News & updates
CLZ Alwin here, with the last CLZ Newsletter for 2024.
But first: A happy 2025 from the entire CLZ Team: Martin, Rowdy, Sven, AJ, Pim, Joe, Bernard, Justin, Taco, Kelvin, Sytske and me, Alwin!
Then next up: I have some BIG news:
CLZ is going fully remote per Jan 1!
Yep, today is our last day at the office! Starting Jan 1, CLZ will go fully remote, fully virtual. No more office, no more CLZ HQ. We will all work from home!
During the Covid period, we already worked from home for almost 2 years. During that period, we became pretty efficient in communicating over Slack, meeting using Google Meet, working together using screen sharing, etc…
Post Covid, we never went back to the office in full, most of the team kept working from home 3 days a week, and 2 days at the office. And like many other companies, we are finding that this hybrid situation is far from ideal… and quite costly.
While some companies are attempting a full BTO approach (back to office), we have decided to go the other route: we are going fully remote!
This will give us all more flexibility to work from anywhere, at any time. Lower costs and no more lengthy commutes. And unlike the Covid period, we can still meet IRL whenever we need or want. We are planning to do “social meetings” for lunch or dinner twice a month, and project-based meetings on demand.
We are super excited for this new officeless era!
With that out of the way, here’s the other CLZ News for December 2024:
- Mobile apps:
- CLZ Comics 10.0: Add Comics by scanning the covers
- CLZ Comics 10.1: Check Comic Values by scanning covers
- Web apps:
- CLZ Web: Improved Add screens for all 5 Web flavors
- Coming up: CLZ Web UI refresh
- CLZ Core updates:
- Core for Movies: “Check Covers” project, 86% cloud coverage!
- Core for Comics: New Comic Book Day summary, 2,027 new releases
Mobile apps:
CLZ Comics 10.0: Add Comics by scanning the covers
For most comics, just scanning the barcode is a quick and easy way to add them to your database. For comics without barcodes, you would need to search by typing the series title and find your comic that way.
But not anymore!
With the new CLZ Comics v10.0, there is new tab in the Add Comics screen, called “Cover”.
There, you can just take a picture of the cover and the app will automagically find the matching comic(s) in our CLZ Core!
This new method of adding comics is ideal for:
- Comics from the pre-barcode era (before 1976)
- Direct Editions without barcode
- Modern comics without barcode
But of course, the cover scanning works very well on any comic, including ones that do have a barcode!
CLZ Comics 10.1: Check Comic Values by scanning covers
In version 10.1, we’re taking the next step, by bringing the cover scanning feature to your Check Value screen!
This will be your best friend while going through the bargain bins at your LCS, when checking eBay or FB Marketplace:
- Choose Check Value from the menu
- Select the “Cover” tab (default from now on)
- Make a picture of a comic’s cover
- And BAM: there’s the comic entry from CLZ, with the value from CovrPrice!
Web apps:
CLZ Web: Improved Add screens for all 5 Web flavors
Earlier this month, we released 5 updates with big improvements for the Add screens of all 5 editions of the CLZ Web cloud-based software.
For all five editions, the update brings:
- Re-designed search result entries, providing more details with a nicer, more compact look, , so that more entries can fit on the screen
- A new “Confirm” popup with full item details that slide up from the bottom. This popup replaces the old Preview panel.
For CLZ Movies Web:
- Instead of “expanding” a movie entry to see its releases, now just click a movie to see all releases in the panel on the right
- Browse these releases in a grid with BIG cover images, no more tiny thumbnails!
- Use the tabs at the top to filter the release list by format! (4K / Blu-ray / DVD / Other)
For CLZ Games Web:
- Instead of “expanding” a game entry to see its releases, now just click to see all releases in the panel on the right
- Browse game editions with BIG cover images, no more tiny thumbnails!
- Filter the editions by Region using the tabs at the top! (All / US / EU / AU/ JP / Other)
For CLZ Comics Web:
- No more (slow) sliding panels, no more going back and forth between series list and issue list.
- Just click a Series in the search results to see its issues in the panel on the right.
For CLZ Music Web:
Better user interface for combining discs into multi-discs albums:
- Checkbox discs and they will automatically be numbered, 1, 2, 3… while you tap
- Easily change the order by unchecking / checking
- Preview the created multi-disc album in the Confirm sheet
Screenshots: CLZ Movies Web / CLZ Games Web / CLZ Comics Web / CLZ Music Web / CLZ Books Web
Coming up: quick CLZ Web UI refresh
Before we move on to big new Web features and improvements, we decided to do a quick UI refresh project. CLZ AJ and me (Alwin) are working a new user interface design, with lead web-developer CLZ Sven implementing the changes.
The main goal here is to make the UI more compact, to free up more screen estate for your collection list. Also, a new font type for a more modern look.
ETA: before the end of January.
CLZ Core updates:
Core for Movies: “Check Covers” project, 90% cloud coverage!
Both CLZ Kelvin and CLZ user Martin Ede are still working on this full-time, 5 days a week, checking and fixing over 10 thousand (!!) DVD and Blu-ray cover images every week!
Earlier this week, we reached a Cloud Coverage of 90%. Meaning that on average, our users should be getting guaranteed correct cover images for 90% of their scanned barcodes!
Core for Comics
CLZ Comics – Wrap-Up 2024
The year is almost over, but not before we take a look back at this year’s biggest hits!
We have done some queries on our Core online comic database to gather popularity stats, based on usage of the CLZ comic database app and software. Using the results of those queries, we created this CLZ Comics Wrap-Up for 2024!
New Comic Book Day summary: 2,027 new releases!
This month, our CLZ content team added 2,027 new comic books to our Core, on 4 NCBD wednesdays. Check out this month’s NCBD posts on Club CLZ:
- NCBD week 49: 438 releases
- NCDB week 50: 584 releases
- NCDB week 51: 694 releases
- NCDB week 52: 311 releases
You can find all past NCBD posts on our Club CLZ forum here.
Talk to you again next year!