QOTD #19

I know my stuffs....

"Sometimes people call me a 'computer expert' ;)"

QOTD #18

The world owes me...

"Thanks friends, sometimes I wish people would tell me how much they appreciate what I've done. But to expect that would be asking too much..."

More about ripoffs...

"Looks like they ripped-off ______, good thing _______ supports _______".

Funny that.

Maybe Zooomr invented it before Friendfeed?

What's wrong with this picture?

or this one?




(aside from them taking rediculously long to load)

Technically, nothing. ;-)

QOTD #17

On sharing TMI...

"For those who ever wanted to know what my feet look like"

Umm...no thanks!

QOTD #16

On sharing useless information...

"I just uploaded a photo named "Lunch"

QOTD #15

On multiple issues and possible hacks...

"We've never been hacked."

QOTD #14

On redundancy and redundancy...

"We keep ridiculously steady backups of everything, and photos are replicated 3 times on three different kinds of equipment. In a word: Infallible."

QOTD #13

On survivalism...

"There's an article out in yesterday's Nikkei Electronics about Zooomr and how camera makers should partner with us to survive! :)"

The accompanying article labels Zooomr's Zipline as "Twitter". ;-)

QOTD #13

On being under attack...!

"Lots of traffic from Taiwan at the moment -- seems to be a DDOS attack -- but whatever, Zooomr can handle the load just fine! :) "

Zooomr was then down for the better part of a week after this comment.

QOTD #12

On ass kicking...

"We're going to kick some serious ass together this year. :)"

We're still waiting. :-(

QOTD #11

On whether or not Zooomr is doing a good job of being Zooomr...

"I want to take some time to ask if people think we're doing a good enough Job with Zooomr given the circumstances we've been given as a community."

As they say..."if you have to ask..."

QOTD #10

On users leaving due to service outages and broken uploads, etc...

"The funny thing is that you'll probably upload more photos in the future when we release the next version in the next two weeks. Take care, okay?"

He never did come back after that.

QOTD #9

On explaining new features...

"Let me take some time and put up an article on InfoTags inside of the new Zooomr Knowledge Center, okay? :)"

That was +4 months ago now...still not documented.

QOTD #8

On finally adding Copyright settings to Zooomr photos...

"Dude, I'm totally stoked about this stuff."

QOTD #7

On what Zooomr really is...

"Zooomr was not built to be just another photo sharing site. We're not trying to be like Flickr or others. This is Zooomr -- Photo Communication."

QOTD #6

On understanding what "Exodus" means...

"I've always wanted to be invited into a group that's an Exodus of something I've created. I can only now safely cross that off my grand TODO list! :)"

QOTD #5

On taking criticism...

"blast ‘em, guys"

-Kristopher, telling Zooomr members to flood Zoliblog with comments in favor of Zooomr after Zoli posted a criticism of the service issues Zooomr was having.

QOTD #4

On the previous bad-mouthing of Thomas Hawk...

" If I did badmouth TH, it was not meant in any negative sense. I apologize if it was taken that way. I only hope that TH would never badmouth Zooomr."

QOTD #3

On upload issues and the guilt that goes along with being a "Free" user.

"Guys, please cool it! The upload problem is only temporary. We don't have the 500+ boxes that our competitors have. Zooomr Uploading is 100% free. I'm working on temporary solutions, but in the mean time please Donate or Upgrade. Thank-You! :)"

QOTD #2

Kristopher, on new features and Thomas Hawk's current role on Zooomr.

"We can't launch it until we've moved all files from our US datacenter to Japan. Lots of awesome things going on for sure. Thomas Hawk knows about all of this but doesn't want to share it with you. He hasn't been working for Zooomr AT ALL since Oct. His job was to share. His job was to take care of our American strategy, but has failed to do so. I have to communicate in Japanese to fill the gap. But now I have to do HIS job too. I love talking with you all about features, but Thomas Hawk should love to as well. He's just been silent."

Things will get better over time...

Or maybe they won't?

I can't even finish deleting my photos and comments.

Unfuckingbelieveable.

QOTD #1, or "I might still have a use for Zooomr afterall".

I think I might just start posting rediculous quotes from Kristopher, there seems to be a stockpile of them out there for the taking.

Just found this one now.

"We released Zipline at the same time Twitter and Jaiku were just coming into view and had the feature in development after we launched our second release (way before jaiku & twitter. ever existed)."

Oh, that's just rich!

The End.

OK, this is it.
I give up, you win Zooomr.

