Author: steppek

Well, Kris Tate is still fighting the good fight to get Zooomr back on line. After 12 days of downtime they were getting several responses from various companies around the globe. It looks like Zoho and Sun Micro came through to help out.

Zoho had donated some data center space for them, and Sun Micro has loaned Zooomr an x4500. The only problem to overcome now is that the voltage requirements of the new server out weigh what is provided in the server room.

Things are coming along, and hopefully Zooomr will be flying across the internet once again, very sooonr.

Zooomr Mark III: Zoho Saves the Day from Kristopher on Vimeo

Wow, talk about rising from the ashes! It looks like the guys from Zoho , the developers of the very nice online office apps, have stepped up and not only offered Zooomr Datacenter space, but machines too! Thomas Hawk said that he received an email from Robert Scoble that said that the Zoho had offered to give space and servers, and when Thomas called, they said “Come on Down and lets see what you got”. Not only that Sun Microsystems is also sending over some servers as well. That is fantastic news. Thanks Zoho and Sun! Watch Live! All Very Exciting.

Zooomr Mark III: Hardware Crash PSA from Kristopher on Vimeo

It looks like the darkest hour…one that no one wanted to see. Kris Tate, a 19 year old programmer, has been working many long hours especially this last week trying to get the site upgraded to the newest incarnation, Zooomr Mark III. After the long wait everyone that had been following the progress during this time in the IRC chat room and on their Ustream channel was excited to finally see Zooomr up and running…for about 15 min. Then something bad happened.

That something bad was the machine that they had been using for production took a hard hit and went down. Looks like the Raid controller just couldn’t hang, and died. Soon afterwards a someone in the chatroom drove Kris to their datacenter only to find the machine in an unusable state.

Where does that leave it? I don’t know. What’s their next move? I think that they are now in that holding pattern to see if the calvary is coming and who’s calvary it is…

If you can help out a new start up…now would be a great time to step up.

I for one will donate a little something…and I will be hitting Dell, IBM, Red Hat, and Novell and filling out contact forms to see if I can drum up some action there. Won’t you join me? Feel free to Copy this text into feedback letters if you write companies.

In Charlotte, NC today was the kick off of Speed Street to coincide with the race this weekend. They block off a large section of downtown and have vendors and other events to celebrate the weekends festivities. Now, keeping in mind that Nascar is a Fan Driven entity…I had 2 people ask me about my Camera. Those 2 different people asked me if it was alright to have my camera. I was confused at first, but on the Speed Street website FAQ (see 6th item) it states that No still or video is allowed. Being inspired by a recent Thomas Hawk article, I told one of the people I spoke with…I don’t think that they can stop you…there are photographer’s rights, and this is a public area…Why would they state such a thing on their website? That is Crap. In all fairness I had no trouble, nor did anyone tell me to stop.

Zooomr, another fantastic photo sharing site, update is coming and while Kris is hard at work on launching the site, Thomas Hawk is manning the Ustream. Come on over you can watch in real time as Mark III makes it’s way to the surface.

Yesterday I went walking around downtown Rock Hill, SC with fellow Flickr-ite Doug (Mr. Guybrarian). This is the first time I met him, much less anyone from the Rock Hill Flickr Group. We had a pretty good time walking and talking…and I look forward to meeting others from the group.

I was feeling a little nostalgic the other day and as I was flipping through my photo album I decided to scan some in and post them. It was fun looking at them again, and checking out the detail as I was cleaning up the pictures (dust and scratches).
Update: Here is a link to the Set.

Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir (otherwise known as _rebekka), is one of the most popular photographers at Flickr, a single mom, and an art student. She does some very impressive self portaits and landscape photography. She recently found out that she had her images stolen and sold by Only-Dreemin, a British company, passing them off as being someone else’s images!

Being a single mom and all, she doesn’t have the funds to go after them to get the money that they made from her art which is sad. I hate to see someone getting taken advantage of like this.

Anyway, you can head over and get all the details from her write up and check the end. There is an email address where you can write them an angry email for stealing.

There is also a digg posted also.