NICK PEERS
Ever needed to keep a catalogue of important items you own? Perhaps your DVD collection needs organising before you start lending it out to friends or family, or you want to keep tabs on your books. Maybe you’d like to make a definitive list of your music to avoid going out and accidentally buying another copy of an album you already own. Or perhaps you’re looking to record a more personal treasure, from cigarette cards to stamps.
Whatever your cataloguing needs are, Data Crow is the tool for you. This underrated freebie makes it easy to start building and managing collections of all sizes, and thanks to some nifty time-saving tools, you don’t necessary have to meticulously record everything yourself. Instead, Data Crow has linked in with several online providers to make it possible to automatically populate the information you need from various web-based services (sadly, not all currently work, due to changed API settings on the part of Amazon and IMDB).
Read on to learn how to collate your collection, access it from any computer on your network, and set up a loan-administration system so you know who’s borrowed what.
1 CLIENT-ONLY INSTALLATION
Data Crow comes in both standalone and server-client configurations – whichever you choose, it requires the Java Runtime Environment. If it’s not already installed, go to http://java.com and click Java Download. If you’re happy running the 32bit version of Data Crow (most people are), just click Agree and Start Free Download, otherwise click See all Java Downloads to choose the Windows Offline (64-bit) installer instead. Save the installer to your Downloads folder, then double-click it, and click Install when the Java setup appears. Click Close when complete.
Once installed, type “java” into Windows’ search box, and click Configure Java. Switch to the Security tab – if you only plan to use Java with Data Crow, uncheck Enable Java content for browser and Web Start applications. Select Very High as the security level, then click OK [Image A]. The box on page 37 reveals how to get started with a server-client configuration for multi-device access. For standalone configuration (or to install the client on your PC), head over to www.datacrow.net, select Downloads from the left-hand pane, and click Data Crow Windows Installer to go to the FossHub website.
Here you’ve got a choice between Portable (All Platforms) for adding Data Crow to your portable toolkit, or Windows Installer. Either way, save the zip file to somewhere convenient like your Downloads folder. Once done, locate the zip file, right-click it, and choose Extract All. Then it’s a case of double-clicking the correct 32bit or 64bit file (clearly marked) to either install the program or run the portable version. Follow the wizard to its end – the default choices are fine for most users – then click Done.
2 CREATE CATALOG
Run
