Who is who?

Alwin Hoogerdijk
CEO & founder, marketing, development

Ronald Kats
Windows development

Patrick Machielse
Mac OS X development

Sven Spillekom
Web development

Sytske Hermans
PR & marketing, office manager

Henk-Jan van der Kamp
First & second line support

Mark van den Anker
Content manager comic database, Web development

Alain Vleesch du Bois
Content manager movie database

Martin Keur
Content manager music database

Mark-Jan Harte
Founder

Bitz & Pixelz company history

December 1993: Canasta 1.0 release
Mark-Jan releases his first shareware product, the card game Canasta for Windows.

October 1994: Alwin and Mark-Jan meet
In October 1994, Alwin and Mark-Jan both start their first job as programmers at the SIG company in Utrecht, the Netherlands. At the time, both were already active in the shareware business: Mark-Jan was selling the card-game program Canasta, Alwin was selling his sound-editor program NoiseMaster.

May 1996: Keep it Compact 1.0
In 1996, Alwin started on a database program to catalog his own growing CD collection. After a while, the program worked well enough for his own CDs. So In May 1996, he decided to go ahead and release it as shareware, to see what would happen. This was the 1.0 release of Music Collector, at the time called Keep it Compact.

April 2000: Bitz & Pixelz founded
In 2000, both Alwin and Mark-Jan had other jobs, Mark-Jan at the ABN Amro bank, Alwin at Lost Boys. But they still kept in touch. In April 2000, they decided to join forces. They merged their shareware businesses and founded the company Bitz & Pixelz. Both started working part-time at their day jobs, to be able to spend more time on expanding Keep it Compact into a series of cataloging programs under the brand name Collectorz.com. From then on, every Wednesday and Sunday was spent programming.

Augustus 2000: Keep it Compact renamed to Collectorz.com Music Collector
In August of that year, the 4.0 release of Keep it Compact was renamed to Music Collector, to become the first program in the Collectorz.com series.

October 2000: Bitz & Pixelz full time
Through the years, the revenues of both Canasta and Keep it Compact/Music Collector had been steadily growing, up to the point where it would be possible to live off it. So in October 2000, Mark-Jan and Alwin made a big decision and quit their day jobs, to be able to spend all their time on Bitz & Pixelz. The main goal: being able to spend more time expanding the Collectorz.com series.

November 2000: Movie Collector 1.0 release
Movie Collector was the second product in the Collectorz.com line. It has the same functionality as Music Collector but it is the dedicated software solution for people with a huge DVD collection.

May 2001: MP3 Collector 1.0 release
Although we already had Music Collector, we wanted to have a seperate software cataloger for digital audio files: MP3 Collector. It's easy to use, with lots of edit, batch rename, sort and search options.

January 2002: Euro Converter
Here is something we "threw" together for fun: Collectorz.com Euro Converter. It's freeware and it's a handy tool to convert the old abolished European currencies to Euros and vice versa. Just to get used to the new currency and its value.

April 2002: Book Collector 1.0 and Comic Collector 1.0 releases
With Book Collector and Comic Collector we now support five different collection types. We choose to build two dedicated solutions for books and comics, since these are not items that can be cataloged into one database. Book Collector uses many online sources to add books automatically, including several international libraries and the Library of Congress.

September 2002: Canasta 5.0 release
This is a major update of Canasta, which includes the new Lobby feature for easy online gaming.

August 2003: Game Collector 1.0 release
Game Collector is a program for cataloging your video game collection, for either PC games or console games (PS2, X-Box, GameCube, DreamCast, PSP, X-Box 360, DS etc...). Game Collector is based on the same ideas as the other Collectorz.com products, so if you are familiar with those, you will feel right at home here.

April 2004: Jigsaw Puzzle Player 1.0 release for Windows
Bitz & Pixelz expands into the games business with Jigsaw Puzzle Player. JPP lets you play jigsaw puzzles on your computer, it's just like real life jigsaw puzzles, but without the pieces getting lost :-) You can download several standard puzzle packs or you can create your own jigsaw puzzles from digital photos. JPP and Canasta are now sold under the new games brand B&P Games.

May 2004: Jigsaw Puzzle Player 1.0 release for Mac OS X
JPP is now available for Windows and Mac OS X.

October 2004: Customer support outsourced
Four years later, Collectorz.com has grown into a 6-product series, offering cataloging software for music, movies, MP3 files, books, comics and video games. The products are very successful and revenues have grown considerably. However, so has the amount of time spent on customer support. So we started outsourcing the first line support to Peter Gadzinski of Crossover Computing, located in Toronto, Canada.

