MediaMan is a general purpose collection organizer software for establishing a personal database of media collections (DVDs, CDs, books, etc.) developed by He Shiming.
Debuted in 2004 as freeware, MediaMan was the first software in its genre to offer a media-agnostic, general purpose organization software. The license of MediaMan remained freeware, until late 2006 when it switched to a price of $39.95 per license.
Amazon Web Services (later called E-Commerce Service and Product Advertising API) was used to retrieve product information automatically during the import process in MediaMan, which means it is also a part of the Amazon Associates program. However, the latest version of MediaMan (v3.10 series) no longer uses this API due to the efficiency guidelines introduced in October 2010.
Software development seems to have stalled with the last release of a beta of MediaMan 4.0 back in December 2013. There have been a growing number of bugs in the software that has made the program unusable for some. Communications with the developer have stopped, development and bug fixes have ceased, and the site has gone offline.
Product history
Date
Version
Major features
License
2004.3
0.8
Initial public release
Freeware
2004.6
1.0
Import from 6 Amazon sites, status tracking
Freeware
2004.8
1.5
4-style item listing
Freeware
2005.1
2.0
Virtual-Shelf, theme, webcam barcode scanning
Freeware
2005.9
2.30
Enhanced virtual-shelf, theme, performance
Freeware
2006.10
2.65
Switched to SQLite for file format, rewritten GUI
Shareware
2007.8
2.70
Playback of audio/video inside program
Shareware
2008.9
3.0
Complete rewrite to improve experience and performance
Shareware
2010.10
3.10
Complete rewrite to further improve user experience, adopted Chromium style GUI
