We just rolled out a new feature to the Zistle main site! Many of you have asked for a way to annotate cards in your collections, so we added a new view type.  If you are viewing or editing your collection you will now notice a “details” view option is available.  If you select that it will show you your results that look like this:

In addition to being able to edit your collection like the other views, in details view you can add and view notes that you have put on your cards.  If you click “edit note” you will get an input box that you can enter your notes into

If you click save then your note will be attached to that card

So notes will allow you to store information specific to your cards for you to see.  A few things to note about notes:

1. Right now you can only use this view on your own collections
2. If you search while viewing your collection you will search over your notes
3. If you move the quantity of cards to 0 you will lose any notes attached to those cards

Enjoy and if you have any suggestions for improvements we would love to hear them!

by josh Features, Zistle Updates

After we launched live chat, there were quite a few requests to add a forum. And well, we just can’t say no. There is now a Zistle Forum that you should definitely go and check out. As you might have guessed, this will help facilitate the writing of the style guide as well as give you an opportunity to have longer threads between members. If you want a category added, just let me know. The forum is housed at forum.zistle.com and if you are logged into Zistle, you will be automatically logged into the forum as well.

Private messaging is built into the platform and it is called ‘whispering’. If you want to whisper, simply start a new discussion and type in the user’s name in the appropriate field and only they will be able to see your message.Similarly, when you respond to a thread, you can simply enter in the name (the field will auto-complete so you don’t need to type the whole username) and you are all set.

Chat is still available for you to use. For now, they are different experiences but we will most likely integrate them down the road. As always, we love to hear your feedback on what you like, don’t like, think could be better, etc so don’t be shy!

by ashley Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates Forum

Live chat, our most requested feature, just came to Zistle and we are very, very excited to offer this feature to our members. Any member logged into Zistle will be able to access Zistle Live Chat to instantly connect with other Zistle members. There will be one main chat room where all members logged in will appear. You can participate in the main conversation or have a private conversation with any individual member in a separate tab. So you can discuss the topic du jour or work out trade details with other members simultaneously. To initiate a private conversation with a member, just click their username and click ‘ private message’.

You will be able to access Zistle Live Chat from your dashboard and the trading homepage. Members who do not log into Zistle chat will not appear in the chat room so you don’t need to opt out if you are not interested in chatting with other members online.

While we have tested the new chat feature, we anticipate that bugs will arise over the next few days. As always, we rely on you to let us know about any issues you encounter. We work hard to get new features to you as quickly as possible and we appreciate your help when we launch a new feature.

See you soon on Zistle Chat!

by ashley Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates Live chat

We all need to show off every once in a while. It’s ok, don’t be modest–especially about your cards. If you want to show off your collection on Zistle, now you can! Anyone can view your entire collection by visiting www.zistle.com/username/collection/sport. Visitors do not need to be logged in to see your collections so you can post a link on your blog or share it with anyone that you want.

When visitors access your collection, they will be able to browse in the same way you do when viewing your collection. Your collections are also now accessible from your dashboard by clicking the sport names in the “My Collections” section. What are you waiting for…go show off already!

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates share, view collections

We have launched the beta version of our teams functionality to our beta site. With this feature you can add a player’s team to the card when editing your collection, browsing the library, adding a card to the library or flagging a card.

All of the current professional teams for all four sports have been entered as well as a few retired, amateur and college teams. When adding team in list view, click on the “add team” link and type in the team name and it will automatically complete your selection. Click the green add button and the team will be added to that card just like that.

Select Add Team

Type name and click green add icon

If the team you are entering is not in our database, you will receive a prompt to add that team to the library.

You cannot see the team name while you are viewing your collection right now. If you would like to add teams to your cards, go to “edit collection” and select “just my cards” and add teams this way.

You will also note a different layout for editing collection. This was necessary to have enough room to display team info. We look forward to hearing your thoughts about this new layout.

We also plan to allow you to sort by team while editing but we have not yet built this functionality. We will likely add it in the next few days. If you can, try to add teams to a few cards and let us know what you think. We would like to make this available as soon as possible.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, New on Zistle, Zistle Updates beta, list view, teams

It is Valentine’s Day which means that most people are thinking about a different type of cardboard–the type that tells loved ones you love them and/or the cardboard boxes that contain chocolates. Not us! We celebrated Valentine’s day early by heading to the local card shop and buying a box of fresh wax for each other. But it doesn’t stop there. All weekend, we are going to be working on cranking out some great new features for our loyal members because we really love you guys. Here is what we have lined up for our weekend of Zistle love.

