News: all updates for our software and apps (Newsletter) (page 6)
We’re in the middle of the vacation period here at the CLZ HQ, so progress is a bit slower than usual. However, we were still able to push out nice new versions of all desktop editions this month. And with everyone back at the office soon, there’s more to come next month!
Read on for details:
- Now live for Windows: New Excel-style “Freeze Columns” feature.
- Now live for Mac OS X: Better performance & stability / Full Screen mode.
- Coming up next month:
- FineDiner, restaurant journal app for the real foodies among us.
- New User Defined Fields system for all Mac editions.
- Music Collector for Mac: Music file cataloging + iTunes importing.
- Connect 2.0, a new look and feel for all Connect editions.
Read more
Sytske and I (Alwin) just returned from a short vacation in France and are now handling some backlog in all areas: support tickets, other email, project management, etc.. So today’s newsletter is going to be a bit shorter than usual 🙂
Let me just give you a quick overview of this month’s releases and current projects:
- All Cobalt versions for Windows : Create your own data fields.
- All Cobalt versions for Mac OS X : Important stability improvements.
- What’s the CLZ team working on now?
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Lots of things going on at Collectorz.com, on all supported platforms: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android *and* online (Connect!). Which will result in important software updates in all areas, some within a few months, some as early as “next week”, some even just went live!
Here’s what cooking now, in order of ETA:
- Now live : Improved My.CLZ.com site.
- Now live : Music Collector Cobalt.4 for Mac.
- Next week : Music Collector Cobalt.5 for Windows.
- Next month : CLZ FineDiner app for iOS.
- Within 2 months: Connect 2.0.
- Later: CLZ Comics 2.0 for Android.
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Alwin here, with what was meant to be the April 2014 edition of the CLZ newsletter, but ehm… let’s just call it the “early May edition”. Time flies where you’re having fun 🙂
If you’ve been following our Facebook, Google+ or Twitter feed, you have probably noticed that we’re on a roll ! SIX big releases since the last newsletter: the long awaited CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android, three big Cobalt updates for Mac and two for Windows.
And there’s more to come, including a completely new CLZ project for the fine dining enthusiasts among you: CLZ FineDiner (more info below).
On top of that: we reached an important milestone 3 weeks ago: 20,000 Update Plans !
In the meantime, 20,832 users have upgraded their software to the Cobalt version by getting one of our Update Plan options. Which brings the total number of Cobalt users to 45 thousand !
Thank you all for your continuing loyalty, much appreciated!
The topics today:
- It’s live: CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android!
- Coming up: CLZ FineDiner – keep track of your restaurant visits.
- Recent Cobalt updates for Mac and Windows.
- Upcoming Cobalt updates for Mac and Windows.
Read more
Saturday morning… while my wife Sytske is handling your support questions, I (Alwin) am writing this March 2014 edition of the Collectorz.com newsletter.
We have released important updates for two Windows Cobalt versions this month. Next to that we’re doing lots of “behind the scenes” work for upcoming new releases. Let’s look at both:
This month’s releases:
- Comic Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – new Quick Fill screen when adding comics
- Book Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – now recognizes 23 million ISBNs
Coming up:
- Book Collector Cobalt.3 for Mac – ebook cataloging and more
- Music Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – improved support for vinyl
- CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android – add/edit/scan – first screen shots
- Flexible user defined fields system for all platforms (inc. CLZ Cloud)
Comic Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – new Quick Fill screen when adding comics
In this Cobalt.4.1 update, we introduced many improvements to the Add Comics Automatically screen, plus we made the Update Automatically feature fully configurable!
- Add Comics Automatically: New Cobalt Compact template for Preview panel.
- Add Comics Automatically: New Quick Fill popup, that lets you set ALL Collection Status values (including On Order and For Sale), plus several extra fields, while adding comics.
- Add Comics Automatically: Screen now opens and closes faster.
- Fully configurable Update Comics Automatically feature.
Book Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – now recognizes 23 million ISBNs
The Cobalt.4.1 update brought two improvements to your Add Books Automatically screen: better results for ISBN searches and a new look for the Preview Panel.
- Add Books Automatically: Now recognizes 23 million ISBNs!
A new, secondary ISBN lookup data source has been added to our online book database, which includes 13 million new ISBNs, plus extra data for 5 million books in our existing database. This brings the total number of ISBNs recognized by our own database to 23 million! - Add Books Automatically: New Cobalt Compact template for Preview panel
CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android – add/edit/scan – first screen shots
As you probably know, we are currently working our way, step-by-step, toward fully stand-alone 2.0 apps for Android, with adding/editing features, barcode scanning, 2-way cloud-syncing and a tablet-optimized layout.
