Official Zooomr Blog

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:

Hiroshi Asaeda (Japanese: 浅枝 大志)

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.

Toru Murakami (Japanese: 村上 亮)

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).

Zooomr Mobile is ripe for Real-Time Experiences

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:

• EZ Login (One-Click Login!)
• Follow your Friends and Family on the incredibly addictive Zipline.
• Seamless Camera Phone Capture-to-Share Integration on all three major Japanese carriers!
• Works with Built in GPS, iArea and aGPS (More on this Below!)
• Add, Edit and Remove Contacts
• Post and Reply in Real-Time on both Photos and Text.
• The easiest Location-Based Content Discovery system we’ve seen!
  Thanks to Built-in GPS, users can search for near-by Restaurants, Movie Show Times, Friends and Photos.
  

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.

Zooomr API Gets Official

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.

Officially Introducing Zooomr Zipfox

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.

HUGE Updates to Localizations

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!

The Road Ahead: November Plans

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,

kristopher

(Want to talk about this? Join us here!)

Media

Zooomr Zipfox: http://www.zooomr.com/zipfox/

Hey folks, Prophead has just released his Zooomr Mac Suite of applications available for download. These are some pretty cool apps. If you are on a Mac check them out here!

This week Zooomr signed up for an affiliate account with B&H Photo. What does this mean? This means that any cameras or photographic equipment purchased at B&H going through our links means that we get paid a small affiliate percentage of the sale.

We feel good about promoting B&H because we feel that it is one of the best places on the internet to buy camera gear. They have really low prices and really great service. Both Kristopher and I bought our own cameras through B&H and highly recommend the store as a place to buy your camera gear.

If you click through the B&H banner above and buy anything at B&H then Zooomr will get credit and you will help ensure that Zooomr can continue to run and that Kristopher can continue to develop for the site. We run a very lean ship at Zooomr, neither Kristopher or I take a salary, your support is very instrumental in keeping the site alive.

Anyways, you may notice some various B&H Photo badges around the site here and there . If you are in the market for camera gear and feel so inclined to go through one of these links to B&H it helps us out.

Thanks to all of you who have gone Pro and for those of you that continue to support the site. We could not do it without you.

Click through above to see the Vimeo InfoWidget and actually wach the garage implode. Very cool Thanks for the shot Brian!

Well I’m pleased to announce that Kristopher just added the final touches on what has probably been our most requested feature on Zooomr. Zooomr Social Stream represents a new way for you to follow the activity on your photographs on Zooomr. With Zooomr Social Stream you can sort the activity on your photos by the last day, week or month and have several different views to choose to view your activity from including a list view and a timeline view.

By tracking the activity on your photos Zooomr will allow you to better monitor your photos and interact with your contacts.

But…

This is just the beginning for Social Stream. With Social Stream Zooomr is taking the first step towards our larger vision of becoming a real-time communications platform. Certainly photos are a big part of that but watch for even bigger developments coming from Social Stream. Combined with Zipline, Social Stream allows you to put your finger on the pulse of what is happening with your photos as well as what your friends and family are up to.

Zooomr Social Stream is a Pro only feature, so if you haven’t upgraded to Pro yet on Zooomr here’s one more reason why you may want to. Plus you really, really, really help us out when you go Pro and we appreciate it immensely and it allows Kristopher to continue developing on Zooomr.

Prophead did a nice write up on how to order Moo cards from your Zooomr stream here.

Thanks Prophead!

Kiss, Kiss photo above by Prophead.

Come on out and join us for a night exploring graffiti art and graffiti photography next Friday night, October 5th in Oakland.

The evening will start out with a free showing of the one hour documentary Piece by Piece in the garden at the Oakland Museum of California. There is also some great art to shoot there in that garden as well. Arrive early to shoot the art and get a good lawn seat for the film.

More on the film from it’s website:

“Take a journey into San Francisco’s mysterious graffiti underground. Witness the birth of the movement as told by the people that lived it. Piece by Piece puts you alongside the graffiti writers, police, and local San Franciscans affected by this misunderstood art form. Documenting the last 20 years of creation and destruction, you’ll hear the stories and adventures depicting this elaborate movement for the first time in history.”

There will be a Q&A after the film.

Once the Q&A is done we will head out from there to shoot some graffiti sites in Oakland. Bring your camera, tripod, flashlight, colored gels, and whatever else you’d like to bring for photographing graffiti at night. Photowalks are for everyone so even if you don’t have a SLR feel free to come out and hang out for a night dedicated to graffiti as art and photographing graffiti.

Upcoming.org event page here.

Zooomr friend Dave Sifry is organizing a Photowalk this Saturday in New York City if you happen to live in or be in the Big Apple.

From Dave:

Come join me and a bunch of folks who are getting together this Saturday for a photowalk across the Brookyn Bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan, and the continued with lunch, and a stroll around the lower east side. Saturday looks to be a beautiful day (current forecast says Sunny, Highs of 75 degrees) so I’m sure we’ll have a great time and get lots of great photos.

Details (including RSVP): http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/269765

Where: We’re meeting at the walkway entrance is next to the Federal Court Building in Brooklyn. There are stairs on Cadman Plaza East and Prospect Street or a ramp entrance on Johnson and Adams Streets. You can get there by subway: take the A train to High Street. Give me a call at 415 846-0232 if you’re lost or are wandering around.

When: 10AM on Satuday September 29th. We’ll grab some lunch afterwards when we get to the Manhattan side, so all in all the walk will probably end around 2PM.

What to bring: Bring yourself, and whatever you like to record the moment - camera, video camera, or your friendly instamatic! All experience levels are a-ok, from beginner to expert pro.

You might want to check this post out.

Thanks to John Wesley for building an app to show your Zooomr photos on your Facebook profile page using Zooomr’s RSS. If you want to add Zooomr to your Facebook check it out here.

Photos (l to r from top) by: Sean Davis, Bryan N,jeepersdad and Celine.