It's obvious at this point that nothing is going to change. Things won't be fixed, they will just be covered up with other new features, tweaks, and toys. The errors will still be here (see above) with no explanation, cause, or cure. I asked about the error and was told it might be on my end, a timeout, as Kristopher couldn't duplicate it. I've asked about the issues with OpenID, apparently they have issues, but only with Zooomr. I asked about some Twitter issues with linking etc, I was told it was Twitters fault in how they handled URLS. I even asked about the issues with jUploader, that's apparently jUploaders fault in how they are dealing with the API. Don't get me started about the Friendfeed issues, just know it's Friendfeed's fault that it doesn't work properly.

It's great to see the new mobile features are working though...at least someone will still be happy. Maybe I should consider going strictly mobile, as everything seems to be working for them? Nah...

So Zooomr, I think it's time for me to finally give up. I'm almost about done deleting the rest of my files (which is another issue all together from what I've heard) and I have just about finished hooking up with all of my contacts over on Flickr (the Vimeo Rip-off) and iPernity (destroyer of photos). Once done, I'm planning on a "no looking back" step away from here. I think I need to follow the lead of so many others and just walk away, never to return, and get on with it. All the hooting and hollering in the world isn't going to make a difference. Zooomr (read: Kristopher) obviously knows better than everyone else and is unwilling to listen. It's been a problem for a very long time, it's just too bad I didn't see it sooner.

Life lesson #212 learned...next!

In Cycles

Round and round we go, again!

Zipline arguments always go through the same routine without fail. First someone complains, next someone defends, then everyone else lines up behind their favorite team and joins in on it. A few stray the course and try to neutralize the situation, others just sit by for a few hours and rattle the cages when it seems as things were almost calmed down. Then, once it's safe, intervention comes along, and the hero emerges. It's a cycle that never ends and is never resolved, only put off for a few more months. The problem is, people on all sides just don't get it, and they never learn from the ordeal.

If I may, a few words of advice for those who wish to get involved in such "arguments".

To the complainant: you complain you loose, it' the way the Zooomr game works. There will always be new defenders that haven't learned yet, and they will shun you like you've got the plague.

To the defender: watch what you say now, you (like so many before you) my find yourself eating your words when you realize that things are as you once denied. It happens every 3-4 months or so, then fades out, repeat, etc.

To Zooomr: when will you see and acknowledge that this cycle is a problem, a continuous issue that has spanned years. When will you finally break this cycle, and I don't mean with the calming empty promises?

To the rest: sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the ride, and if you missed this one, give it some time, another cycle will be round for you in no time.

Usually, there will be an "update" or a "bug fix" or some "new features" coming after these Zipline posts span more than a day, that's how it always works. Throw them a bone, reassure and reconfirm with everyone that Zooomr is one person, who is working hard for their "friends" to make Zooomr happen. Rally the troups, calm the situation, and then continue on for a few more months with a broken product and incomplete promises.

We go 'round and 'round...

Oh, the wonderful things one can "Discover" at Zooomr.

That, is just full of "Awesomeness"!

Another day...

...another ride on the failboat.

Intermission

Zooomr has more intermissions than bingo night at the old folks home. I guess that could be a good or a bad thing...Depends? (OK bad joke)



But seriously...how can people deal with this anymore? This was all supposed to be taken care of with the new Zooooooooooooooomr08 release, and then a week later when the C+ code went in place, then a week later with the load balancing, then a week later with the new lines being put in, then a week later with the new DB server, then...then...oh right, it's just Kris doing all this work by himself again, sorry, I forgot, I'll give him some more time.

Line up ladies!

No comment.

Things to do during a Zooomr outtage

How nice of Kristopher to parade around showing off the office with his webcam via Ustream while Zooomr was out of commission this morning.


Maybe next time, when he mentions that he can't update the status page when he's in the middle of solving the issue, he will skip going to ZooomrTV and instead post an update, then get working on the issue.


Unless being offline means "Nominal"?

Maximum Zooomr Velocity Reached?

It's all downhill from here...

Traffic and stats show that almost half of Zooomr's current audience is within North America (43-48% depending if you include CA), while less than 3% comes from Japan, the new saviour.



This is all well and good, afterall Zooomr is good for all of our "Friends" across the globe. The big problem is the slowdown that most of the 43-48% of the users are now experiencing. The move to Japan may allow Zooomr to serve Japan well, but there are constant issues with Zooomr to the US and CA. Faster DB servers and faster hardware are not going to solve these issues. It has more to do with the location and it's flooded connection to the outside world, including North America.