While doing this, we’re focusing on completing CLZ Movies first (as it is the most popular app), doing the other 4 apps after that.
In CLZ Movies 1.5, a complete rewrite of the app, we have already introduced a new look, a native Android user-interface, an optimized layout for phone, phablets and tablet and a new details template.
In the meantime, we have almost finished CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android, which will bring adding/editing features, barcode scanning and 2-way syncing through the CLZ Cloud.
» » Here’s some Sneak Preview screen shots of CLZ Movies 2.0.
The ETA for CLZ Movies 2.0 is end of April 2014.
Book Collector Cobalt.3 for Mac – ebook cataloging and more
This is Patrick’s main project at the moment: adding automatic e-book cataloging features to the Mac edition of Book Collector. Automatically scan your computer for e-book files, and easily add them to your database, using meta data for the e-book files.
This new version will also get the re-designed Preview template for the Add Books Automatically screen, plus the new ISBN lookup data source that adds 13 million recognized ISBNs.
ETA: 2 or 3 weeks
Music Collector Cobalt.4 for Windows – improved support for vinyl
The Cobalt.4 version will add more vinyl-specific fields, PLUS (if all goes well) the ability to add vinyl records by searching Discogs.com by Catalog Number.
This has been an on-going project for Robbert and Ronald for quite a while. We would have liked to release this much earlier, but the guys from Discogs are … let me put this nicely … not exactly cooperative:
Discogs has recently introduced restrictions on image downloads and the usage of their API, just at the moment we started implementing our new search system. And this has caused numerous issues, which we have been trying to resolve since mid-January. We hope to have everything working soon, but it’s still hard to put any reliable ETA on this.
In the meantime, Robbert and Ronald will just continue on another ambitious project:
Flexible user defined fields system for all platforms (inc. CLZ Cloud)
This is a huge and ambitious project we expect to be working on for a long time to come: creating a new, completely flexible, user defined fields system for all editions (Win, Mac, iOS, Android and Connect), that will seamlessly sync through the CLZ Cloud.
We will be implementing this platform by platform, starting with the Windows editions, then the CLZ Cloud / Connect, moving on to the other platforms after that.
A costly and time-consuming endeavour, but we think this will take the flexibility of our cataloging solutions to a new level.
And now… Sytske and I are going to enjoy a sunny weekend 🙂
Talk to you next month (or earlier if you’re on Facebook, Twitter or Google+),
Alwin Hoogerdijk
Hi all!
It’s a short month, so here I (Alwin) am already, with the Feb ’14 edition of the CLZ Newsletter. Today’s newsletter will focus on one of our customers, Michael Thomasson, who has attained the official Guiness World Record for “Largest Video Game Collection”!
But first, let me give you a super-compact overview of what the CLZ Team is working on at the moment:
- Robbert and Ronald: Updates for all Windows editions, with a new Cobalt Compact template for Add Auto, plus other program-specific new features.
Their Movie Collector update is already live, more info below. - Pim and AJ: CLZ Movies 2.0 for Android. Add Movies screen is finished (inc barcode scanning!), working on Edit screen and two-way CLZ Cloud syncing now.
- Patrick: Big update of Book Collector for Mac, with automatic e-book cataloging features and the new Cobalt Compact templates for Add Auto.
- Robbert and Dion: a complete redesign of Connect, with a more modern look that automatically adapts to desktop, tablet and phone screens.
- Rowdy and Martin: Quality checking all movie and edition cover images in our online movie database, replacing all small and low-quality images with better ones.
- Chris: A complete rewrite of all manuals of our Windows and Mac editions, using our own online manual software Manula.
Okay, on to the biggest video game collection… in the world…
Read more
The first CLZ Newsletter of 2014! So let me (Alwin) start with this month’s biggest news: We hired two new web-developers!
Early this month, we welcomed Bart and Dion to the CLZ team. Both are still students which means they will be working with us for just 2 days a week now. If all goes well, they will complete their studies later this year and will then join Collectorz.com full time.
Bart and Dion have joined senior developer Robbert on a huge project : a complete rewrite of Connect. All five Connect web-applications will get a more modern look and a responsive design that will automatically adapt to all screen sizes: desktops, tablets and phones.
We expect to be working on this for at least the next 3 months. I will try post regular updates on Facebook with screen shots of our progress.
Now, let’s go over this months releases:
- Big 2.5 updates for all 5 CLZ iOS apps
- CLZ Movies 1.6 for Android, with CLZ Cloud syncing
- New Tools / Options screen for all Cobalt versions for Windows
- Editing in main list now available for all Cobalt versions
Read more
This is CLZ Alwin, with the last CLZ newsletter for 2013!
I can happily report that 2013 was a great year for Collectorz.com, the highlight being the success of the new Cobalt versions and our new Update Plan system.
