have barcodes, but I am sure that most of you can use it, at least from now on. So... what's this all about?
Yesterday, IntelliScanner announced the upcoming release of a personal barcode scanner that comes with a software package to help you automatically manage your comic collection. The name of this device is Comic Collector, and it is built for both PCs and Macs.
The way it works is pretty simple - you scan the barcode, then the software grabs detailed information, including artwork, for each series and issue, from an Internet database, making it much easier to organize, sort, inventory, categorize and even share comic details with friends online using IntelliScanner.net, a free Web 2.0 enhanced service built for this purpose.
As you may already expect, Comic Collector will be released at Macworld next week, and the software is expected to be available as a Universal Binary for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later way ahead in April, while pricing hasn't been yet announced.