Fogview: Thanks for the feedback. I've just spotted Overkill's post: "Zooomr Upload always fails without any notice if IPTC:Caption-Abstract (which becomes the picture's description here at Zooomr) contains UTF-8 encoded characters."

Of all of the photos I tried uploading, those with "Yucatán" in the description failed, those without uploaded successfully.

I guess I can "dumb down" my descriptions to use standard characters, but I'd much rather see special character support.

Anyway, mystery solved. Thanks both.

Hmmm.
I can't quote the top-most post.
I'd imagine that's a very quick fix, and would like to see it made.

Zipline paging seems flaky, there's often doubleups between pages, varying from just a few entries to half of the previous page appearing on the next.

I investigated, and it isn't due to new entries pushing older content onto the next. I opened page 1-3 and refreshed them simultaneously.

Also, occasionally a page will be much much shorter than usual, with only 5 or so entries.

a) IPTC metadata with non-ASCII characters have been an issue in Mk II as well, at least when one was using the upload form. With jUploadr the problem didn't occur.

b) Pics not showing up is most certainly a time-out problem (aside from the metadata issue). My observation was that whenever I had a batch upload running and in the meantime switched tabs in Firefox or to some other (bandwith or CPU time consuming) programm running, the chance that pics went AWOL increased significantly. And larger files are more prone to not showing up than smaller ones.

So whenever I'm uploading now I resume from doing anything else on my PC in the meantime. And I make sure that I stop torrenting the latest Ryan Adams & The Cardinals show beforehand. But even though I usually reduce my photos to a size of 1024px 1 in 20 still doesn't show up, and for most part it's the largest (in file size) that don't.

I am looking for some info on how to practically make a group of photos available to family and friends:
1. I have marked them as private and accessible to family and friends.
2. I have created SmartSets for the way I want them to be grouped

My question is then: how can they access these sets? How do I define who is part of Family and Friends (i.e. email/password)?

espin,
You have to add people as a contact. Right now they have to be Zooomr members. To add someone, click their Profile link then click Start Relationship.

If they don't have Zooomr accounts, they'll have to create one. Or you can create a "friends" account and give everyone the password. That's what some people do, but I think you should encourage them to sign up themselves.

I have suggestion for improving Groups that should be simple, but make them easier to use.

If the thread has more than one page, either move the page links above the "Reply to this topic?" box, or remove the "Reply" box from all pages except the last one.

It seems a lot of people don't notice the pages below the box so don't realize the thread has continued past page 1. I've done this myself several times because I don't scroll the browser window all the way down. Just a suggestion.

One more vote for opening up for jUploadr.

Gary Hegenbart: Just a small plug for my Enhanced Thread Paging Greasemonkey script until Kristopher fixes this. The script moves the page links above the Reply box, and it always adds another row of page links at the start of the thread.

Script link

I have suggestion for improving Groups that should be simple, but make them easier to use.

If the thread has more than one page, either move the page links above the "Reply to this topic?" box, or remove the "Reply" box from all pages except the last one.

It seems a lot of people don't notice the pages below the box so don't realize the thread has continued past page 1. I've done this myself several times because I don't scroll the browser window all the way down. Just a suggestion.

Ping, thanks again for volunteering your efforts to compensate for Zooomr's shortcomings!

James Huff: Just "scratching my own itch" and happy to be of help. :)

And here's an open invitation, if anyone has an idea for a Greasemonkey script that can improve their Zooomr experience, feel free to drop me a zmail or post in the Developers group. No promises, but I'll try to see what I can do.

For some idea on what can be done with Greasemonkey (without the API for now), here's a list of my scripts.

You're awesome! Thanks for sharing, those scripts really help.

I'm cross-posting this from another thread, because it really belongs here.

This is going on my 4th month doing unofficial Zooomr support and I'm getting pretty tired. I think I'm going to take a break from Zooomr and move on to other things.

-Tom

Well, you beat me. I've only been replying to help threads here for two months, and I'm just about to throw in the towel too.

I'm sick and tired of being bombarded by shiny half-implemented feature enhancements while Zooomr continues to be infested with several serious bugs that have been a part of "The Zooomr Experience" ever since we were graced by the Mark III update.

