I am a little at a loss for words. I have never considered myself a basketball fan before but I think Dirk Nowitzki just made me a believer. Josh and I always watch the finals but I feel like I have a deeper respect for the game watching Dirk this post-season.

Thanks to jaybruce32 for adding this card to Zistle  and duck6700j for providing the images. Check out this card on Zistle.

Drumroll please….

It is no surprise that Custom collections came in first as the most requested new feature for Zistle. You asked and we listened. Our next feature release will be custom collections!

Most collectors like to say what they are collecting. Obviously right? Whether it is a player, team or even aspecific set, many collectors focus on something that they enjoy. If for no other reason than to save some money – it’s hard to collect everything right? Now you can create as many custom collections as you’d like. They will be sport specific for now.

We’re really excited to be able to launch this new feature. Stay tuned for a sneak peek over the weekend.

The system is rocking on all cylinders. The last two days we focused on fixing any outlying bugs and getting the system solid. We have been pretty happy with the launch and welcome as much feedback as you can give us – don’t be shy, we love it – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

There are a few features that we did not talk about in our sneak peek series and that has caused some confusion. To help new members and old, here are a few tips on getting started on the new system.

Timezone

During the transfer to the new system, some members were erroneously put on Hawaiian time. While I am sure everyone would like to be in Hawaii, it is annoying to see the wrong time on your messages and activity stream. To change your timezone, simply go to edit your account to change your timezone. Or stay on Hawaiian time if you’d like, we won’t tell anyone.

Collections

One of the new features is the ability to customize your experience by only displaying the sports you collect in your collections tab. Everyone who had at least one card in a sport should have had that sport automatically added to their collections tab (emphasis on should). If you are missing a sport that you collect or you have not started adding cards to your collection, you will need to go to edit your account and select the sports that you collect.

Community

Many, many members have expressed interest in extended community features. We made a good start with this release but we know we have a long way to go. Right now the community page is more of a placeholder than it the final vision for our community features. Don’t get discouraged! We’re going to work on some really great features very soon. Remember to vote on our feedback site and tell us what you want to us to add to community next. Your votes help us determine what to build next.

Today was an exciting day for Zistle. We had a record day in terms of usage and we definitely feel good about the feedback that we received today. Thanks for your patience as we updated the site and help in fixing some initial issues today. We have been rolling out updates all day to help resolve any issues and we definitely appreciate your help in making it awesome.

A HUGE thank you to those Zistle members who helped us debug some issues today. We definitely had some errors early on that we did not expect and we could not have figured them out without your help and patience. Big props to mdaubrey, grogg_2434 and mrbadness especially for helping us work out some obscure but important issues.

I also want to say a special thank-you to those of you who have been loyal members since 2009. Wow – has it really already been over 2 years? Amazing. It has been a pleasure to work towards making the community better.

Yes it is 6:38am central time and the sun is coming up. The good news? The new Zistle is going live as I write this. We want to thank all of our members for your loyal support over the years. We’ll be sleeping in today but we look forward to your feedback when we wake up!

We would greatly appreciate you tweeting, blogging, or using any other method of spreading the word about our release. Woo hoo!

The moment has finally arrived. We’re super excited to release the new Zistle and we’ll be launching around midnight tonight. In order to get the new Zistle launched as quickly as possible, we have had to make some changes to our features as well as limit the browsers that we support. Please read below for more details about changes we made to the site and how it will affect you.

Browser Compatibility: Please update your browsers.

All browsers are not created equal. For the best Zistle experience, we recommend using the following browsers.

• Internet Explorer 9
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Chrome

We will no longer be supporting IE7 or lower. We will support IE8 but strongly recommend IE9. If you have Internet Explorer 7, you MUST upgrade to a newer version in order to use Zistle.

Coming soon: Box Breaks

We decided not to include box breaks in this release. If you have reviewed boxes in the past, all of your data will be saved until we re-release the Box Breaks feature. We think box breaks has a lot of room for improvement and we want to make sure that we give it enough time and relaunch it when it is truly awesome.

We will be working on the new box breaks experience in the coming weeks. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please visit our feedback site and let us know.

Coming Soon: Library and Set Expert

The Zistle library experience is officially on the shelf. Similar to box breaks, we will be making significant improvements to the library and we didn’t want to delay this release any more. If you are a set expert right now, you will remain a set expert when we relaunch this feature and all of the library data will be archived in our system.

