Posts tagged ‘zooomr’

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October 6, 2008

Smugmug – First Impressions

‘Wow’, ‘Aah’, ‘Great’, ‘Wonderful’ …. [yeah all with caps !!] so goes the first impressions  with Smugmug.

If ur not aware – Smugmug is a family run, self sustaining, non external funded, profitable, web2.0 photo sharing site.

I had known about Smugmug for quiet sometime, but paying for the account, had made me a bit skeptical where there were lot of free alternatives. As I was using Flickr (and am still & will !) was looking for other alternative to load / categorize and share photos. Zooomr was quiet promising a year back. But after its move to Japan(couldn’t agree more with RaohlPop) and no promises or updates on the horizon , lost hope on the same. Wishes for Zooomr to spring back. Only time will tell.

Last week, was pulled back again to Smugmug, by Don’s passion and commitment to online photography and video sharing [if you already have not , definitely check out the video from Vincent using Canon Mark II]. Decided to tryout their photo sharing site. Signed  up for a trial account. The more I played around, the more tempting it became to use. You can use flickr / yahoo / picasaweb, based on what ur using currently, in the coupon/e-mail field & receive 50% off. Grab while it lasts.

Some of the prominent features I liked are [still trying out and finding treasures...]

  • The first statement in their about page – ” Most Internet companies dream of selling to bigger ones, and getting rich. We don’t”. It says a lot.
  • Amazing customer service support. I sent the first e-mail to real people, as the site suggests with a questions and got a reply in less than 10 mins. Later got a note from Markam, Director of BizDev for SmugMug. The query got resolved in the next one hour. It was amazing, considering that I was still having a trial account, and it was after hours, atleast for me – 6PM MST.
  • Amazing flexibility of customization and co branding [only Power and Professional Accounts]
  • Users don’t need to register to view photos / gallery [alongside with options for password protected private galleries]
  • Option to set price and sell photos [only Professional Account]
  • Open API , documentation and support [thru discussion forums, was able to find answers to most of my questions ... ]
  • Surprisingly, I found about their offer of free Pro account for anyone developing applications using Smugmug API. Its a win-win for both, nice move. Yes , I am working on something, would definitely write about is once it gets pretty good shape !

Edit
My Smugmug account is still under customization and would provide a link once the same is complete.
Link to my Smug Account / Portfolio – LikeTheOcean
Link to the Smug Application – SmugBadge

Posted in photography | 1 Comment »

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October 7, 2007

Fall in Love with Nature


Alpine Scenic Loop
Provo, UT, USA

For the full set check this out.

Posted in canyon, colors, fall, General, Photoblog, photography, seasons, Travel, utah, zooomr | Leave a Comment »

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August 5, 2007

Temple Square


Temple Square, Salt Lake City, UT

Temple Square – An amazingly different place , an entirely new world within the downtown of Salt Lake City, UT. One a beautiful evening with a wonderful sunset – Lush gardens, serene pond, water fountains, iron cast statues – the list goes on …

For other shots of the Temple square, check this out (slide show).

I need to plan on a couple of visits, there is so much more around here.

Posted in Photoblog, photography, photos, utah, zooomr | 7 Comments »

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November 2, 2006

Flickr are u listening !

Recently Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate (Zooomr) along with some high profile bloggers met with Getty Images CEO, Jonathan Klein.

Getty Images is a high end provider of Imagery for Film and Digital services. Getty recently bought over iStockPhoto, which is in the lower end of the same spectrum. When going through some the Flickr forums (Darn wish I could locate the post again, it is not coming up in the search now !!!), I remember Thomas (CEO, Zooomr) mentioning that Zooomr is working on something called as zMarketPlace that would try to position itself somewhere between Getty and iStockPhoto in the spectrum.

Basically zMarketPlace would allow the user to monetize (if willing) the photos based on the popularity and the demand of the same. That would be quiet interesting to see when it comes out.