Try running your favorite online or even private Traceroute program to see what the results are. These are the *best* results we could come up with, using all of the major online test services.



With those numbers, pages take somewhere in the vacinity of 10 seconds to load, and this is with the "small" versions of the photos being show. Useable...yes...acceptable...no.

Apparently, the user base doesn't think so either. The chart below should show Zooomr's daily visitor trend in a stable (rocky is accepable) or incline trend.


While this chart should be showing Zooomr's forward growth and momentum, if not at least to be stable.


For a year now, we have heard it dozens of times, and in many of it's different flavors. But at this point in the game, I think it's safe to say that Japan will NOT save Zooomr, not unless by "Zooomr" you actually mean "Zooomr Japan". Zooomr is more at risk now of losing their core market as they have ever been, and that could potentially mean almost half of the users worlwide. Granted, they could finally give up on the photography market and focus more heavily on the phonecam/realtime-chat/icon-driven mobile market, something that might save them. But at this point, it's pretty clear that Zooomr is now a bit of an empty shell of it's former self.

Family Friendly Zooomr

After all this time, and after all the complaints about innapropriate content being shown in the public spaces on Zooomr, it's still showing up on a daily basis. This has been a hot item for at least two releases now. There were promises of a "flagging system" being put into place prior to MarkIII, which never showed up. Then with the introduction of the Zipline and Discover, the issue started to rear it's ugly head once again. Now almost two years and another release later, we are still back where we started, with users having to file a complaint in the Zipline and then (if someone is online) images being picked off one by one.

To be honest, it doesn't bother me to see most of what floats by, I am an adult that can move on without getting too worked up, but would you want to share your photos with family, or friends knowing that they could potentially run smack into this? They are literally 1 click away from sexually explicit material at any given time.

Free Zooomr Pro Accounts

Zooomr is offering free PRO accounts to current members who invite their friends to join Zooomr. Well, they actually have to sign up for you to get the PRO account, but either way the PRO account is there for the taking. This is all well and good, but the problem is that currently, only folks who follow Kristopher in the Zipline will know about this offer (most of whom are already PRO users). Maybe there will be a "public" posting to Zooomr in the coming days, but for now, only "Friends" are seeing the post unless others repost it or repeat the posting in the public Zipline.

*EDIT: The link to invite others has now been added to the navbar for all users. Though some users still won't know about the free PRO unless they are told directly or follow Kristopher as stated above.

Zooomr08, as the dust settles

Since we are just over a month into Zooomr Release 2008 (aka MarkIV) I thought that it might be a good time to reflect upon a few of the issues that were present in MarkIII and were going to be fixed in MarkIV, as well as a few items that were added since MarkIV. This list is in no way complete, and does not cover the "backend" issues, this if merely a view from a user's standpoint.

Broken/Fixed:

• Smartsets - (still broken) What's the point of creating a set of photos, if once you click to view one of them, you break out of the set and into the unordered photo stream. It's like organizing your rock collection but then storing it in scrambled eggs. Sure, it's all collected there and ready to look at, but it's messy as hell and you eventually give up on it.
  
  
• Geotagging - (somewhat broken) Geotagging within Zooomr is time consuming and often requires refreshing of the page in the middle of it all, which loses all of your unsaved geotags. Your other option is to geotag outside of Zooomr, and *maybe* Zoooomr will accept it, maybe not. Do you feel lucky...punk?
  
  
• EXIF - (somewhat fixed) Lots of cameras are showing EXIF info now, though not all. Also, once certain programs touch the EXIF, Zooomr seems to avoid it like the plague, even though all the other services still welcome the EXIF with open arms. Also, your back photos that didn't show EXIF before, yeah, they don't show EXIF now either (see also Batch edit). Zooomr apparently does not like getting chocolate mixed in with it's peanut-butter.
  
  
• Zipline - (broken, see Additions secton below) There is an issue with Zipline that has gone on since day one and which was supposed to be fixed in Zooomr08 but hasn't been. The issue is that when someone uploads more than X number of photos at once, the remaining photos (over 5?) that aren't shown in the Zipline take up space in the Zipline and offsets every other post. The result is that the Zipline will sometimes have several pages with 1 post on them, or sometimes it's the same post over and over for several pages if the person posted enough photos. It really cramps the Zipline's style.
  
