News: all updates for our software and apps
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