Pocketpedia Improvements & Suggestions

[rpmpseudonym]

I love pocketpedia, so thank you for getting it out there. I have added 660 movies, 19 games, 57 books & everything is going good so far. Here are some ideas I have for future updates that I think will help make it better.

#1. A fixed location for search bar. It's a bit confusing when I scroll down my collection in the middle of a search & the search bar goes up out of view.

#2. Edit titles once added to collection. Sometimes the only copy of a movie I can find in Amazon is different from the one I own. I add it, but it would be nice to change the title from it being Blu-Ray to just the movie title.

#3. Custom cover. Related to #2, sometimes the only image of a movie is that of a blu-ray copy or other version, with the blue bar across the image. If I could search for another image of the movie cover & replace it, that would be great. Even if it just using google image search & saving the image to my saved photos, then accessing the photo library within pocketpedia, that would be fine.

#4. Internet connection. I don't know if this is a problem with pocketpedia or the ipodtouch, but I spent a long time adding movies to my collection, which meant spending a long time connected to wifi. During my time adding movies (over an hour) the wifi completely dropped & the wifi icon would disappear & I would lose internet connectivity. This happened about 4 or 5 times. Quitting the app & waiting a second or two on the main screen of the ipod would bring the wifi icon back. Again, don't know if this is a problem with the app or ipod.

#5. Alignment of alphabet search. The vertical search of all the letters overlap on the symbol ( > ) next to each movie.

#6. Edit collection names. Once a collection is created, it would be nice to change the title of it.

#7. Purely for visual appeal, but having coverflow for my collection would be really great. Turning ipod sideways (landscape mode) morphing into coverflow & swipping through collection & single tapping on movie cover would flip it over & reveal all the information.

#8 IMDB connectivity. Sometimes movies are not available on amazon, but imdb has their profile & information. Having another source for retrieving information on movies would be great.

#9. Icons. I have three collections in pocketpedia, dvd's, games & books. All of them have the same icon ( 4 books grouped together). Having a different icon for each category would help differentiate each type easily & quickly.

I hope you consider my requests for future updates. I love the app & look forward to seeing it become better with each update. Thanks for listening.

[moviecouple1995]

Just picked up Pocketpedia for my iPhone and have been waiting for something like this for a while... something that can house all my Books, Games, DVD collections for on the go.

I do however hope that you will take into consideration a few things that might help improve the program.

1. A way to Rename a Collection if you should choose so or make an error.
2. A way to manually Add a Title in case Amazon does not find what you are searching for.
3. In DVD... a way to sort between DVD and Blu-Ray.
4. In DVD... a more comprehensive list of Credits. Such as Director (in the body and not just on the top), Music, Producers, Screenplay, etc. Like on a Movie Poster.
Also it should be broken down on the screen by Movie Credits... and then Disc Credits... or Add a tab at the top for Film Credits and another one for Disc Credits.

Those are just a few ideas that I think would help improve the already good program.

Steve

[Alex]

Those are some great suggestions. A couple of comments:

1. This is the way that the Address Book does it so it seemed in keeping with Apple's Guidelines.

2. We're working on it

4. I have not experienced this at all with the WiFi connection dropping. Does it seem to happen only in Pocketpedia and no other apps (Safari, etc)?

5. Hmm... not sure what you mean by this one. The > Symbol only appears in the Results view which does not have an alphabet, and the alphabet search only appears in the Collections view which does not have the > symbol.

6. In process

7. This one would be nice. If only Apple weren't so cagey about their implementation of coverflow.

Cheers.

[Alex]

Hello, those are some good suggestions. There area a couple of pages of pocketpedia suggestions already in this forum. I'll look into merging them onto one topic so that we can all keep track of them.

Cheers.

[moviecouple1995]

One other thing I hope gets into an update... is the ability to under Collections... to manually place where you want your collections. As opposed to just having them all Alphabetical. I would like to have my Gamecube and Wii collections next to each other because they are both Nintendo products. Also the Wishlists and Borrowed should be at the top... or so I think.

I would also like to see the ability to add your own Personal Note to a title. At the top of each title... you have Reviews, Summary (Info), and Box Art... and there should be something for Personal Notes. I have a very extensive DVD/Blu-Ray collection that is scattered among over 100 seperate binders. It would be nice to be able to go into the Personal Note and add that this title is in Binder 7 or stored in Box 12. Somehthing of that nature.

I do hope you will continue to make updates to improve this already great program. If some of the ideas out there that are presented can be implemented... I would even be willing to buy it and I am sure other people would too.

A new icon wold be nice too. Not too fond of the current one. Sorry.

[justinluey]

I use DVDpedia and I have several different collections on the desktop app but I don't want all the same ones on my iPhone. I can only seem to hit sync and that does everything. Is there a way to tell the iphone app or the desktop version to only sync certain collections?

Thanks in advance.

[Nora]

Thanks for the feedback. We'll keep it in mind for the future.

[evg2000]

Hi,
I saw several pocketpedia improvement postings, non seemed to mention my thoughts:
1. Any chance of being able to change the font size? I like to have as much info on the screen as possible.
2. Once you've chosen a pedia, in this case the gamepedia, is it possible to have a sub list to choose from? example broken down by platform:

3DO
Atari 800
Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Atari 7800
Atari Jaguar
Atari ST
etc...
I have almost 10,000 items in my list and it can be cumbersome to work with
3. This may be more of a bug, the text doesn't alway display properly on the screen, it overlaps:


If there is anything I can do to help, like send you a copy of my gamepedia file or anything let me know.

thanks for the great products,
charles

[Midori]

I had the same problem, solved it: I simply made what is called in the French version "liste intelligente" with the platform as criteria. Since the lists are transferred to the iPhone... I simply have to look at the concerned list.

Midori

[Conor]

You can use Midori's option, that is the best bet with such a large collection as it splits it up into groups. Otherwise if you want one giant list you can create a smart collection with the rule "title is not [leave blank]", this will include all your games. Then you ca nname this collection "By Platform" and be sure to sort it by platform.

Thank you for the feedback on the font size, and do please send us your Gamepedia database if you don't mind so that I can try to replicate that display bug in "Mickey Mousecapade". You will find the file in ~/Library/Application Support/Gamepedia/Database.pediadata.

[evg2000]

When I get a few extra minutes I will try Midori's idea, still getting used the iphone, as I've only had it a couple of days. I have sent a pm on how to get a copy of my database.

thanks again,
charles

[illini319]

I have been a proud DVDpedia user for 2 years now and am quite literally about to buy Bookpedia. I also have a Macbook Pro, an iPod touch and the iPhone 3GS. (a bit of a mac freak yes, but I live in the Big Apple - what more can I say!). I've also been using Pocketpedia since its very inception and I love the overall integration of these programs to every one of my gadgets (including MobileMe). Ok, after that quick background, here is my suggestion:

Seeing as you guys have the mechanics for using iSight as a barcode scanner, it would be absolutely great to use the iPhone camera as the barcode scanner. Then the libraries between the mobile devices and my main library on my laptop can get sync'ed. I think that this really is a natural extension of Pocketpedia and am quite surprised that it hasn't been mentioned. (Although I apologize if I had not scoured the forum sufficiently if this suggestion already exists).

[Nora]

Thanks for the feedback. Barcode scanning is something we'd love to include in Pocketpedia but we'll have to adapt our code to be able to read the barcode image off a still image instead of a video as it does with the Desktop Pedias. It's going to be tricky but it's definitely something we'd love to include in the future.

[Conor]

We are also excited about the new 3GS camera that has autofocus that will make this easier, if not possible. Take a look at this flicker set for the difference: old, new.