Friends, we’re coming up on a mere 11 hours to go! I wanted to show you another video on one of Zooomr 2008’s new features that let’s you create GeoZips instead of regular Zips on Zipline. The Video is below.
kristopher
Good Morning from Tokyo, Japan! I’ve been working straight over the weekend and our team should be here any moment.
We’ve only got about 19 more hours to go as we launch Zooomr 2008 on 3.3.08 Pacific.
Please know that from this point forward, we might bring down the site at any moment to upgrade Zooomr. 
With love and regards,
kristopher
Zooomr 2008 is only mere days away! Check-out this video about Mobile and Custom Designs in the new release:
Hi Friends! Sorry for the lack of updates on the Zooomr Blog! After recently opening up the Knowledge Center, we’ve been keeping it chock-full of cool and useful information for our community. I highly recommend that you check it out!
Now then, some updates.
First, we’ve moved to a new Data Center in Japan! Our Japanese Data Centers are much faster than the old and as a result, you will find that uploads and general browsing will be faster. Big plus.
Second, we’re still waiting on some of our older equipment to be shipped. Unfortunately, we had a 25-day deadline (we only knew 26-days in advance! 
) to move-out of our old data center in the US, and without me there to supervise, Thomas Hawk and two very cool Zooomr Users had to handle the operations. This was a big shock to us, but we managed to get a data center in Tokyo together!
Further, what this also meant was that we had 25-days to move 20TB of Photos! Unless you’re VC backed, this task is pretty impossible. With our small financial resources at the moment, we were only able to grab half of the data out of the data center. The other half is again on its way to Japan and will be activated within this month. We regret the situation this has posed to our users and ask for forgiveness. Users may track our progress in the Knowledge Center. Again, donating or going pro really helps us out, as well!
Third, Zooomr 2008 is well underway and once we get all of our hardware into Tokyo, Japan and things start to stabilize, we will push the new code out to the servers and show you what we’ve been working on for the last 6 months. It’s really exciting stuff and we’ll hope you’ll join us in its launch.
Lots of great things are planned inside of 2008 and we want to communicate that our focus for this year is to make Zooomr faster and more stable along with making improvements to core features we have today. We feel that our features are very strong, and if made more stable could do very well.
I also want to take a brief moment and thank all of the hard core users who IM and communicate with me and our crew here in Japan everyday! You guys are awesome and it shows 100 times over. Thank-you!
Let’s stay strong for 08!
kristopher
Hey friends, tomorrow from about 10a we’re going to meet-up at Sendagi Station (Tokyo Metro) and start photowalking in Japan!
If you’d like to come along, please join this discussion on Zipline or send an email to kris.tate@gmail.com
Zooomr user Chidorian also put together an awesome Google Map that everyone can use to follow the adventure!
I’ve also gone ahead and put up a wiki page on our new Zooomr Knowledge Center so that you can track future Japan Photowalking events as they happen!
日本皆様、こんにちは！クリストファーです。明日の午前１０時から、是非にPhotowalkしよう！:)
Photowalking Schedule:
集合場所
10am 地下鉄千駄木駅集合
不忍池
12pm 不忍池で集合して昼食へ
秋葉原駅
3pm 秋葉原駅で解散
僕たちと会うのを思ってたら、ピトークまで連絡してくださいー。:)
Hi Friends, we’re excited to be launching our 2008 Release here shortly! After working on several bugs and our well awaited mobile version, we’re excited to be delivering this special installment of Zooomr to everyone.
There will be some upload outages as marked above as we are moving some data to our Japanese Data Centers, but we plan to have both Web and Static photos online for your viewing pleasure.
Our team and myself have been working hard here for the last 5 months in Japan for everyone’s benefit. I’m glad that we’ve been able to save Zooomr from a money crisis that could have killed Zooomr for good — but, instead, we have found investments and are moving full speed ahead for you guys — our users.
We’ve also launched the Zooomr Knowledge Center where you can find more information about our upcoming release, as well as submit bugs. We’re trying our best to keep everyone in the loop.
