Was the presentation for a specific group of people like investors/partners (thought I remembered someone mention something similar on Zipline)? If so then I guess it would focus on the things they were interested in, rather than the stuff we are.

Kris's presentation was filmed in front of group of people in a room, but it is not clear how many people or who they are. There is Q&A after he goes through his view graphs. Questions are regarding the mobile stuff he presented.

I should have included a link to the videos. They are from a post on the official Zooomr Blog on 2/27/08. http://blog.zooomr.com/2008/02/27/days-away-to-zooomr-2k8/ The post appears very general and addresses the upcoming Zooomr 2K8 (A.K.A. Mk4) upgrade, which we have been hearing about for a month or two now, but as noted above only talks about the new mobile platform being developed for Japan.

I really hope the bulk uploading is enabled, that is the main thing I have been really wishing for.

the flash uploader just really sucks, it has so many errors its almost unusable, I try to upload a folder of photos, and about 20% have errors and don't upload.

I abandoned Zooomr after the disaster that was Mark III. If there are no substantial changes to the web version (as Jeff mentioned) I'm afraid I may be gone for good.

1) After Mark III there was far too little communication, and 99% of the ways we needed to communicate bugs, etc. resulted in 404 errors.

2) The uploading process sucks. There is absolutely no incentive for me to use Zooomr over flickr.

3) The UI on the web site is generally horrible. Only the most savvy web users would be able to find their way around. It just doesn't make sense.

4) Who cares about updating your status from your phone? Is there really a sizable Zooomr community only communicating via Zipline? If it taps into Pownce or Twitter, so be it; but I'm not going to get into posting to yet another micro-blogging service. IT'S A PHOTO SITE. You can generate community without the Zipline stuff. If your groups and comments are easy to use -- which I find they are kind of confusing compared to flickr -- you'll have community / a social app.

Anyhoo... I was a very early adopter, but lost the fever for the flavor. Here's hoping 2008 can bring the beat back.

I stand corrected. After watching Kristopher's recent presentation, it's clear that they are really moving Zooomr into the micro-blogging space. And I quote, "One of the great things about Zooomr, as well, is that we also do photos."

So there you have it. I guess you can disregard my comment in all caps in my last message. It's not a photo site. It's a micro-blogging site that "also do(es) photos." I guess I will be sticking with flickr for my photo site -- at least until the US catches up with Japan and all their cool mobile technology.

3) The UI on the web site is generally horrible. Only the most savvy web users would be able to find their way around. It just doesn't make sense.

I can't wrap my head around this. I really don't think the design is that bad at all. I mean, I've very VERY web savvy, but still...

4) Who cares about updating your status from your phone? Is there really a sizable Zooomr community only communicating via Zipline? If it taps into Pownce or Twitter, so be it; but I'm not going to get into posting to yet another micro-blogging service. IT'S A PHOTO SITE. You can generate community without the Zipline stuff. If your groups and comments are easy to use -- which I find they are kind of confusing compared to flickr -- you'll have community / a social app.

Kristopher has always, ALWAYS, touted the worldy and communication aspects of the site. The fact that the site is translated into so many different languages was his attempt at spanning the globe, breaking the language barrier, creating more 'far out' friendships, or at least getting a fair amount of exposure outside of ones own area.

Comments are typically limited to a single context. i.e. that of the subject(s) in the picture. Groups are good for long, detailed discussion. Well, I guess it's good for short discussion too. Discussion nonetheless :P.

The Zipline itself, and the mobile integration, is going to be great for quick blurbs at any time.
Say when out on a shoot (rallying the troops for the photowalk), or even just daily commute banter. It's actually a great idea.

OpenTransit sounds amazing, but I don't know how far outside of Japan it will exist.

Anyhoo... I was a very early adopter, but lost the fever for the flavor. Here's hoping 2008 can bring the beat back.

I think the value add of other things (like the Zipline) will greatly complement the rest of the site. It's not taking over, Kristopher has already talked about the API (and shown shots of "authorizing jUploadr"), the recent screencast (on the blog) with the profile pages looks handy (boy have we been missing that), and the ability to recolor Zooomr looks pretty keen.

The biggest thing riding on my mind was something Kristopher posted to his Zipline: "Something to think about: Zooomr 2k8 can 100% read over 120 different kinds of photo metadata, including EXIF, IPTC, XMP -- even PrintIM. :)"

(Source)

I feel safe in saying that the web isn't being forgotton.

quepol, see my comment to Thomas Hawk on his blog. It pretty much mirror your feelings and thoughts.
http://thomashawk.com/2008/03/details-on-zooomr-2008.html

VxJasonxV, I think quepol is saying some of what I am feeling at the moment. That is, Zooomr started out being a PHOTO SHARING site and appears to quickly be turning into a mobile based social networking site, that oh-by-the-way also is a place you can post your photos. I hope I am wrong, but this it the message that Kris has communicated to us over the past couple of months. If the Web portion of this site is still important, why has he totally ignored that in his formal communications to us on the Zooomr blog? We shall see on Monday what the future holds. After all, it's all about the photos, at least that's what I thought. I am cautiously optimistic that the Web will in fact still be a key part of this site. The message currently being presented is 180 degrees from what Kris and Thomas's messages was about a year ago. I also find it quite interesting that Thomas Hawk has been all but silent for the past couple of months regarding anything to do with Zooomr. I know he is very passionate about photography and with this apparent shift in direction that Zooomr has taken, I wonder how much input he has had regarding the direction and focus Zooomr is taking since Kris moved to Japan ~6 months ago?

I find strange that Thomas stopped using Zooomr for his blog photos, and using flickr instead. Doesn't give me much confidence...

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Camera info reliably shows up for my photos since a few days ago, Zooomr doesn't choke on EXIF fields with empty values anymore. Kris mentioned somewhere that he has already updated the API. It still doesn't process IPTC data with non-ASCII characters though.

I can live without all the Zipline and Twitter stuff as well, but if Zooomr 2008 fixes the majority of MkIII bugs I can happily ignore all those non-photo-sharing features. Well, let's see what the final release brings.

Ignorant and others, about the metadata engine we have online now is still the mk3 engine.

The new API is online, but we haven't activated the new upload API because it ties into the new UI and code driving that UI.

(Also, you should know that we've brought back the 3rd party API, so jUploadr should work again. It might not work out of the gate yet, going to do some immediate testing after we launch -- we haven't been able to get the jUploadr developer access to our system pre-launch; but it's all the same access calls as last time -- we should be OK.)

After the launch, I hope you'll try out the new processing and metadata engine. Should be cool.

Web is very important to us and it is important to know that the Web has huge changes, including a new Account Center that wasn't there before! The entire focus of this release was mainly to improve Web.

Zooomr will always be a great place for you to share your photos, we just want to help the entire world share their photos -- and that means going mobile, as well.

kristopher

I'll take a bite at this topic...

I joined Zooomr because of the awesome possibilities I saw with regards to internet photo hosting (plus it's easier than running my own server!) Currently, I would view mobile stuff as silly, pointless, and a waste of time. However, since Kris has taken the first shot, so to speak, and done a lot of stuff to make the mobile side of this site happen, I do have to admit, it's pretty cool. That being said, I doubt I'll ever use it, unless Verizon integrates a cellphone into a Canon dSLR...

I'm looking forward to the new release, though I am a little worried it will have issues that people will freak out about. Here's to hoping that everything goes off without a hitch!

IT'S HERE!!!!!