What makes us even happier is that just this morning, we have sold the 15,000th Update Plan! If we include the 16,000 users who received a free Cobalt license (because of a recent purchase), plus all new customers since the Cobalt release, this brings the total number of Cobalt users to 37,886 !
HOWEVER: we are still receiving a lot of questions about Cobalt and the Update Plans. So in this newsletter I’d like to try and answer the 5 most common questions.
In other news… I’ll cover recent Cobalt updates, upcoming Cobalt updates and what’s coming up on mobile and online. Here we go:
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This is Alwin, with your Collectorz.com News for November 2013.
At the CLZ HQ, the Cobalt craziness is slowly quieting down. Our Support guys and gal (Chris, AJ and Sytske) have everything under control again.
On the development side, the advantages of the Update Plan system are already showing, with this month’s Cobalt.1 updates bringing a nice set of improvements for all PC & Mac programs and our new weekly “Maintenance Monday” resulting in faster fixes for reported problems (more details in the 1st topic of this newsletter).
I have three news topics today:
- About Cobalt and Update Plans (over 13,000 users have gone Cobalt!)
- 3 days left in our Black Friday Sale: Get an extra Collectorz.com program half price!
- CLZ Movies 1.5 for Android is live!
Read more
Hi all,
Alwin of Collectorz.com again 🙂
This time with the Collectorz.com newsletter for October 2013, the craziest month in Collectorz.com history! What a ride it was (and still is!).
The past 2 months the CLZ team has been working on nine (!!) new Cobalt versions for our Windows and Mac editions and at the same time preparing our software and server-side code for the completely new Update Plan system.
But I am proud to say that we made it! In the past 4 days, all nine Cobalt versions and the Update Plan system went live and it’s all working great 🙂
In the meantime, over 5,800 (!!) users have already updated to Cobalt, most of them opting to pay for their Update Plan with the new automatic monthly payments, others choosing to Pre-Pay for a year. Thank you all!
Read more
Alwin here, with your CLZ News for September 2013.
When I start writing these newsletters, I always scroll down the timeline of our Facebook page, just to remind me of everything that happened in the past month.
This time however, it looked like we were just a mobile app developer, as I only found posts about iOS and Android. Of course, our mobile apps are a big part of Collectorz.com, especially now with the recent iOS 7 release and our big Android project. But it certainly isn’t the only thing we’re working on!
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This is CLZ Alwin here, with your monthly dose of Collectorz.com news.
This month we released a major upgrade of “the one that started it all”. The program that I started on myself, in my spare time, back in 1996 (yes, that’s over 17 years ago!).
Of course, the program I am talking about here is Music Collector for Windows.
In the meantime, our lead Windows developer Ronald has taken over the programming duties on Music Collector, but still, I am very proud that my baby has just reached version 11!
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July 31, so just in time for the July 2013 edition of the CLZ Newsletter.
It’s the summer holiday season, so most of the CLZ crew is either currently on vacation,
just returned from vacation or just leaving for vacation.
But still, we’re getting a lot of work done 🙂 Here’s what’s cooking :
- The price of the iOS apps will go *up* next week. Get them now!
- But…. What about Android ????
- Just a few weeks away: Music Collector 11 for Windows
- Lots of software updates for improved CLZ Cloud syncing
- Coming up: completely new mobile Connect website
- Core for Movies is getting a Submit feature
Let’s start with the most urgent topic, as I don’t want you to miss out on this one:
Read more
Yes, it’s coming soon, the next major step forward for Music Collector, version 11.
And if you’ve been following our news about the recent upgrades of our Movie Collector and Book Collector products, you probably already have a good idea what it will bring.
Music Collector will finally get:
- Full Unicode Support – better handling of special characters for non-English languages
- New Virtual Shelves look, new templates, new look for the toolbars and icons
- More intuitive behaviour of the main screen’s tree and list panels
- Integrated support for our CLZ Barry wireless barcode scanner app
Read more
CLZ Alwin here, with the June 2013 edition of the CLZ Newsletter.
Just 3 topics today and they’re closely related, it’s all about the CLZ Cloud!
- New naming : CLZ Account and CLZ Cloud
- CLZ Cloud storage and syncing is now free for everyone!
- Coming soon: Improved CLZ Cloud syncing with custom images and more data fields
Read more
Hectic times here at the CLZ office in Amsterdam. We’ve completed some big releases and started on a couple of huge other projects. Some of which I will disclose in this newsletter (we’re back on Android!!), but others I have to keep quiet about for now.
First, here’s the new stuff we’ve launched this month:
- CLZ Barry for Android version 1.1
- Book Collector NINE for Mac OS X
- Core for Comics / Comic Collector 5.4
And this is what we’re working on now:
- CLZ app updates for Android ( join our CLZ Android Club! )
- Further improvements for the iOS apps
- Improvements to Connect software and cloud-syncing
- …. ?