Most of all, I'm tired of the new opacity that Kristopher has adopted for the post-Mark III development. With the exception of Zipline enhancements, we've been in the dark for almost three months now. And, no, I don't watch ZooomrTV. I have better things to do with my life. Why, in the name of all that is good and photogenic, did you pick ZooomrTV over the blog?

I knew that things were going downhill when Kristopher launched Z-mail. Why does a photo-sharing site need webmail? For that matter, why does a photo-sharing site need a micro-blog, and would you please stop enhancing the Zipline?

I sent a donation to Zooomr HQ two months ago because I wanted to see things improve, and all I go in return was the blasted Zipline. At this rate, you can't ethically ask for Pro account purchases.

We don't need a Zipline. What we need are bug fixes, an account management interface, and a real profile page.

This is no way to run a webservice, whether it be free or otherwise. Your users (read: clientele) are expecting a usable product. Stop adding new toys and start focusing on making Zooomr usable for everyone, not just yourself.

uploading with linux still doesn't work, flickr bypasses that by detecting the OS/browser/flash version and showing the old-fashioned upload in case the new one is not supported. It probably take a few lines of code for doing that and finally allow linux folks to upload their pictures.

I don't think it's that hard to ask and possibly a priority over fancy new features.


(and no I am no disabling/removing flash or using any other workarounds for such a basic thing)

Thanks

James, I understand your frustration, and Tom's. There doesn't seem to be a lot of communication regarding when various bugs will be fixed. Some basics functionality would be great to have, or at least communication on time lines and real plans.

I understand Kris and Thomas may not want to disclose when new features will roll out, but bug fixes should have a target that is communicated to users.

Regarding Zipline, I wasn't a fan of it initially, but now think it's pretty cool (except the 'XXX added YYY as a contact' spam). However, I feel bugs need to be addressed before new features are implemented. Or at least tell us there is a critical feature that has to get implemented for Zooomr to survive, so bugs aren't getting fixed until then. I believe that to be the case with Zooomr Mobile, but don't recall any post to that effect. And ideally Kris would say "these specific bugs will be on hold until we implement feature X".

Thomas and Kris have no obligation to tell the world details their business plans, and I don't expect them to. I don't know of any company that does that. Target dates are a good thing though. Even if the dates slip, at least we have a light at the end of the tunnel.

I trust that things will be fixed in time, but I think the frustration everyone is feeling is that MK III was supposed to be an upgrade, but at this point it broke more than it fixed.

It's hard for me to be an evangelist for a site with many basic functions not working. I still tell people to sign up, and hope they are patient.

I just wrote a post here and as James, I think it belongs here too. (only saw this here after posting, sorry ;) )

I feel the same as you do. I tried now for some days to somehow change the exif-data of my pictures (zooomr showed camera information for picture with little-endian exif byte order, but the conversion of my big-endian pictures didn't do the trick :( ). But the my biggest problem is, that I nearly always need two or three attempts to upload a picture!!!

I'm here only about a month or two, and was very enthusiastic about zooomr! Beeing a microengineering student and having programmed quite a bit in the past, I liked beeing on a site that a young guy like me creates (and I still like that fact). And it feeled quite familial and close to the developing here. But as you said, there were only very few updates from Kris and that he now is always (only) writing in Japanese is quite disappointing!

I completely agree with you, that Kris should not add some (for now) useless new features to zipline&co. Kris should really change his list of priorities! But I also understand him, that it is much more interesting to code new features that to hunt down bugs. He should finally begin to fix this bugs before zooomr starts to lose users who are important to the community! (as you up there! ;) )

Another thing I wanted to add, is that I'm not sure if this zooomr mobile will really suit to the rest of zooomr. I understand that this is a niche with potential funding (and in Japan a lot of potential users). But I see zooomr as a site to show others your good pictures and to find great ones from others. Thousands of ugly mobile-phone pictures doesn't fit in my picture of zooomr. (perhaps I'm a bit harsh on this one, or what do you think about it?)