Please be safe — we’re only 9 days into the year and moving strong!
kristopher
Hey Friends, we’re off to a great start this year. We’ve been working on moving data to Japan and that has stopped us from posting most of the brand-new 2008 Release of Zooomr.
Yet, there are parts of the 2008 Release that can still be backported to the old version without messing up any of the transfer.
Today, I pushed major updates to Privacy and Licensing systems. The cool thing is that you can also now search for that data — so if you want all Creative Common’s licensed photos on Zooomr, just do a search for it!
Example: Most Recent CC Attribution Licensed Photos on Zooomr
More to report inside of 2008 — we’re only 5 days in!
kristopher
Friends, it’s been an amazing year. One that, together, has taken us to bigger and bolder heights.
In this year we launched an entirely new platform, moved server farms, launched our global blogging platform and have also seen the success of Zipline and how it has raised community awareness — All thanks to your support.
Up until now, Zooomr was completely manufactured, coded, maintenanced and administrated by myself. Doing this by myself has been a truly humbling and insightful experience — but what I will remember the most is how touching it has been for me to be able to share my life with all of you — our community.
Believe it or not, for the last two years, I have worked every living moment of my life for this Web site: For Zooomr and for its community. (And, if that is hard to believe, please look at my vimeo stream or the thousands of photos that I have uploaded on my photo stream in this year alone.)
So, in a few words: It has been an honor to have put everything, including my blood and sweat, into zooomr for this community.
And even now, I have traveled over 5,000+ miles away from America to Japan to not only find financing for Zooomr to keep its community alive, but also to open what we all know and love about Zooomr up to new markets, as well.
This is also the first holiday season that I will not be spending with my family — and oh how I miss my Mother, Father and younger brother Ryan. No doubt, they probably miss me too.
This post isn’t about me, though — it’s about all of us. It’s about Zooomr, the community and what we have all put into it to keep it going for the better of everyone included.
When I was sitting in my 5×5 foot (!) sublet room in Silicon Valley, CA first creating Zooomr, I only imagined what it could become. I wanted to create a place where everyone could share their experiences in life with the rest of the world in as many locations and languages as possible. Today, we’re still finding more ways to connect people globally and being an active part of other people’s lives is what keeps me attached to this project day in and out.
And while I have over 15,000+ hours into making Zooomr, I’m still going strong out here in Japan working hard to make Zooomr stronger, more reliable and ready for the next wave of challenges and advancements in photo sharing and communication that we can provide.
After three months of solid work here in Japan, we’ve got a new Web build ready that fixes much of the bugs and issues with Zooomr today. And, thanks to on-going Japanese investments, I can say that we’re working to make Zooomr stronger than ever by increasing man-power and also moving data from the US to Japan so that we can continue to build up Zooomr’s infrastructure and make Zooomr faster for everyone around the world. (This new build will be launched soon after the move is complete.)
As I leave this post and get back to working on Zooomr, I want to just take a moment to thank all of our users and all of the companies and individuals who have given to this project in order to make it better for everyone.
This is a time for giving and remembrance; I want everyone to know that even though I may not be in front of a warm fire with close friends and family, I am instead filled with a different, special kind of warmth — the warmth of community and togetherness.
From me to you, thank-you and happy holidays.
Zooomr Mobile is just so simple and fun to play with, here’s some more video of it in action!
Some things demonstrated in this video:
More still to come!
Hey friends! It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to sit-down to talk to you about the latest exciting news over at Zooomr & Company — lots to talk about!
First order of business? We’ve grown. We’ve partnered closely with Cross Borders Japan and now have office space in Harajuku & Suidobashi along with a complete staff of over 10 people. A warm welcome to our new teammates! Yay!
As we move further along, you will notice that Zooomr is investing heavily in the Japanese Market. Japan holds the Second Largest GDP in the World behind the United States and its opportunities when it comes to Web growth on Mobile and Browser are phenomenal — More on that soon.
Okay, strong focus on Japan and the World, new team of bright faces. Who is going to lead operations? Introducing Hiroshi Asaeda and Toru Murakami:
One of the youngest and successful entrepreneurs in Japan, Hiroshi is already an author of three books, including one on Second Life and Real-Time Experiences — all at the incredible age of 24. Hiroshi is fluent in both English & Japanese and will become the CEO & President of Zooomr Japan.