January 2005: Bitz & Pixelz hires first employee
After 4 years of being a 2 person company, we decided we needed an extra programmer to help us with the development of existing and new products. Bernard Kroes joined us in January 2005 and started working on a new, seventh, product in the Collectorz.com series: Photo Collector.

July 2005: Photo Collector 1.0 release
Our software solution for digital photos has powerful database qualities. Adding your files to the photo database is easy, just scan your harddisk for JPG, TIFF, BMP or PNG files. Browse your photo album and search by subject, event or category. Just add information about each photo in separate fields for the people who are in it, the photographer's name, the location, the date or the event. This can be done one by one, or for multiple pictures in one go. With that information you can search your database and find for example missing pictures of your pet, or your grandma on your sister's wedding.

August 2005: Bitz & Pixelz hires their second employee
Sytske Hermans joined our company. She has several years of experience in marketing and PR. At Bitz & Pixelz, she is going to be responsible for setting up and maintaining our own media databases. Next to that, she is going to help us with the marketing and PR of the Collectorz.com products.

October 2005: The Collectorz.com Movie database
We have added the Collectorz.com Movie database info source to Movie Collector. The new online database is our own database with movie information like cast and crew, release year, DVD information, a cover image etc. We started this database to be less dependent on the existing online sources.
Check out the most popular movies of the Collectorz.com Movie database and read more about the submissions and the submissions guidelines.

November 2005: Movie Collector 1.0 for Mac OS X release
Collectorz.com released its first product for the Apple Mac platform: Movie Collector 1.0. It is written as a native Mac OS X application, fully using the OS capabilities (like Spotlight under Tiger). This is the first Collectorz.com product for the Mac, more will follow. We're now working on Music Collector.

December 2005: Music Collector 1.0 for Mac OS X release
The second Collectorz.com product for Mac OS X: Music Collector 1.0. Like Movie Collector, it was built from scratch as a native Max OS X application.

December 2005: The Collectorz.com Game database
We are happy to announce that version 2.0 of Game Collector is available now. The main addition in this release is the new "Collectorz.com" info source for downloading game data.
The new Collectorz.com info source in Game Collector is our own online game database system. Check out the most popular games of the Collectorz.com Game database and read more about the submissions and the submissions guidelines.

Februari 2006: Two new employees
We have hired two new people: Athan-Jon de Jager and Mark van den Anker. Mark and AJ are going to help us maintain our new media databases for movies, games and comics. AJ is in charge of the movie and game database, Mark is our dedicated comic admin. With their help, we hope to keep up with the overwhelming amount of submissions.

April 2006: Book Collector 1.0 for Mac OS X release
We released the third product for the Apple Mac platform: Book Collector 1.0. Organizing your books with Book Collector is easy: download title, author, year, genre and cover information from the internet by typing author and title or the ISBN barcode. Like its predecessors Music Collector and Movie Collector, it was built from scratch as a native Mac OS X application, fully using the OS X capabilities.

June 2006: The Collectorz.com Comic database
With the release of Comic Collector 3.0 we introduced our own Collectorz.com Comic database. You can now add new comics to your database automatically by just typing the Series name and selecting the issues you own. The program will then automatically download all comic data (including publisher, date, credits and characters) plus the cover images. You can also use the online database to update existing database entries.
Check out the most popular comics of the Collectorz.com Comic database and read more about the submissions and the submissions guidelines.

July 2006: New employee
Our online databases for movies, games and comics are up and running and doing a marvelous job. To keep up with the amount of submissions from you guys we hired an extra employee: Robin Noort. Robin is going to work on our movie database. We now have 3 guys working on our online databases: AJ on movies and games, Mark on comics and Robin on movies and games.

July 2006: New office
We’re now with 7 people and our old grounds became too small. Luckily for us there was a bigger office available within this building. We are very happy with this new place and expect to stay here for a long time.
(note that we are record holders moving: 6 times in 6 years).

September 2006: New employee: Henk-Jan van der Kamp
For two years now, our first line support is handled by Peter Gadzinski in Toronto, Canada. What Peter can't solve is redirected to one of us, as second line support desk. To further streamline these questions and to have a dedicated person working on second line support, we hired Henk-Jan.
HJ has several years of customer support experience and knows all the ins & outs of how to handle all sorts of (technical) questions.

March 2007: New employee: Ronald Kats
Good news: a fourth programmer joined our development team. It took some time to find one but today Ronald Kats started his first day at the office.
Ronald has many years of programming experience and used to work with Alwin and Bernard at a multimedia company some years ago. They go back a long way and we’re very happy with him teaming up with us.