If you have any ideas for the library, we’d love to hear it. Visit the feedback site and let us know.

It was a hard decision for us, but we felt that it was worth putting off revamping our least used features to get this release out more quickly. We really focused on the collection, trading, and community features for this release and want to make sure that these features are solid before moving on to new functionality. Thanks for your understanding and enjoy the new Zistle!

If you check out our feedback page, the number one feature request is trade recommendations. We have focused a lot on trading for this next release and that includes making it easier to find trade partners.

New Trading Search

Searching for trade partners on Zistle is getting easier. First, you will notice an improved search experience in trading. In the example below, I have searched on the trading tab for ‘Celtics’. When the results are displayed, I can see which members want each card and who has it up for trade.

Instantly view trade matches

Not only will you be able to see a list of users who are trading or want the card, you will be to hover over their picture and instantly see trade matches.

It will show you matches on your wantlist, your tradelist and allow you to initiate a trade. You will be able to hover over a member icon in the trading tab as well as in your contacts.

You’ll also be able to see this information when viewing your wantlist or tradelist. In the example below, I am browsing my own wantlist and I can see which cards on my wantlist match a card up for trade. When I hover over the member’s profile pic, I can instantly see if we have enough trade matches for a trade.

Now you can just simply browse your wantlist and just mouse over any matches to see if you want to trade. This will make finding trade partners much easier.

We are making great progress toward being able to launch later this weekend. Stay tuned for updates about the launch. It will include some downtime and we will keep you updated on the blog.

It is that time again. This is a teaser post about how great Zistle will be with the next release. Trading is a particularly painful topic because frankly, our trading tool is just crap right now. A big focus for us in this release is simply making trading work. This was my original draft of the trading sneak peek post:

Trading. It works. The end.

Stop reading if that is all you care about. If you’re interested in a glimpse of the new system, then read on.

Trade Proposals: New look and feel

The actual process for trading is very similar to our current system (again, focusing on it actually working). One major improvement is the appearance of the trading tool. When you initiate a trade with a Zistle member, you will be brought to a page that displays your trade matches (cards you want that are also on their tradelist).

Similarly to our current system, you can also browse their tradelist in case there are cards that you don’t have on your wantlist. However, you can also browse their collection in case there are cards you want that are not on their tradelist.

Editing the proposal and trade history

After the initial proposal is sent, you can add messages or edit the proposal as many times as necessary until you come to an agreement (you can also reject the trade if it isn’t working out). All of these updates to the proposal are saved as part of the trade history.

Rate trade and automatically add cards to collection

Once both members have accepted the terms of the trade, the trade is pending until you receive the cards in the mail. Once you receive the cards, you can rate the trade and automatically add the cards to your collection.

The trade isn’t complete until both parties receive their cards and rate the trade. Trade rating allows you to build a good trade reputation on Zistle.

Ultimately, we’re really excited that trading is going to work and look as good as the rest of the site. The next post is going to focus on improvements that we’ve made to make finding trading partners easier.

Some of the most exciting updates for our next release are in the collection section of Zistle. We are hoping that this will help some of your power users save some time while organizing your collection. For those of you who spend hours on our site every day, these updates are for you.

Collection New Look and Feel

Similar to the rest of the site, the collections tab is getting a new look and feel that makes it easier to use. This includes inline pricing, a fixed sidebar for easy scrolling, multi-select and a detail pane.

Multi-Select and Bulk Actions

We want it to be as easy as possible for collectors to add their collection to Zistle. Now you’ll be able to select all cards, a group of cards or one by one and bulk add or remove them to your collection.

The controls will be very similar to selecting multiple files on your computer’s file system.

• Hold CTRL to select multiple cards
• Hold SHIFT to select multiple cards in a row
• Select ALL selects all cards on that page

Once those files are selected, you can add or remove them from your collection using our bulk edit feature. We also plan to add a way for you to add cards to your tradelist and wantlist if not in this release, in the near future.

Detail Pane

We have replaced our detail view with a detail pane that is completely integrated within both list and gallery view. Clicking on each card name will show a closable pane at the bottom of the page that will display all of the details that you used to see in the detail view and more.

