One of the reasons why this release took so long to materialize (besides some complicated back-end changes) was a lack of focus in terms of what features to focus on first. There are so many ideas out there and so many things that we want to do – but, it is significantly harder to decide what to do first and how to prioritize. So to simplify our process we asked ourselves one simple question: what is stopping most collectors from using Zistle? It was an easy answer – we need better data. So our number 1 focus for this release is to make tools and features that make it easier for you to get your data into Zistle and allow you access to get it out. More data, better data, free data…

More data – Bulk import into the Zistle Library and to your collection

Many of our members have spent countless hours entering cards one by one into the Zistle database. With the next release, members will be able to mass import cards from a .csv file directly into the Zistle database. This allows Zistle members to leverage their own spreadsheets as well as spreadhseets and checklists that already exist online and import them into the database which will make it a lot easier to increase the number of cards in the database.

We would like to add similar functionality for adding cards to your collection and wantlists. We could really use your imput on whether or not you think this system would be useful to you and if you have any suggestions for how to make it the most useful process for you. Obviously, members without their entire collections will not benefit from this as much as users with more data to add. We are hoping that this will help people who have been on the fence about Zistle make the leap. Be sure to give us your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Better Data – Tools for improving the accuracy of the database

So more data is great, but it is no secret that there are some issues with inaccurate and duplicate cards in the database. Right now, our flagging system works well for individual errors or updating a single card. However, when an entire set is incorrect or there are a series of duplicates, there is not a very good system for bringing that to our attention and correcting it. We are approaching this in a few different ways. First, you will be able to flag a set or a subset as being a mess (that probably won’t be the official term – but when I think of 1990 Topps or anything Starquest sets, that is the only way to describe them). This way, we can identify and track sets that need a substantial amount of work and resolve it more effectively. Those of you who have emailed me or shared feedback on Get Satisfaction will be able to appreciate that these requests often slip through the cracks.

We are also making some significant changes to the Library tab. Currently, the Library tab is designed to serve as a reference area to look up cards not in your collection. On the new site, it will serve as a wiki-style view of each set on Zistle. So for example, you will be able to go to the 2010 Topps page and see a comprehensive view of each set, with a list of every subset, the number of cards in each subset, and images of the cards. There will also be a discussion area to hash out style issues such as red ink versus black or misprints. In addition, we will have set experts that will be able to approve the cards added to that particular set and monitor any changes that happen to the set. This will help take some of the administration burden off of Josh and I and allow more consensus within the community on style points and the nuances of each set.

Free your data – Exporting your collection/wantlist from Zistle

This is a feature we have talked about for a long, long time. One that many of our detractors mention as a downfall of the site and certainly makes people nervous (especially when we don’t blog for a few months). We do firmly believe that you own your data and we recognize that it is nice to be able to print off your collection and wantlists for card shows, etc. As a disclaimer, there will be some limits to the amount of data that can be exported at one time (this is primarily a technology barrier). We haven’t worked it out exactly but it will be something on the order of a limit of 10,000 entries at one time – which seems workable to us. We will be monitoring the exporting and reserve the right to disallow this privilege or cancel someone’s account if we suspect abuse for obvious reasons ( mean spirited people be advised). To our valued members – thank you for trusting us with your data for the last year and a half. We are excited to be able to launch this feature.

We know that is a lot of information. Please give us feedback in the comments below. If you have ideas about how to make bulk importing into wantlists/collection better than we laid out above, please let us know. Can’t wait to hear what you think.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!