Category Archives: Web Stuff

The Zooomr Soap Opera

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This last week, I’ve been following the ongoing launch of Zooomr, an up-and-coming photosharing website. The whole web application is programmed by just one man, Kristopher Tate, backed up by photographer Thomas Hawk. Kristopher is just 19 at the time of writing, and despite criticisms of “copying Flickr”, he has made a huge achievement with Zooomr so far.

The latest version of Zooomr, known as “Mark III”, is a complete redesign of the whole system, from the ground up. Unfortunately, being such a major upgrade, it necessitated taking the whole site offline in order to perform the upgrade. This included migrating all of the content to a new server, as well as populating servers across the world to make the system faster for users outside the USA.

Kris Tate launching Zooomr Mark III

If I remember correctly, Zooomr (Mark II) went offline over a week ago, and Kristopher hasn’t had much sleep since. He and Thomas have spent much of their time on live streaming cameras via ustream.tv, explaining the different obstacles that they have come across during the upgrade. Their transparency in communication has been commendable, and despite the site being down for so long, ‘old’ users and would-be users alike have been informed of everything along the way.

I have been visiting zooomr.com several times daily, and following the streaming video to catch up with the latest gossip about the upgrade. It’s been like a very geeky soap opera that is very addictive. My friend James at work has also been following events at Zooomr. We’ve unashamedly swapped gossip like a couple of old ladies at a bus stop! It’s been fun to watch so far…

I’ve watched the criticisms, the support, the pizza being sent in by Flickr, not to mention the problems that hounded them the first time they tried to launch it back at the beginning of April.

Considering all of the problems that Kris Tate has had to surmount this past week, I really do wish him well with Zooomr. If Mark III delivers the promised functionality, it will be a tremendous achievement for him, and great fun for us too.

So good luck with Zooomr, Kris, and after Mark III is up and running – please take a few days off!

Google buys Feedburner

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According to TechCrunch, Google are in the final stages of acquiring Feedburner for $100 million. I use Feedburner for a lot of the blogs that I look after, and it’s a great service. I’m sure that their acquisition by Google will ensure that their service will be around for a long time to come. And in terms of all the work that the Feedburner team have put into the service, financially it will all have been worth it.

Is it me, or is Google growing a little too fast though? I trust Google with some of my data (Gmail) more than any of the other big corporations, but I can’t help feeling a little uneasy about it. Are they wanting to take over the internet?!

Time will tell…

(oh, and I do use Google Adwords to make a few pennies ;-)

Carbon Neutral Website Hosting

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Green Web Hosting! This site hosted by DreamHost.
Dreamhost have just announced that they are now a carbon neutral organisation. They claim to have offset their carbon emissions through reputable organisations, such as The Green Office.

But as with any “green scheme” there will always be controversy over the methods used to “offset” carbon emissions, and the comments on Dreamhost’s announcement post make interesting reading (certainly from a socialogical standpoint!). The usual “climate change is a lie” arguments are put forward, and one paranoid individual says that: “This global warming scam is a ruse aimed at imposing world-wide socialism”. Wow.

There is certainly a lot of cynicism, but at least some effort is being made to reduce their carbon emissions. It is being done voluntarily by the company (New Dream) with no financial benefit to them:

While the costs to us are significant, they’re not so high that we’re going to raise our rates, either. At best, we do our own little part to leave a better environment for our children. At worst, we leave a somewhat smaller profit for ourselves every quarter. (from comment 16)

At least their philosophy appears to be in the right place. And it’s giving them some great publicity, as this blog post proves ;-)

Full details are available on their blog (do have a good peruse of the comments).