Teams! As I write this, Josh is building the infrastructure to add teams. The lists will start with current professional teams but you will be able to add old teams, minor league teams, college teams, etc… We think we have come up with a pretty great solution for adding team to a card quickly as well as adding new teams. Just like adding a new set, a new team will have to be approved before users can see it. This has been a popular feature request and we are excited to launch it.

Layout improvements: Adding teams has forced us to reconsider our layout in list view. We are improving the layout to be able to see more cards at a time in gallery view as well as be able to see the team in list view.

Trading! This is a behemoth of a project which we plan to make a huge dent in this weekend. We are working hard to get this functionality to you. We definitely need people to beta test this for us. We’ll let you know as soon as it is live!

Other Bug Fixes/Improvements: You will definitely see some small updates as well. For example, some improvements/changes to adding cards, the ability to flag sets/subsets and the ability to add a box to the box break page.

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, Trading, Zistle Updates Box Breaks, flagging, improvements, zistle love

There has been some confusion over our domains and frankly it is our fault. Initially, we were going to have a private beta site (beta.zistle.com) before our public launch on our main domain. We realized that this was a tad silly as we just wanted collectors to start using the site. So, we decided to go ahead and push everything to our main site www.zistle.com. This should be your main destination when using Zistle.

We will still be using beta.zistle.com to test new features before rolling them out to the new site. We strongly encourage you to check out our beta site to use new features and give us feedback before we launch them to the main site. We have recently received a ton of feedback from our members asking for new features and we’ve definitely heard you! We are already working hard to add new features to the site. For example, Dan from Saints of the Cheap Seats had a great idea  about being able to add entire sets/subsets to your collection (we may have given him carpel tunnel when he added over 2,500 cards to his collection over the past few days). Not only have we started working on building this feature, but Dan will be able to test this feature when it is finished and give his feedback.

At the moment, anyone can log onto the beta site to test new features. All of your data will transfer between the two domains. So if you update your WantList on beta, those changes will also happen on the main site. The only difference is that our beta site will have some additional features that have not been fully vetted (i.e. the site may break on you).

We want our beta site to be a way for our loyal users to test out new features while keeping our main site as bug free and stable as possible.

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, Zistle Updates

Breaking a box is one of the most exciting experiences in card collecting. How can you tell? The number of collectors who  share that experience online in card collecting forums, posting on blogs and even videos on YouTube. The reason is obvious–it is fun to share your pulls with others who are also passionate about cards and if you get screwed you want to rant. For readers, it is fun to read/watch, each break is unique, and there is a chance that someone could really get lucky or pull a really rare card.

While it is entertaining, it is also informational and provides unique insight into what breaking a box of a particular brand is really like. We want information on the number of pulls and how good they are. Which is the best box for autos? What about rookies? While individual reviews are helpful, you need to read several to get an accurate picture of how that product is performing. So when we started building our Box Breaks feature, we knew we needed a tool for members to share their box breaks but we also wanted to organize the data so that it would be a useful informational resource.  

In order to achieve this, we created a uniform method to evaluate the pulls from each box. A simple rating system would be too vague to be really useful. So, in addition to a rating, we determined the most important categories for any box: total pulls, autos, relics, parallels, inserts, and duplicates. When members break a box, they enter the cards they pulled from each category and that information is averaged with all other breaks. That information is available to all members and formatted so that you can easily sort by each attribute. So you can see which box has the most rookies, the most autos or which is the highest rated. 

This system accomplishes a few things simultaneously. The most important is that it is a really easy way for anyone to share and track their box breaks. You don’t need a camera or a blog. It also creates an unbiased, aggregated source of information on boxes from the collecting community. Zistle doesn’t sell boxes and we aren’t affiliated with any particular brand so all reviews will be posted. And most importantly, it is a really useful tool for making decisions about boxes based on a variety of attributes. 

