Newsletter January 2010

Hi,

Guess what most of this news flash is about?
That's right, Amazon and iPhone apps, and I have good news!

But first, some fun things that also happened in the past month:

** Music Collector 9 for Windows **

On January 11, we released version 9 of Music Collector for Windows.
With version 9, you can finally catalog *both* your CDs *and*
your music files (MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, OGG, etc..).
Plus there's a super-easy new Add Albums Automatically screen and
a cool new "Vee Nine" look for the Details Panel, in 4 styles.

Here's the full What's New list, including lots of screenshots:
http://www.collectorz.com/music/upgrade.php

** Collectorz.com Connect improvements **

We're continuously improving the Collectorz.com Connect online cataloging and
publishing tools. The ability to upload your own cover images is a huge success.
Since the introduction, you all have uploaded over 100 thousand cover images :-)

Here's what we changed to Connect in the past couple of weeks:

* New Next & Previous buttons on both the item detail pages and the edit pages.
* Improved mobile viewer.
* Several other improvements to the user interface and navigation.

The full list of changes is here:
http://connect.collectorz.com/movies/whatsnew

Haven't tried Connect yet? Then sign up for your 30-day free trial here:
For movies: http://connect.collectorz.com/movies/register
For books: http://connect.collectorz.com/books/register
For games: http://connect.collectorz.com/games/register

** Amazon and the iPhone apps **

On to the big topic. First, let me explain again what the issue is all about,
because it seems that some of you misunderstood last week's email.

* Quick summary:
Last week, I received an email from Amazon, saying that we must stop using
Amazon data in mobile apps, because it is a violation of their agreement.
Or else they would turn off our access to the Amazon data feed.

So to play it safe, we removed our iPhone apps from the App Store.

(for clarity: our online database systems use Amazon searches as a fallback,
only for items that are not in our own databases yet)

* Our solution:
Today, I am happy to tell you that we have found a great solution to all this:

- Making Collectorz.com Amazon-Free -

You see, from your feedback we know that you guys and gals love our iPhone apps
and the mobile Connect sites. And we keep getting requests for Blackberry apps,
Android apps and, since yesterday, iPad apps. Mobile applications are
a big part
of Collectorz.com and they are only going to be more important in the future.

If we cannot do mobile apps while still using Amazon data,
then Amazon will have to go. Simple.

So that is what the entire Collectorz.com team is working on now:
Removing all usage of the Amazon feeds from our online database systems, and
replacing it with alternatives, so that you won't miss Amazon one bit.

* Current status:
Yesterday I had a phone conversation with two reasonable guys at Amazon.
They confirmed that once we stop using the Amazon data feed, we are free to do
mobile applications. And they agreed to keep our access to that feed enabled
while we are working to implement alternatives.

In the past 10 days, the entire Collectorz.com team has been focussing on our
online database systems for games and movies. Robert, Sven and Dinh have updated
and optimized our search engines and admin tools.
Rowdy, Martin and AJ have been adding missing barcodes like crazy.

And I am very proud to announce that as of today,
our game and movie database systems are 100% Amazon-Free!

Which means that our Clz Movies and Clz Games iPhone apps will re-appear in
Apple's App Store soon.

In the next couple of weeks we will be working hard on our database systems
for music and books, to make those Amazon-Free too. My guess is that the entire
team will be working on this Amazon-Free project for the next month, at least.

But can you imagine how happy I am that we started to create our own
online media databases 5 years ago? Best idea ever :-)

Thank you for your support,

BTW: If you want to stay up to date on our progress,
follow us on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/collectorz

Alwin
Collectorz.com