I hope this gets to a happy ending, because zooomr could be a really cool place! =)

I am currently going through this discussion looking at the ideas being posted and I haven't seen anything yet similar to what I was thinking. Here it is. On the profile page for users, be able to list "What's in your equipment bag?" Where users can post what camera equipment they use for there photography habit!

This list could be divided into equipment catagory such as: bodies, lenses, flashes & ring lights, etc.

If this has already been suggested my apologies as I am still reading through this discussion.

Thanks All!

Commenting often doesn't work in Opera 9.22. Editing comments sometimes doesn't work in either Firefox or Opera.

I have no problem commenting or anything like that in Firefox, the only problem that I think everybody has regardless of browser is uploading and missing photos.

A cool feature would be to click on somebody's avatar and go straight to that photo. This would be an awesome feature because I see avatars that I really like but can't find the pictures.

A cool feature would be to click on somebody's avatar and go straight to that photo. This would be an awesome feature because I see avatars that I really like but can't find the pictures.

ghanit, I completely agree. Zooomr Mobile probably won't be an exciting upgrade for the majority of the existing Zooomr users, and thousands of mobile phone shots will certainly degrade the quality of the photographer community here.

draconian57, You can delete a photo after setting it as your avatar, and I think that there are quite a few people who do that around here, especially with non-photographic and non-portrait avatars. Because of that, such a feature might result in quite a few "photo not found" links.

I'm getting tired a bit as well... long time no new strike in the bug/feature list. But i rather would like to be informed about what and if there's something developing.

Deleteme 10

SCNR

I don't know if already "requested": any chance that I see the number of views and comments in my photos-overview?

There is a stats page in the works. I believe it will be part of the Profile fixes.

I'm cross-posting this from another thread, because it really belongs here.

This is going on my 4th month doing unofficial Zooomr support and I'm getting pretty tired. I think I'm going to take a break from Zooomr and move on to other things.

-Tom

Well, you beat me. I've only been replying to help threads here for two months, and I'm just about to throw in the towel too.

I'm sick and tired of being bombarded by shiny half-implemented feature enhancements while Zooomr continues to be infested with several serious bugs that have been a part of "The Zooomr Experience" ever since we were graced by the Mark III update.

Most of all, I'm tired of the new opacity that Kristopher has adopted for the post-Mark III development. [...]

I'm so with you. I using Zooomr for 10 months now and it's more or less downhill all the way. As ignorant wrote above non-ASCII characters have been an issue all the time. JUploadr, statistics and backlinks worked however. Then March came, Zooomr went offline and online again, weeks later the same misery started all over again as Mark III was on its way. Kris promised and promised and promised, but nothing really changed. Most things kept to be broken ever since. I'm totally fed up and sorry for the people I talked into joining Zooomr as it is basically not usuable compared to all the other photo sharing sites.

I told people to sit and wait as things will improve again, but they don't. Kris should shut this down and start thinking about Japanese mobile phone chat communities (no offense meant) or something as it seems to be of more importance to him.

I know you can be easily distracted if working on IT projects, but on the other hand they are trying to make a profit out of this for God's sake! And using Zooomr for nearly a year now, I know I'm NOT willing to pay money for service like this. Zooomr hasn't taken work of me, it doubled my work getting photos online taking all the endless hours in regard I failed uploading, tried to find the bug preventing this or that to work, help other users to get their photos online or watched Kris on UStream buying iPhones.

Actually Kris and Thomas seem to give a dead rat's ass about their users' (read: customers') requests and complains or when was the last time we heard something official (and I don't mean some hidden thread in a discussion group, I'm talking about the blog or some other form of prominently placed information) about the site's development?
Having to constantly check Kris's Zipline or these discussion groups in hope for some interesting news is somewhat tiresome.

Just my 2 cents.

Kirstopher quietly announced the activation of a "newer uploading platform" today on his Zipline. Would any of you with upload problems, particularly those of you using Linux or international characters in your photo's EXIF data, mind checking to see if any of the known uploading problems have been resolved?

Thanks for pointing to the Zipline entry. I just did a quick check, but unfortunately international characters in a photo's description (but not in it's labels) prevent the photo from showing up after upload.
The problem still is UTF-8 inside IPTC:Caption-Abstract to be technically precise.
As soon as I remove the data field the photo uploads successfully.