We realize that this will not replace the in-depth commentary of your favorite blogger–and we don’t want it to!  We are trying to develop a tool that will be useful to bloggers as well as readers and of course Zistle members. If you would like to be one of the first people to try it out and give us feedback, be sure to sign up for our private beta launching in January at www.zistle.com. We need you!

by ashley Building Zistle, Features, Zistle Updates Box Breaks

Every card collector has cards they don’t particularly want or would be happy to swap for a different card or lot of cards. Currently, the only way to really trade online is to search the blogs to see if you can organize a trade with a blogger. While these bloggers are awesome and they have done a lot to encourage online trading, it can take a lot of time to search through their want lists and there isn’t a way to connect with other readers. Zistle is trying to make it easier for collectors as well as bloggers to find other collectors who are interested in trading cards online with our Want List and Trading Bucket features. With our Want List feature, you can quickly build a list of cards you want (thus, “Want List”) by simply selecting sets, teams, and players that you collect. We will automatically create your Want List with any cards in our database that you don’t currently have in your collection. Similarly, the Trade Bucket feature allows you to add duplicate cards and other card you are willing to trade. With this information, Zistle will show you which members have cards to trade and likewise members who want the cards you are trading.

If it sounds complicated it isn’t—here is an example. You are working on completing the 2008 Topps Chrome Main Set and you need a handful of cards. Rather than adding those cards one by one, you can add the entire set to your Want List with one click and Zistle will automatically add all of the cards that you don’t currently have in your collection. Then you look at your Want List and you see that there are several collectors who have some of the cards you need. You select one of the collectors and it shows that they have 5 total cards in their Trade Bucket that you need. If you have cards up for trade that they want, Zistle displays that for you as a potential trade option. If not, you can see what they collect (e.g. Kirby Puckett, 1986 Topps, etc) so that you can propose a trade on your own. Proposing a trade is just a quick message that is sent to their email address. At Zistle, in less than 5 minutes, you can create your entire want list, find members with cards you need and propose trades with other members.

We are working on a few related features to make sure that this system works well. For example, creating a trader rating so that members can see if the people have a good trading history or not. Also, if you add a card to your collection and it is on your Want List, we automatically update your Want List so you only need to update your information once. We think that these features will make managing your collection and making trades much easier and more accessible to all collectors.

If you are excited about this idea, be sure to join our mailing list at www.zistle.com and join our private beta! We need your feedback!

by ashley Features, Zistle Updates Online trading

Building a library of sports cards that our members can search and use to organize their sports collections is really the key to the Zistle experience. Without a comprehensive library Zistle cannot offer much value to its members. This is why the central mission of Zistle is to build the largest online database of baseball, football, hockey and basketball cards in existence. It didn’t take us long to realize that with millions and millions of cards, the only way to succeed in this mission is to leverage the information that each member has in their own collection and provide an easy way they can share it with the community. This is why we have built a platform which enables members to add and edit to the Zistle library while they are building and organizing their own collections. While we have used a variety of tactics to create as much content as possible to seed the library, we have developed several tools that allow users to add and edit our library if any cards are missing or incorrect.

If this doesn’t make sense, just think of Zistle as the Wikipedia of baseball, football, hockey, and basketball cards. The possibility is really amazing. How cool would it be if Zistle users could collaboratively create the most authoritative source of information on card collecting? We think that is pretty freakin’ awesome and we are betting that other collectors will agree with us and join our cause.

Of course we realize that we need to do our part which means creating the tools to make this sharing painless and perhaps even fun. For Zistle, this means integrating this process seamlessly into the normal interface of the site as well as making the process easy and not disruptive to the main experience. We have spent a lot of our time thinking about these features and how we can optimize our members’ experiences with our site. Initially to maintain the quality of our library, we plan to review all entries to the library but eventually we want to turn this function over to the community. For now, we have created a flagging system so that members can easily flag cards that are duplicates, inaccurate or missing information. We can see that this system could potentially become more robust and collaborative. What we are really excited about is to watch how our users will utilize these tools and to hear feedback as well as new ideas for creating and moderating the library. That is where the fun really begins.

If you have any feedback or ideas about the library idea even at this stage, we would love to hear it. You will find us very humble about the fact that we may not have the right solution but we sure will try. Just leave a comment or email me at ashley@zistle.com.

by ashley Features, Zistle Updates Community, Library