In addition to the card image, team, card attributes, pricing and information about who added the card and images, you will be able to see trading information including who wants the card and has the card up for trade. There are also links to see that card and set in the library (more details soon on library). In addition to being able to show more content about the card, you will be able to click through cards one by one and get information without losing your context.

Card Notes

You may have noticed that card notes are no longer in the detail view.We’ve moved card notes to a new column in list view. When a card is in your collection and you hover over it in list view, a pencil icon will appear in the note column. If you click on the icon, a pop-up will appear that will allow you to add a new note.

When your note is saved, a note icon will appear that you can hover over and see your note anytime you are in list view. Pretty fancy, huh? This way, you can easily see which cards have a note and read it instantly.

We’d love to hear your feedback about any of these new features and improvements at http://feedback.zistle.com or in the comments. Our target is to roll out the next release in early June and we are making great progress toward that goal. We’ll be asking for some of you to be beta testers before we roll it out in full production. If you’re interested in helping us test the new version, email me at ashley@zistle .com or just add a comment below.

Beckett is now charging $20 for their Organize product unless you subscribe to one of their online price guides (which they have also made more expensive). We at Zistle, along with many collectors, were pretty surprised by this announcement. In particular, the short time frame for their members to find another option (5 days according to the email that went out earlier this week). True to Beckett form, they have also banned any of members who have publicly protested the new policy.

My Organize has struggled as a product for several years now but it is difficult to complain too loudly about a free product without many alternative options. Well that is about to change. We at Zistle want to take this opportunity to explain why we are different than Beckett and what we are doing to make Zistle the new BEST online tool for collectors.

Zistle will ALWAYS be free

When we mean always, we mean always. Everything that is on Zistle will remain free, forever. No fine print, exceptions, surprises, ambushes or other trickery. We are passionate that connecting with other collectors should be free and not merely a tool to sell price guides.

We do have plans to add a commercial version of Zistle for sports card shops and dealers and that will include paid features. We are excited about this because this will mean a strong future for Zistle and its members. Zistle is committed to being free for collectors now and in the future.

You can ALWAYS export your data

You shouldn’t be a member of a site just because they are holding your information hostage.  We are completely dedicated to allowing 100% full access to your collection and trading information at all times by allowing you to export your data.

Zistle will NEVER ban its members for disagreeing with our policies

At Zistle, members are free to speak their mind, even if it means *gasp* you don’t agree with us. Yep, it’s crazy we know. We think it is important to listen to our members even if it isn’t what we want to hear. Burying the criticism doesn’t make it go away

Spammers and trolls – We will ban you though, so don’t bother.

What we are doing to make Zistle better
Zistle has been around as a hobby site for the past 3 years. We have proven that we aren’t going anywhere but we know there are a lot of features needed to be an adequate replacement for Beckett. We are completely dedicated to providing collectors a better online community – you deserve it.

Better Content
Beckett claims to have over 6 million cards on their website and frankly Zistle doesn’t have quite that many. Over the next few months, we will be bringing on some additional staff that will be in charge of adding cleaning up the fleshing out the Zistle library. We will also be adding some fun features related to contribution points including contests, bounties, and giveaways related to contribution points.

Forums
We have resisted added a forum for many years mostly because there are already some great forums for collectors. However, our members have asked for us to add a forum and other social features to help you connect with other Zistlers. We are going to put our special Zistle touch on the forum to fully integrate the forum functionality into the site.

Trading that works…. really works
Our top priority has been to have a great organizational tool and trading has been neglected. We are working on a really powerful trading tool that will offer the best trading experience available.

Easier to switch
We are actively working on some advanced features to help you import your data from Beckett to Zistle. While we already have a collection import tool that allows you to import cards with a CSV file, Beckett doesn’t allow you to export your collection details. We are making it easier to add cards to your collection with an Add All button as well

More Members
It goes without saying that the more members we have on Zistle, the better the community will be. Zistle is still a non-commercial venture and we don’t have a lot of money for marketing, but we know that we can do a better job of getting the word out with your help. Immediately after our next release, Zistle is going to host a new member drive which will reward current members for referring new users. Stay tuned for more details.

Thank you to our loyal members who have been our champions over the last few years. You have made this site really special and we are really excited about where Zistle is headed.