Friend, Mentor and Future Investor, Murakami-san has been a force in the Japanese Web industry since the early days working as an Executive VP and Founding Member at IMJ in Japan and Korea. Today, Murakami-san is a professor at Digital Hollywood, Japan’s first College designed for digital content authoring. Murakami-san’s influence has certainly helped sculpt Zooomr into a strong player for the Japanese Market. His understanding for talent and ideas goes much further than his deep qualifications; Murakami-san is a welcome addition to our advisory board.
We’re very excited to be working such talented and experienced individuals such as Mr. Asaeda and Mr. Murakami — Welcome aboard you guys!
Ah, but today is not a normal day! This is just the beginning in our bevy of exciting news to share.
Today we’re adding a new service to the Zooomr Family: Zooomr Mobile (Zooomr ShareLife in Japan).
Is something going on around you right now? Now you can share it with your friends and well over 100,000 users strong from the comfort of your Mobile Phone — This is the message we’re sharing with our friends in Japan starting Today.
While this service will be Japanese-Only to start, it is available in both English and Japanese languages.
To the over 50 million 3G+Mobile users in Japan on DoCoMo, au by KDDI and SoftBank, Zooomr is soon to make a welcome entrance into a market where Web 2.0 hasn’t quite yet dared.
This is new ground for us and many others, but we feel strongly about our value proposition. Here’s a quick round-up of the Mobile feature-set:
Of special note, thanks to a API Partnership with Guru Navi, we can provide some of the best, up-to-date, restaurant information available in Japan.
To top it all off, inviting users is a snap with our unique QRCode Invitation System, that allows users to add each other by simply scanning a barcode. Super-Super-Viral — And easy!
In short: We’ve made Zooomr very accessible and super-addictive to the over 50 million 3G Mobile Phone Users in Japan. We’re opening up an area of communication that many Japanese people have not seen until today.
While we haven’t locked-down an exact launch date for our API, we’re excited to announce that we’re starting to issue API Keys to members of our new Zooomr Developer Google Group! The Google Group has documentation and other goodies available that make Developing on Zooomr a snap. We’ll have a more detailed post on the Zooomr Platform soon — please join our group and stay tuned.
What made your friends’ Real-Time Experiences on Zipline and placed them into an easy-to-view sidebar that updates every minute? Well my friend, with quick-launch buttons and minimalistic theme, this is exactly what Zooomr Zipfox is aimed at doing.
Real-Time Experiences are best when more people are in the loop. Thanks to Zipline’s smart-threads, you and your friends’ updates cluster together so that you can focus on communicating, instead of trying to figure out what was last said. Huge thanks to Gen Kanai over at Mozilla Japan who was a major influence in Zipfox’s production! And for you Flock users out there, Zipfox even works with the Social Web Browser, too.
With all of this terrific work, you can expect that there’s more than just a few strings to change. Starting next week, we will be re-launching our Localization Google Group with the new files inviting our more than 80 volunteers to help us put Zooomr into More languages than ever imagined before. A big thanks to our Localization Members from all over the globe!
With Zooomr Japan focused on Mobile, Worldwide Services will be working on keeping developers happy and plugging them into the wealth of tools that has made Zooomr into a rich Real-Time Experience Platform.
Over the last few months, I have worked very, very hard to bring you some of the most up-to-date fun experiences in the industry and throughout the month of November, there will be a significant amount of code clean-up and revisiting.
Our goal at Zooomr has always been about building the best way to experience the world around us as it happens. With Zipline, Zooomr Mobile and Zipfox, we are building tools that enable potential millions to communicate. The future is very strong here at Zooomr.
Very Special Mention and Thanks to Ron Conway, Timothy Van Loan & Co. at Sun Microsystems, Raju Vegesna and the ZOHO Crew for their continued support. Without these individuals and contributions from Users Like You, Zooomr would certainly not be here today! Thank-you.
With love and respect,
(Want to talk about this? Join us here!)
Zooomr Zipfox: http://www.zooomr.com/zipfox/