iPhone PocketPedia

PocketPedia by bruji.com

If you love books or films this is a brilliant apllication with many useful functions.  It can also be used for keeping tabs on your CD music or games collections.

This software has a feature I know many love – it’s FREE   It never ceases to amaze me how brilliant some of the free software is for iPhone and this software by bruji.com is a fine example, up with the best.

Bruji.com are primarily an Apple MAC software development company and they produce DVDPedia, BookPedia, CDPedia and GamePedia which are paid for version software titles and of course the main source of their revenue.

PocketPedia integrates with these apps on your MAC and will synchronize back and forth if you have these applications.  There are no Microsoft Windows versions unfortunately.   The good news is that you don’t need these apps at all to get a great benefit from this software.

However this highlights one major downside with this software if you are a Windows or Linux user : there is no backup function within the PocketPedia software itself.  So if you spend months or years building a great collection you are always at risk of losing this, if for whatever reason your database becomes corrupted and unreadable, or your phone goes faulty or gets stolen or destroyed etc. etc.  The only way back from this is to ensure you are religious with backing up your iPhone using the iTunes software.  This will at least give you the facility to restore everything. Of course this can happen with other software titles as well so keeping regular backups is just the sensible option.

Read Bruji’s info on backups here : bruji.com/updateprocedure/

That ommision aside, this is still a very useful piece of software.  I tend to read a lot of books so the Amazon lookup is really fantastic to me.  So many times I have been in a bookshop about to buy a book and just whip out the iPhone and load PocketPedia to check prices and read reviews right there and then in the shop. How amazing is that?    Depending on the reviews I might decide not to buy this book after all.  Sometimes reviewers leave recommendations for much better books which I can buy instead. Also I can check prices there. If Amazon are selling at close or the same as the bookseller then there is a good chance I will buy the book there and then. If the discount on Amazon is high then I can order it from Amazon instead.

Some of the books I pick up I am undecided about and add to my wish list or future maybe purchase list. This software is great for storing records of books you have previously read and has the convenience that it will pull in the book cover and reviews from Amazon.

Highly Recommended.  But make sure you BACKUP your iPhone regularly to avoid tears.