Newsletter January 2009

Hi All,

Alwin here, with the January 2009 edition of the Collectorz.com Newsletter.
And this time, it really is a NEWS-letter as there's a lot going on here:

- New in the Shop: the Opticon OPN-2001 Barcode Scanner
- Music Collector 3.0 for Mac OS X
- Movie Collector 6 and Book Collector 6 improvements
- Game Collector is alive!
- Collectorz.com Website redesign
- Meet the Collector: Susanne Vogel about Book Collector

** New in the Shop: the Opticon OPN-2001 Barcode Scanner **

You have probably noticed we added support for this scanner in recent
program releases. And now it can be purchased from us directly.

The Opticon scanner is a compact laser barcode scanner, with built-in
memory for 1000 barcodes and a powerful laser beam.

Check it out here:
http://www.collectorz.com/opticon-opn-2001-barcode-scanner.php

** Music Collector 3.0 for Mac OS X **

Finally, a new major upgrade for the Mac edition of Music Collector.
Find out What's New here:
http://www.collectorz.com/music/upgrademac.php

** Movie Collector 6 and Book Collector 6 improvements **

Both "Vee Six" versions are getting better and better. Their "Add
Automatically" screens have been fine-tuned to perfection. Adding books or
movies can't get easier than this (but I'm sure Ronald will keep trying).

Robbert and Sven spent a couple of weeks rewriting the search engine of our
online movie database.
Now it does a much better job finding movies by title. It went live last
week... and it rocks. Check it out in your own copy of Movie Collector.

Sven is currently implementing the same improvements to our book search
engine, which will dramatically improve the results of Author / Title
searches. Coming soon!

** Game Collector is alive! **

As you know, Rowdy, AJ, Martin and I are serious gamer nerds. So we kindly
asked the programmer nerds to update our favorite product with all the cool
stuff that was added to Movie Collector lately. And they did:

Today, just a few hours ago, Robbert and Dinh activated the new online game
search engine. Like Movie Collector, it now has:

- Automatic Amazon Lookups for Barcode Searches
- Better results for Title searches
- Bigger cover images, up to 600 pixelz high!

Ronald is still working on a 3.1 version of Game Collector itself. He's
aiming to release it next week. Sneak Preview of the What's New:

- Revamped Add Games Automatically screen
- New Print Screen
- Opticon scanner support
- Plus: Game Collector will be the first of our apps to receive a subtle
but cool cosmetic update that Ronald has been working on for a while.

** Collectorz.com Website redesign **

Of course we are always changing and tuning the Collectorz.com website, but
this month Mark has introduced some more "radical" changes:

- New menu bar at the top
- Site width has been increased, allowing larger fonts and more white space
- New scanner pages: http://www.collectorz.com/barcode-scanner.php

** Meet the Collector: Susanne Vogel about Book Collector **

For a few years I have now owned the Book Collector and I am very pleased
with it. Even though I have only about a fourth (exactly 671 books) of the
collection catalogued, it is already a great help and a lot of fun. Every
new book is included at once and whenever I have time I take out a heap of
books and add them - often manually, because I inherited a lot from my
parents without ISBN.

I especially like the plot and notes and reading/ rating sections.

Then I have just purchased the Music Collector and one of theses days I
will have all our ca. 700 LPs catalogued - even if I have to take photos of
the covers myself.

Very fine! - but now I am so spoiled, that I don't want to have my other
collections on excel spreadsheets!

All your fault! So I forced the BookCollector to house my collection of
Knitting Nancies! (little wooden dolls used for learning to knit for
children).
This is not perfect, but still a lot better than a spreadsheet - with 100
rows and 15 columns it started to get complicated! The best are of course
the two photos - one for the toy, one for the box, and the possibility to
sort them by whatever. And to set a link is sometimes useful, if there is a
homepage of the maker.

Everything that doesn't fit, goes into plot or notes. Purchase price and
date are great features as well! And I love the statistics!

Next I will try to catalogue my Spanish ceramic and cement tiles and the
postcards.

But maybe you will decide one day to come up with a program, that can be
adapted to any kind of collection.... And please for MAC!

Many Collector's greetings from Germany, Susanne.

That's it for today, talk to you next month!

Alwin
Collectorz.com