Today we released three important social features. Firstly, now you can have more control and grant a broader range of permissions to people you share blists with: read, add, modify, delete. You can choose to keep blist data private, leave it public, or share with a few people.

Also, we now let you search through the blist structures created by other people so you can find a good one, and use it as a template for your own (the actual data is kept private, unless explicitly made public).

Thirdly, now two or several people can simultaneously open and edit a shared blist.

These are big first steps towards leveraging the collective wisdom of the blist community and moving blist beyond the extant paradigm of an online version of a desktop application with simple document sharing. blist is a social database, not just a database with sharing.

Definitely go try these out at http://app.blist.com/ and send in your feedback, it really helps!

Mille grazie!

Today, we released some important new features, fixed a bunch of bugs, and made some performance improvements.

First off, now you can change a column from one type to another. You can change a number column to a text column. If you have a text or number column that just contains ones and zeros - you can convert that to a nice looking Check-box or True/False column. The most interesting thing you can do is take a text column that might have many rows, but with repeated data, like the State column in a list of addresses, and turn that into a neat pick-list with a drop down chooser in each cell. One neat use for this feature is to be able to import a CSV, but not worry about setting the correct column types until later.

The other interesting feature that we added is the shared blists pane on the left. Now you can easily go back to blists that have been previously shared to you by someone else via email.

In terms of performance, we made some improvements to our CSV file import feature. It’s better now than it was before, and we’re going to continue to improve and extend importing going forward.

Don’t just take our word for it: go try it at http://app.blist.com/

When writing the post last night announcing the new features we released, I forgot to mention one that has been requested fairly often. We’ve added the ability to email your blist to yourself. Just load up the desired blist and click on the “Email blist” icon:

We’ll give you the option to send the blist in either plain text or HTML format. The email is delivered to the email address we have on file for your account. If you choose HTML, the email you receive will look kind of like this:

The blist team has been hard at work and is pleased to announce another feature release. Here are some of the highlights of this update.

The performance for loading a blist has been improved.

The blists pane and Favorites pane have been redesigned so that instead of separate panes, they are now combined.

Last release two weeks ago we added CSV import. With today’s release you can now export your blist in CSV format, which is handy if you want to play with your data in Excel. To export, simply load your blist and click on the “Export” button in the File menu.

Booleans have been promoted to first class custom types. A boolean is simply a field that can have only two distinct values. Typically it’s true of false. But if you were tracking applicants you might want “Hire” and “No Hire” or if you were developing a blist of houses you are thinking of buying, you might want “Deal” and “No Deal.” You can even create a custom type of Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down if you want:

Custom types now include Pick Lists and Booleans - two column types over which you have full control. You decide on the text and the icons. Based on your feedback, we made it easier to discover how to create a new pick list.

Another suggestion from people already using blist was to have a starter blist created for you when you create a new account. So we added that too.

The vision we have for blist is to become the first online social database. Part of that entails a sense of community around data that matters. In today’s release we introduce the first live version of the dashboard, with the ability to see what’s going on in the blist community:

The dashboard will evolve often over the next few months.

We added the ability to tag blists and lenses.

We added the ability for you to upload your picture on your profile page.

We’ve also worked to stabilize blist by fixing a number of crucial bugs.

The blist team is committed to building out the feature set, enhancing stability and boosting performance. Look for blist to settle into a steady rhythm of updates to improve the product.

It’s been three weeks since blist launched in private beta at DEMO. You’ve been busy making blists; we’ve been busy adding features. You may not have noticed but we’ve had three or four releases since DEMO, mostly below the surface bug fixes and streamlining of the account creation process. Today we’re pleased to release some important new features.

By far the most requested feature has been the ability to import data from Excel. Now we have it. When you click on the [New blist] icon, instead of having “Coming Soon” stamped over it, you can now import from CSV. Just give your blist a name, browse for the CSV file and line up the columns with the appropriate column types.

Importing is fairly manual and basic for now. Over time we’ll try to do more by guessing column types and automatically generating pick lists. For now, while we’re still in beta this new feature dramatically improves the process of migrating an existing pseudo-database from Excel into blist.

We also released some very basic sharing capabilities. You can now share a blist or lens with someone else. Just click on the share icon and we’ll send an email invitation to whomever you want to share your blist with. Initially blists and lenses are shared read-only. Don’t worry, pretty soon we’ll add very robust permission-setting capabilities.

We’ve added basic charting capabilities. Load up your blist or lens and click on the chart icon (the one that looks like a pie chart), then select the chart type and X & Y axis and you’ll get something kinda like this:

As for major features, the last new one is simple search across all text columns. When we launched three weeks ago, the simple search box only searched tags. Now it’s scope is much broader (but yes, we know, not broad enough).

The feedback since launch has been terrific. Keep it coming. The message we’ve been hearing is that you like what you see but we still have a ways to go before you can start using blist regularly with your critical data. We agree. This feature release is a small, but important step in the right direction. We’re not only listening, but working hard to meet your needs. Thanks.