Meanwhile Zooomr came back alive again after a 72 hr downtime last weekend, with a couple of surprises. The bandwidth quota for basic account has been raised to 100MB and pro accounts to 4GB. Additionally some users noted that ‘PRO 4 LIFE’ next to their profile names. After quiet a bit of search, found what it was!!! . As mentioned by Thomas

to

 Pro 4 Life accounts are accounts that include the premium Pro features for the life of that account as long as Zooomr is alive (which we hope is many, many, many years). They cannot be purchased but are accounts that we have given to some of our early members who have grown with us and suffered through some of our early growing pains. These people will never have to pay for their Zooomr account. It’s our way of saying thank you to them for their loyalty and for helping us build Zooomr from the start.

Thanks Zooomr for the pro4life Account, gesture well appreciated !!!

Posted in flickr, zooomr | 1 Comment »

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October 25, 2006

Get ur Zooomr Photos on WordPress Sidebar

Yes U read that right. U can pull all ur Zooomr photos into the sidebar of WordPress website. Of course, we still do not have a official Zooomr plug-in.

As I pointed out earlier, Zooomr API, seems to very closely resemble Flickr API (One of the reason for this could be to ease the transition from Flickr to Zooomr, if one prefers). That being said, thought would try to use the Flickr Sidebar Widget for Zooomr and bingo it worked.

Once U sign in for a Zooomr account (read this for y u should consider getting a Zooomr account), upload some of ur photos. In the ‘ Your Photos’ page, scroll down below to the RSS link. Copy this URL.

In the Flickr Widget paste this URL. UR all set. For an example to see this in live action take a look at my test site here. The one is the side bar is actually a Flickr Widget.

Now if only, we could have two occurrence of the Flickr widget (like the Text and RSS Widget) we could have one for Flickr and one for Zooomr.

I have sent the same via Feedback to WordPress Team. Would post here once I get any updates from them.

Update : There was no reply / Update from WordPress Team on the above request. It is quiet understandable. Zooomr has not yet released its API and probably WordPress was not intrested to make an option for something which is yet to be released. It would be really difficult, since tomorrow, the results of using zoomer using the Flickr widget might give different results. People here have no control over the same.
So what did I do – I used the Flickr Profile Builder for my Flickr and the Flickr Widget for Zooomr ;-). See my side bar -u can see both Flickr stream and Zooomr Stream [Use @ ur owe risk]. I felt, this was a good way to display both, till zoomer releases its API and someone developes a widget for it.

P.S : I feel that this should work the same, with Flickr Widgets / plug-ins that are available for self hosted WordPress blogs and other blog hosts too. But I have tested the same, only for blogs hosted @ WordPress.com. I feel this is due to the way that Zooomr is creating the API in the first place. Thanks Zooomr.


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Posted in flickr, zooomr | 2 Comments »

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October 5, 2006

Zooomr – So what is the deal

Today I came across this post that promised a zooomr Pro Account, for Bloggers (though I think is only for the first year).

I generally use Flickr (and always will, they were the first to innovate and provide hell lot of feature from scratch when no one was around!), but as I get more into blogging , there are certain times at which I do want to hot link to (may be a not that) artistic shots. Additionally there is a limit of 200 on the basic account beyond which certain Flickr links (to old shots) might break out.

So why the heck not give this a try. I remember reading somewhere that Zooomr uses (or used and some even go to the extent of debating it is just a matter of copying) Flickr APIs. And additionally there was some talk from Flickr as not to share APIs with direct competitors. In my view, healthy competition always makes things better for the end user !!!

rsathya-128mmmm I did like some of the features that Zooomr has like maps (yeah Flickr too has it now), Sound (not sure if I would use it!) etc. I even remember seeing Trackbacks listed on the image page, i think thats kind of cool. U could know (at least some) where the images are linked from.

Anyway for time being its free and I was on a lookout for a photo sharing + hosting site (wish yahoo! photos beta had Hot linking to the images), let me give this a try and see how it goes.

And if ur interested check out this link

Update : I never realised that Zoomer was spelt z-o-o-o-m-r and not zooomer :)

Posted in flickr, photography, zooomr | 5 Comments »

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