Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I Want One!



I was reading a magazine the other day and came across this little gizmo. It's a gorqit! What is a groqit (grock'et) you ask? A handy dandy little personal inventory management system that fits in your pocket. So? What does it do? I'll tell you.

A groqit is the answer to my book collection woes. This nifty bit of technology is a barcode reader. It has the capability to store hundreds of thousands of barcodes. It's also attached to a website where you can download and store your list, translated into what the barcode is for. They suggest you take it with you when shopping to avoid duplication. For me, it is a much simpler way to compile the titles of the majority of my books without actually needing to key in all the information manually. Ah, I can see you're getting it now. Another selling point is that you can use it to make lists for insurance purposes. Yes, with as many books as I have that's not a bad thing either.

In addition to creating book lists, it is also capable of compiling records of your cd's and dvd's. Have I mentioned that I have more than a few of them also?

My instant reaction when seeing this was I have to have one RIGHT NOW! But then I thought about it for a moment. My birthday isn't all that far off and I never know what to tell my mother when she asks for gift suggestions. This year I have one...and I've already told her. She's even being nice and said I could order it a full month before my birthday instead of making me wait. I think the real reason behind that may be because she doesn't believe the number of books I've accumulated. She wants to see the list. Okay but that creates a whole other dilemma. I have books that would horrify her even more than mine do. Perhaps I'll save them for last and then add them after I show her the list. Or maybe not. I haven't shocked her lately so I'm due.

8 comments:

J.J. Hebert said...

That's an awesome invention. Maybe I'll buy one too!!!

Brynn Paulin said...

Interesting thingy...

Courtney said...

Keep your cell phone by you so you can call for me to come excavate you when a huge tower of books falls over on you and you can't get out, hehe!

Unknown said...

Err...yes, I can see how wantable that thingy would be...ok, I can't I just want to be polite - and if you want it may it be yours.

barbara huffert said...

10000 books stacked all over my house and a growing desire to have them listed, AJ. I really do need one.

Molly Daniels said...

OMG...I need one! I started compiling a list of all the titles several years ago. Accidentally left the disk in the computer overnight, and my ONLY list/file was lost forever! I was at over 750 titles and still had 3 bookcases to inventory!

Geez...if you and I ever lived together, we'd have to have a southern mansion to hold all of our books...

Anonymous said...

Dear Ms. Huffert,

We at Groqit are delighted that you have discovered our new toy, and that you have such a joyful response to its potential.

I just made a link from our “News” page to your blog, because you seem to really get that this is not just a “gadget” but an entire system, and one that does quite a bit more than you can tell by just looking at the little critter.

One of the possibilities we envisioned when we set up the list-sharing capabilities for the site was the possibility that people would want to share some lists more widely than others. Perhaps you want one of your relatives to behold your entire collection of knitting-related books, but not certain other ones. We made our list-sharing tools so that you can customize lists to share – you can share certain things with selected friends, while not showing them to others of your chosen “Groqit Buddies.”

You can create as many Categories as you want. You might want one-per-author for a few favorites, or a Category specific to one genre of book.

So you could create a category of “Books Too Horrifying for Even My Very Understanding Mom” and keep that as a separate inventory list. Then the friends who want very much to know what would be on THAT list (!) if you let them see it, can beg you to loan them something, can offer to swap you something else for that something, or, if they want to get you a gift, can get you something NEW that even you don’t have yet.

Unknown said...

I have books all over the place too but I like and believe in number 27 of the chaos theory - may nothing be where you want it when you have to find it....and hey bonus the groqit people have latched on to you.