Let me go over these in more details (warning: it’s lllloooonnnnnggggg).
Read more
I know, I know, it’s been way too long since we last updated our Android apps. But this is all going to change soon. Please read on for happy Android news …
You see, during most of 2012, while the Android and iOS editions of our mobile apps were exactly the same… our iOS editions still sold twice as many copies …
Yes, that’s weird, with more Android devices being sold. Maybe the average Collectorz user is more likely to use iOS, maybe the average iOS user buys more apps, I don’t know.
Fact is, when we started developing the most frequently requested features for our apps,
( adding, editing, barcode scanning and two-way syncing through Connect )
the obvious choice was to do all this for the iPhone/iPad edition first …
Yes, I admit, that sucks if you’re on Android. But it got even worse:
The development of these 2.0 apps for iOS took way longer than expected 🙁
And all that time, progress on the Android editions was left at a standstill.
HOWEVER: here’s the good news:
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This is Alwin, with your monthly dose of Collectorz.com news. Lots of different projects
going on, on various platforms. Windows, Mac, online, iOS and yes, even on Android 🙂
Todays topics:
- Coming up: Book Collector NINE for Mac OS X
- Reminder: Movie Collector NINE for Mac OS X is live
- Now available in the App Store: CLZ Games 2.0 for iOS
- Coming up: CLZ Barry 1.1 for Android and iOS
- Coming up: Comic Collector 5.4 for Mac and Windows
Read more
Saturday morning, Easter weekend and the last weekend of March 2013.
Perfect timing for your monthly Collectorz.com update.
Here’s what we’re working on nowadays:
- Coming up this Tuesday: Movie Collector 9 for Mac OS X !!
- Now live in the App Store: 2.1 versions of all 4 iOS apps
- Work in progress: CLZ Games 2.0 for iOS
- Work in progress: Core for Comics
Read more
We’re nearing the end of February, the shortest month of the year.
But still, we were able to push out a lot of important releases (7 in total!).
- CLZ Books 2.0 for iOS available in the App Store
- 9.1 releases of both Movie and Book Collector for Windows
- Maintenance updates for all four Mac editions
And this is what the CLZ team is working on now:
- 2.1 versions for all 4 iOS apps
- Movie Collector 9 for Mac OS X !!
Let me (Alwin) go into more details for all of the above:
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The new CLZ Books 2.0 app for iOS is live!
CLZ Books is now a full book cataloging app with adding, editing and barcode scanning features, not just a viewer app like the 1.x versions.
Find more information and screen shots on the CLZ.com website.
You can buy CLZ Books 2.0 in the App Store now, for US $9.99.
Just search the App Store on your device for “CLZ Books”, or go here.
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Welcome to the first Collectorz.com newsletter of 2013!
And we’re off to a great start, with two big releases already completed and another one coming up.
On top of that, our popular CLZ Barry app got a very nice review at TUAW.com. To celebrate Barry’s success, we’re doing a *Barry Half Price Sale” this week!
So these are the topics of today’s newsletter:
- Cut the barcode scanning cord with CLZ Barry (half price this week!)
- Book Collector NINE for Windows is live
- CLZ Music 2.0 for iOS live, CLZ Books 2.0 coming up
- CLZ Books 2.0 for iOS submitted, live tomorrow?
Let’s start with Barry.
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It’s the last day of the year, so this is the last CLZ newsletter for 2012.
But before I tell you about our recent releases and current projects…
The entire Collectorz.com team (Robbert, Martin, Rowdy, Sven, AJ, Ronald,
Chris, Pim, Patrick, Syts and Alwin) wishes you a Happy New Year,
with lots of new music, movies, books, comics and video games!
If you all keep growing your collections, we’ll keep providing and improving
the tools to manage it all. Just like we did in 2012, when we brought you:
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This is Alwin, of Collectorz.com, with the November 2012 Newsletter.
With the recent big updates and more new versions coming up,
it’s pretty hectic at the CLZ headquarters in Amsterdam.
Here’s an overview of what everyone’s working on:
- Ronald, Martin, Rowdy, AJ, Sven and I are finalizing the software and
online movie database for the imminent Movie Collector 9 for Windows. - Robbert and Martin are working together to create and tweak the
new Core for Movies service and the necessary in-house admin tools. - Pim, Patrick, AJ and Chris still got their hands full with our big
iOS two-point-oh project, with the main focus on CLZ Music 2.0 for iOS. - Sytske, Sonny and Chris are answering all support requests and all your
questions related to the recent and upcoming releases.
Now let me go over these projects in more details:
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