  
• Zipline - (fixed) There was a delete button added to Zipline posts, eliminating most of the broken discussions in the Zipline. (see Additions below)
  

Missing/Lost/Dropped:

• Batch edit/delete/tag - (promised, missing) This one was a big one, and it was promised with 2008 release, but there it isn't. What more can be said, without it, you have to hand-edit each individual post.
  
  
• Geomap/TagMap - (gone) Removed prior to Zooomr08, though it hadn't been functioning for a long time already, so maybe it's best that way. though you can still find it, lurking in the shadows, and somewhat crippled.
  
  
• Trackbacks - (missing, dropped?) Trackbacks were there, they were gone, they were coming back, now they are...MIA.
  
  
• Analytics - (dropped?) Analytics was a feature promised with MarkIII, then put off, then...went into the Vaporsphere (see also Marketplace).
  
  
• Marketplace - (dropped?) The big selling point for MarkIII was the marketplace, where you could sell your photos. The market place was then pushed off until there was a "good base of photos in themarketplace first". Then, it packed up it's bags and left the country, no note, no call, last seen in Japan.

Additions:

• Zipline - (addition) The zipline received a few tweaks to it, some for the better, some for worse. The good, you can delete your Zipline posts, which is especially handy since the the Zipline works in weird ways sometimes causing users to mis-post replies. For instance, if you are reading a thread on the Zipline in it's entirety, and you post using the right side post box, your start a new post, where one would think that your post would be specific to the thread you are reading.
  
  
  The bad...Twitter integration. While it could be a good feature, it simply is not. Between broken conversations that nobody can follow on the Twitter side, to broken URL trackbacks to the original Zipline thread, that don't actually lead back to the original thread, this feature is pretty much useless, aside from letting your friends know that you've posted a photo. Also, if users decide to make their Zipline available to contacts only, it all goes south.
  
  The bad II...icons!? Really, I mean, what's the point? People love to complain about the MySpace-ization and dumbing down of other services, but who can take a photo service so seriously when the welcome page and Zipline (the two things you are presented with when entering Zooomr) are littered with dancing, blinking, waving icons? It brings me back to the days of AOL and AOL chatrooms...blech!
  
  
• Mobile - (addition) While this may be good for some, it shifts the focus of Zooomr from a photo site to a chat/im/cameraphone service(Shozu anyone?). Why mix photos that were worthy of selling in a serious stock photo manner last year, with 1.3megapixel camera phone photos of what someone had for breakfast? Really, it takes Zooomr down a few notches in the overall quality of photos.

As stated, this list is in no way complete, if you'd like a more detailed list, be sure to check out Zooomr's own TRAC system which has all of the recent, current, and continuous hiccups and bugs listed. Be forewarned, it will take some time to go through.

Zooomr accuses Flickr of "ripping off" Vimeo.

I find it ironic that the service which started out as a "rip-off" of Flickr and now Twitter, now acuses Flickr of being a rip-off of Vimeo. I guess rip-off means different things to different people, and that anyone who comes up with video hosting with tags is now deamed a rip of Vimeo. I can see the similarites. *insert eye-rolling here*

On another note, Zooomr's better half has a different take on the matter.

Zooomr to get newer, faster servers.

Zooomr will be getting some newer, faster database servers according to Kristopher. Users can expect to see some newer, faster system crashes and outtages within the next few weeks, stay tuned.

A Zooomr Eulogy

A silly little Zooomr video found on Vimeo. Seems that Kristopher is confused about it.

Zooomr Eulogy from Andrew Case on Vimeo.

#1 reason why Zooomr is crashing...

Because "You guys are awesome"

He said it not me folks!

On Slowness and "Error 503's"

When it's not the DDoS, or the RAID controller, or the updated C+ code, or the hackers uploading 500MB ISOs, it's...poor planning once again.


Notes on Bumpiness from Kristopher on Vimeo.

Zooomr has it's Ups and Downs

Every day for the past week+ has gone something like this.


The natives are getting restless.

Things are looking UP at Zooomr!

That is, if by "UP" you actually mean "DOWN".



Bring on Zooomr2008!

Zooomr "looses" months worth of photos.

Apparently, it was the copying software's fault, as it missed copying terrabytes of data, while no human happened to notice? Oops!

Seems as though this is always the case with Zooomr, humans don't make the errors, the hardware/software/network/switches do. Clearly the folks at Zooomr need to purchase some *quality* equipment and services, it's obvious that these things are what have been holding Zooomr down all this time.