Still.. does not work for me:

http://www.zooomr.com/photos/donstein/3475059/

Overkill, thanks for checking! Does this mean that photos upload now if international characters are present in the title field? I believe that was a problem before too.

donstein, do you mean that your camera's EXIF data was not read by Zooomr, or are you highlighting another issue?

I uploaded some pictures (multiple uploads too) and for me the uploading bug is fixed (all pictures uploaded on the first attempt). And I found out that Lightroom fixes the exif data when exporting, and zooomr is showing it now! So I'm very happy about this bug fix! :)

But I have another problem (I don't know if it was addressed before). sometimes, when I send zmails, they don't show up in "sent-mail". I just sent two messages to the same person, the long one doesn't show (also not after resending it) but the shorter does show. Did that happen to you too?

EXIF is still not read from Zooomr. Annoyingly all three of my digital cameras(Nikon, Cannon and Kodak) do not have exif data read.

Don

Does this mean that photos upload now if international characters are present in the title field?

Photos with international characters in their title field (IPTC:Headline) do upload (they did before IIRC), but the title does not show up. Instead the filename is shown.

donstein, are you processing the photos before uploading? My EXIF data doesn't show up unless I process them in Lightroom. If I export from other programs like Picasa or Canon's Digital Photo Professional the EXIF does not show up. Uploading the JPG straight from the camera doesn't show EXIF either.

Bug 3 in the original post by Thomas is crossed off, implying it's fixed, but it is not.

No processing.. straight from the camera to the upload form.

I agree.. I don't know why it is crossed off.

Don

The combination of poor uploading and cross-browser support is probably going to be the end of Zooomr.

It has crossed my mind before that Zooomr would be a great photo sharing site, if we could actually share our photos.

Another bug: the Exif information is ignored in a JPG file generated by UFraw + Exiv2.

Example: http://upload.zooomr.com/photos/hub/3487987/

I'm now getting a "This Page was Not Found" error whenever I try to update the frequently reported bug list. I guess this means that it'll no longer be "the most up-to-date list of serious bugs frequently reported by the Zooomr community."

That happens when a text exceeds the text window and scrolling starts. It's a new one ...

Oh goody. Another new bug.

Oh the irony :P.

I've grown disillusioned with zooomr in a big way. I feel the same way as Tom and James and many others here which is why my involvement with zooomr has come to a screeching halt. The lack of official updates for the community, the lack of bug fixes and the general lack of interest from TH and Kris is really sad. TH used to give us daily updates and blog posts. Now he seems just as disinterested with the community as Kris does. The ball has been dropped and the continued disinterest from the top has filtered down to even the most loyal users. I've grown tired of the whole thing and especially the lack of attention all these issues (and the community)are continuously getting. It really sucks.

Might I direct you to:

(Click it for the comment chatter.)
and a copy/paste from my zipline:

Kristopher: Monday is going to rock.
dbcohen : We talking Monday in Japan, the States or UTC :)
VxJasonxV : Big release?! :D

Yes, we know. And it's fine. But I think most here would prefer bugfixes over fancy new features. But we will see tomorrow :)

But does Thomas or Kris actually read this thread or do they ignore it as well? Would like to hear a statement of them here! I thought they were better than all those big companies who don't care what their customers think...

The idea of growing with the site really interested me when I first came across Zooomr, and while I'm not at the stage of leaving it anytime soon, I'd really like to see all these problems fixed. I can still live with them, but they sure do bug me.

I just hope they read these threads a little more, or perhaps they do, just that I, and everyone I'm sure, would want to hear a little more from them.

creating threads ... "this page was not found".

cant upload more than one picture with Opera, cant upload more than one with FF(on linux), TONS of timeouts on upload
I really wanted to use this site and not go thru the Yahoo ID hell, but it seems its impossible.

I found out how to get Camera and Colorspace Information processed (see my proof of concept), but I cannot post it here because I always get a "page not found" error. Great success!

Post no more than two paragraphs per post. But please explain, I'm very interested. Break your explanation up into multiple posts as many others have...