April 2007: New employee: Vincent Tempelaar
The Collectorz.com online databases for CDs, DVDs, comics and video games are growing steadily. Our database admins AJ (movies, games), Mark (comics, music) and Syts (music, movies) are daily processing humongous amounts of submissions.
To speed up the process we’ve hired a new database admin and he started working today.
Vincent Tempelaar, Vinnie for friends & family, works on the online movie database. He is a 21 year old student and in his 3rd year at the Aviation Academy. He is also studying a short course of Philosophy, to get more insight in people’s actions and thoughts.

May 2007: Movie Collector 5 for Windows release
We are happy to announce the release of Movie Collector 5 for Windows.
This major upgrade of Movie Collector has a lot of great new features, including support for TV series and Box Sets, Windows Media Center support, new toolbar icons, new templates and much more.

July 2007: Book Collector 5 for Windows
The great new version 5 features of Movie Collector are now available in Book Collector 5 for Windows too. This major upgrade of Book Collector has more new features like full ISBN-13 support, improved Loan Management and Network Support and new print templates for printing Avery labels.

September 2007: New employee: Sven Spillekom
Sven is our new Web Developer and joined our programming team.
He will develop a new web based interface for our online databases for CDs, DVDs, comics and games. For two reasons: for you to manage your collection online and to start an active online collectors’ community.
Sven has a Bachelor degree in Information Engineering from the Hogeschool Amsterdam. He is completely into internet and PHP programming which started of as a hobby but grew into his job. Of course it’s not always ‘work and no play’, Sven watches lots of TV series and is a music addict, so he knows what collecting is all about.

September 2007: Mark-Jan leaves Bitz & Pixelz
After seven years, co-founder Mark-Jan Harte has decided to leave the company.
Bitz & Pixelz is doing very well, and co-founder Alwin Hoogerdijk will continue to run the company in much the same way. He has a lot of ideas to further develop the Collectorz.com products by enhancing features of the existing software as well as creating the new Connect sites.

Mark-Jan has very much enjoyed developing the products and growing the company to its current level; now the time has arrived for him to pursue a new challenge. This will be software in the field of applied machine learning / artificial intelligence, which has always been an interest of his.
We wish Mark-Jan all the best with his new venture.

November 2007: Music Collector 8 for Windows release

December 2007: Connect update
Our Connect site is a continuous work in progress, new stuff is being added each week. What's new this month?

• New look: Designer Joris and coder Sven have created a brand new look for all Connect pages.
  
• Music Collector Connect: Finally our CD database has its own home too. Check the CDs that were most popular last week and the daily updates to our database.
  
• Connect home: The Connect home is a hub page from which you can reach all Connect sites. It shows stats and top 10 lists for all of them and of course our new Connect blog.
  
• Connect blog: At Collectorz.com we watch lots of movies and TV series, read books and comics, play loads of games and listen to music all the time. During lunch we have lively discussions about what we like (and hate) and we want to share those opinions with you. You're welcome to post your comments.
  
• Tip: At Connect you can rate and review movies and games. Let the world know what you think about the movies you watch and the games you play.

December 2007: Bernard leaves the company
Our first employee Bernard Kroes has left Collectorz.com to start working full time at his own company, Shift F5.
Bernard worked with us for exactly 3 years and he was our first employee after being a 2 men company for 5 years. He always had his own projects next to his work with us and he felt that now is the time to work full time on his own business.

We are very happy for him and his new adventure and wish him all the best in his endeavors. Don’t be a stranger and drop in now and then to join our Guitar Hero competition!

January 2008: Comic Collector 4 for Windows
The new year has only just begin and we have already released a major upgrade of Comic Collector: version 4.

January 2008: Barcode scanning with the CueCat
In November 2005 we have introduced the Collectorz.com laser barcode scanner. With the scanner it’s quicker to add books, CDs, DVDs and games to your database.
We now also offer a less expensive alternative: the CueCat barcode scanner.

The CueCat is a simple but effective CCD scanner and is fully supported in Music, Movie, Book and Game Collector. You don’t have to download and install extra software or drivers. It connects to any PC or Mac with a USB port, it’s plug & play.

February 2008: New Windows versions
We have released new versions for Music Collector (8.1), Movie Collector (5.4) and Book Collector (5.2).

March 2008: New colleagues
We’ve hired two new employees.
Alain Vleesch du Bois is a 3rd year student at the School of Economics Amsterdam. He is knee-deep into movies, which is a big plus if you’re processing them all day. Alain is our new Content manager for movies.
Patrick Machielse is our second new colleague, although he is no stranger. He has been working freelance at our office since August 2007, to further develop and maintain our Mac software. We're delighted that we could persuade Patrick to come and join our development team.

April 2008: New Mac OS X editions
We have released updates for the Mac OS X editions of Music Collector, Movie Collector and Book Collector. Version 2.1.2 has great new features like the Collectorz.com templates, new toolbar icons, improved support for the CueCat scanner and much more.