Our first utility has been made available in SVN: JCatalog. This is a simple tool intended to simply in managing a large set of digital media and split it into catalogues / folders.

The need for this product came from my lazy bad ways of operating my digital camera — as I would find myself every now and then in a position where I couldn’t take any more pictures because the memory card was full; at this point I would finally connect it to my PC and start downloading all the pictures from it only to realise that I probably have pictures on it that have been taken at last Xmas party, at my friend’s birthday, on holiday, at a conference and so on. Sorting them (we’re talking hundreds of photos) used to be a nightmare and I would give up half the way through (typically whack them all on a CD which would then get thrown in the back of my drawer never to be found again!). So I’ve put together this little handy Java/Swing app which allows one to view the pictures in a folder one by one and move them with one click into one of the sub-folders created in the original folder — so all you have to do is just create some sub-folders called “Xmas party”, “holiday”, “conference” etc and then start the app which goes through pics one by one and just press the button corresponding to each folder to move the file in the corresponding folder and move onto the next.

Here’s a quick screenshot of this little app in action: