« 僕は今日本にいます！(I’m here in Japan!) [UPDATED DATE!]Night Tour of the Zooomr HQ »

Zooomr Mark III: What Happened

by Kristopher Tate | 9 April 2007 | Adventures, Announcements, Development, General, System Notices, Video Blog | 47 Comments

Hey Friends, I’m back from Japan and on my way back to San Francisco! Many of you have wondered why the Zooomr Mark III Release has been delayed and it simply has to do with a 3rd Party Storage Provider being too slow for our liking and ultimately its sluggish response times. The extra time has been spent scaling our in-house infrastructure and recoding ZM3 to use our in-house storage engine, the “ZMD”. :)

Anyhoo, I’m on my way back to San Francisco right now and will continue to update you as it comes. Please remember that we have introduced UNLIMITED Upload, Archival and storage for your photos — forever! We believe in you guys.

With continued love and respect,

-Kristopher

47 Comments

  1. Julie said on 9 Apr 2007 at 5:19 pm:

    Welcome back, Kristopher. Glad to hear you got some rest. I know what it’s like to hit that wall in my own work. Looking forward to M3, but do take care of yourself, okay?

  2. Robby said on 9 Apr 2007 at 5:22 pm:

    Thanks for the update, Kristopher! You look so refreshed… Looks like the trip was a much-needed break. I’m still excited to see ZM3! :)

  3. Yuvi said on 9 Apr 2007 at 5:34 pm:

    Looks like the break did you good, though I was also sortof hoping that you went to Japan to setup servers for us in Asia… ;)

    And hey, so does this mean you aren’t using S3?

  4. Gette said on 9 Apr 2007 at 5:53 pm:

    I can hardly complain about ZM3 being late with unlimited storage, now can I? ;-)

  5. shane said on 9 Apr 2007 at 7:18 pm:

    glad to hear she’s coming along :D

  6. Raoul said on 9 Apr 2007 at 7:28 pm:

    Alright, this is more like it!!! Thank you for the update, Kris! Glad to have you back and ready for action! :-)

  7. kingler said on 9 Apr 2007 at 8:42 pm:

    Can’t wait to get a hold on the M3 API… Keep up the good work, Kris.

  8. Dave said on 9 Apr 2007 at 10:43 pm:

    Kristopher,

    Thanks for this update, it’s exactly what I wanted. Let’s hope this is the start of a new trend in regular updates (no matter how small). How about every Monday?

    Aside from that, I just had an idea for after Mk3, once the dust has settled. Perhaps you could do some kind of writeup of the technology behind Zooomr. The hardware, software stack, APIs etc. It would be interesting reading for some of us geeks out here.

    Thanks again, and keep up the good work,
    Dave

  9. themak said on 10 Apr 2007 at 1:36 am:

    Thanks for the update on this, it’s pretty bad when something so major is screwed up by a third party- and I think it’s pretty decent of you not to say who they are.
    I too cannot wait to get my hands on the API.

  10. MrDroopy said on 10 Apr 2007 at 6:40 am:

    Hi Kristopher, thanks for the update. I’m very curious what Mk3 will bring us…

    Anyway, I was looking if there was a forum or place to discuss tips, ideas etc. for the future of zooomr after Mk3. Things that we would like to see in Mk4 (Mmmm, hope i’m not pushing it too far ;-) )

    I love your service see a bright future for it. Thanks!

  11. tinyau said on 10 Apr 2007 at 8:08 am:

    Thanks for the update. I can’t wait to see what Mark III will be provided.

  12. Peter Upfold said on 10 Apr 2007 at 12:12 pm:

    Nice to hear things are back on track - and also nice to have a refreshing amount of transparency about what the problem was. Makes a change from other services…

    Don’t work yourself to death again Kristopher, but I’m looking forward to when Mark III does arrive!

  13. Cody Mays said on 10 Apr 2007 at 12:26 pm:

    Welcome back! Did you see any of the new nissan Cubes or toyota bB’s while you were there?

    (I’m a big import car fan >_>)

  14. tim said on 10 Apr 2007 at 2:28 pm:

    Thanks, Kris. Good to see you’re well rested.

  15. Davide Salerno said on 10 Apr 2007 at 11:32 pm:

    Welcome back, Kristopher. Thank you very much for the update.
    I think that MarkIII will be a superb work and I love Zooomr because there are such wonderful people behind it.
    Take us always update but take all the time you need to make an excellent product.
    Davide

  16. Lon said on 11 Apr 2007 at 4:36 am:

    Thanks for the update Kris. Glad to hear you’re doing well!

  17. CJ said on 11 Apr 2007 at 10:28 am:

    Can wait to see the new version, especially the option to sell photos. It iwll be interesting to see how this competes with the microstock industry.

  18. Ian said on 11 Apr 2007 at 11:16 am:

    Welcome back Kristopher! We’d rather have a system that realizes the potential you’ve created, so no need to apologize! It’s good to focus on the quality control.

  19. Jamie said on 11 Apr 2007 at 12:41 pm:

    Quote:”..scaling our in-house infrastructure..”

    By in-house, I really hope you don’t mean IN YOUR house ;)

  20. Ignatz said on 11 Apr 2007 at 4:31 pm:

    Thanks for the explanation. I’m a very proud user of Zooomr… you guys are always workin to give us a great service & u do it.
    Once again, thanks.

  21. Phasor Burn said on 11 Apr 2007 at 8:13 pm:

    Zooomr Mark III Delayed by Amazon S3’s inability to Scale?

    Looks like Kristopher Tate took a short vacation to recharge his batteries. Upon return a couple of days ago he gave an update to the Mark III status, where the blame for the delay was laid squarely at an unnamed 3rd party storage provider.
    They ha…

  22. tim said on 12 Apr 2007 at 10:40 am:

    @Phasor Burn, it’s not a smokescreen. Kris told me about the storage issue way back when the whole delay first happened.

    Where is Thomas Hawk?

  23. alex said on 13 Apr 2007 at 10:06 am:

    hi nice site.

  24. Alice said on 14 Apr 2007 at 12:25 pm:

    I’m a geek-newbie here, I’m starting to really like Zooomr (simply because I heard about the unlimited space) but can you introduce me to Mark3 and it’s exact features… I would really enjoy the read as I’m not aware what I’m actually really eager to anticipate.

    Can I also make a suggestion, Zooomr boasts potentially great features such as unlimited uploads and the lightbox thingy, but the colours used on the site (dark blue, dark orange, dark red, and light blue), and the interface are extremely (boring, annoying, or ugly) ugly. A new design and interface would go great with this Malarkey 3, I mean Mark 3 :P

    Redesign the site and I’ll not only sell you myself, I’ll sell you my boyfriend, my best friends, my other friends, and even mon famille.

    Good luck with the site xx

  25. Shwouchk said on 14 Apr 2007 at 1:41 pm:

    The site’s design and color happens to be one of the things I like most about it… :P

  26. Brad Knowles said on 14 Apr 2007 at 2:17 pm:

    Okay, so I uploaded a whole bunch of pictures. I used the JUploader features to put a lot of tags on them, and none of the tags survived. Moreover, I also used the JUploader features to mark them as private, viewable by friends and family — and they’re currently publicly available.

    How do I use Zooomr to add tags to multiple pictures? How do I use Zooomr to take a whole bunch of pictures and change their public/private status?

    Are these things that are coming in Mark III? And when will Mark III actually be delivered?

  27. Alice said on 15 Apr 2007 at 8:35 am:

    Schwouchk you’re right I suppose it’s a matter of taste really, though wouldn’t it be great if you could customize the colours and layout as a member of the site?

    Oh and Brad mentioned juploader, which I just signed up recently and can’t use because my University campus is restricted to a Proxy server with Authorisation :s
    Is there anyway to upload multiple photos without using juploader or is there a hack I can use with juploader to allow me to do just that?

  28. Alice said on 15 Apr 2007 at 8:37 am:

    By the way can I just say you are very good looking in this entries piccie Kristopher xx

  29. Shwouchk said on 15 Apr 2007 at 11:51 am:

    By the way, a lot of people commented on how kris is very responsive, but he never rerponded to me when i tried to contact him… :(

  30. trever said on 15 Apr 2007 at 1:15 pm:

    Zooomr seems snappier today. Less people hammering the systems, more systems available to handle the load, fully cut over to the upgraded internal storage infrastructure? I hope it’s the latter… good stuff.

  31. Kristopher Tate said on 16 Apr 2007 at 1:15 am:

    Trever, Even though most of our infrastructure is moved over to Mark III — I put another box onto the Release Two load… Hope it helps. :)

    -Kristopher

  32. Kreg Steppe said on 16 Apr 2007 at 4:01 am:

    I am not disappointed…however I anxiously await the Mark III release.

    I too know what it is like to hit a wall.

  33. sebutzu said on 16 Apr 2007 at 4:45 am:

    Kris!
    I am a software developer…and I know all the pains you are going through.
    Take your time, and do it GOOD!
    I hate not being able to play with Mark III, but I know how difficult it must be for you guys.

    You are doing a great job!
    Hang on!

    All this dissapointment will be gone when M3 will see the daylight…

    Good luck…and if possible…
    give us an estimation…
    (I know better to never ask a programmer when the job will be done) but still it would be nice to know that … in a couple of months M3 will be up and running…
    We would really like it if you would:
    1) Post progress status periodically…let us know the problems…
    2) Maybe allow us to test a “alpha” version of M3 - (that must not need to keep the images posted…after the final release)
    3) You could even try to ask for our help in development…I’m sure that there are a lot of developers around, that would love to help
    4) Maybe…but this is too much maybe…you could OPEN SOURCE the Zooomr ;)

    Over and out!

  34. trever said on 16 Apr 2007 at 8:23 am:

    All projects have three phases and it is near impossible to give estimates.

    The first 80% of a project is completed when the design, implementation,and internal testing has been done.

    At this point, everyone things you are about 80% done since there’s very little left to do.

    The second 80% happens when real world implementation with real world data loads and equipment etc is used. There’s always something that comes up here that can take a lot of unexpected time to resolve.

    So now surely we should be 80% done, right?

    Well not so fast.

    The *third* 80% of a project is when real life users get access to the systems and break it in all sorts of wonderful, unexpected ways.

    Initial project estimates, even when you try to over estimate to take care of the unexpected delays, tends to still be far too optimistic. At least that’s been my experience with “big bang” projects that are to be sprung on the user community fully formed from the get-go.

  35. eddie said on 16 Apr 2007 at 12:22 pm:

    So what you’re saying, is that there’s three phases, and 240% to a project? :)

    Interesting.

  36. trever said on 16 Apr 2007 at 3:11 pm:

    More or less. Take your initial estimate, double it, and add a zero and maybe you’ll be able to come in under-estimate :-)

  37. Phil said on 21 Apr 2007 at 10:38 pm:

    I’ve been a Zooomr convert a few months ago and I’ve already encouraged my friends to switch as well. Take your time on Mark III Kristopher, I know it will kick ass.

  38. Vincent said on 23 Apr 2007 at 7:12 am:

    Can we have some more info on a few of the new features? E.g. will M3 be able to transfer one account to another (i.e. when I change my website, I want to use another OpenID ;)

  39. robert said on 14 Jun 2007 at 9:56 am:

    hi all.

  40. Constantinos said on 9 Jul 2007 at 12:14 am:

    Cool!

  41. Angelo said on 9 Jul 2007 at 5:25 pm:

    Cool…

  42. Solon said on 9 Jul 2007 at 8:33 pm:

    Cool.

  43. Giatas said on 9 Jul 2007 at 8:48 pm:

    Nice!

  44. Lambros said on 10 Jul 2007 at 11:37 am:

    Cool.

  45. Valerios said on 10 Jul 2007 at 11:49 am:

    Interesting…

  46. Anaklets said on 10 Jul 2007 at 12:42 pm:

    Nice!

  47. What’s up with Zooomr’s Mark III? said on 23 Dec 2007 at 7:08 pm:

    […] know from one of Kris’ video blogs that there was a major problem with the external storage services they were using. Basically, they […]

Want to Comment? Continue the conversation: Visit Zooomr Groups!