Data Crow

You will never find much flexibility with the features that come with MS Windows. Data can be organized in files and folders which may get scattered all over the hard drive. The more data you accumulate, the more difficult it will be to find it. Data Crow will not only help catalog your data on the hard drive, but it will also let you organize music, movies, books, contacts and many more. It is very flexible and you can add a broad range of details to an item.

A slower Internet connection may have trouble with the 44.4 Mb setup kit, but the software is free (unless you want to make a donation) and you can use it without any limitations, so the wait is worth it. Installing it will also set you back a minute or two because you have to run a .jar file in order to start the process, so you should make sure you have Java installed on your computer.

Your data can be stored in different modules such as movies, software, images, books and others. The modules are displayed as folders on the left side of the interface and some of them contain subfolders. For instance, the Movie folder also contains Actors and Directors folders. Their contents are displayed on the middle part of the window and when you select an item, a description, as well as an image will be displayed on the right side of the window.

Any type of item, be it a movie, a software, etc, can be added by clicking the Add button on the toolbar. This will bring up a tabbed window where you can type information such as a title, description, year, path (if it's software), developers or directors and mostly anything you can think of, related to that item. As an alternative to filling so many dialog boxes, you can click the Item Wizard button, instead of Add. Like the name suggests, this will launch a wizard which will help you by adding some of the item's descriptions automatically. During the first step, you can type the item's name and the wizard will search for it on the web. When the process is done, the results will be displayed in a list, during the same step. After selecting an item from the list and going to the next step, you will see that a lot of fields have been filled out automatically with descriptions, categories, pictures and other details. Finally, you can click the Finish button and the item will be added to your database. The wizard will search for movies, software or other items, according to the folder you select before launching it.

Data Crow does not limit itself to a number of modules. You can create your own by going through a wizard, which can be launched from the Modules menu. During its steps, you can specify what kind of items the module will contain (media, contacts or physical property), type its name, description, choose an icon and its size and more. After organizing your collections, Data Crow will make it easy to find any item with its search and filter features. You can also create HTML or PDF reports, specify if you have loaned an item, and much more. It will not take long to study the software's interface and you will find lots of features which you will certainly appreciate.