Category: Photography

This is quite cool. I am jonesing for a D300 now, thanks to Kevin Devin for making me think about it. Here is a piece from C|NET showing off the “guts” of the new Nikon D3 and D300. Interesting to see the skeleton in particular.

Peering inside Nikon’s D3 and D300 | Underexposed – CNET News.com
Nikon’s D3 and D300 SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras, announced Wednesday, are complicated and expensive beasts, so few people outside a repair center or Canon’s competitive intelligence unit are going to be cracking them open.

Zooomr, the photo sharing website, has expanded the Discover feature of the site. Discover shows you what pictures are uploaded with in certain time periods from everyone, your friends, or your contacts in order of Awesomeness*. Previously it was limited to 20 images…Now you can view up to 100 in Discover by click in on the column headers. Very impressive, and easy to see what is going on! Check it out!

* Awesomness is an algorithm looking at 28 different criteria of a photo to determine the most interesting photos.

Went doing a little photowalking at lunch in downtown Charlotte. The heat today was making me question that decision….I had fun non-the-less.

Here it is after 13 days, lots of frustration, help from generous companies like Sun, Zoho, and Dell, support from the community and friends of theirs, and sleepless nights …It is here!

I like so many others have been following this effort to what was at first just a site upgrade, that turned into a FULL infrastructure overhaul has been fun, and at times frustrating (in the sense lots of us couldn’t help), to watch. Maybe Kris and Thomas can finally get some rest….after all the bugs are squashed. 😛

Go and make yourself an account and share some photos!

 
Well yesterday was in some ways a disater…and others not so much.

Zooomr had gotten a much need help up from Zoho, with the donation of some server room space, and from Sun Micro for the loaner server, a x4500 Thumper. Well, in an effort to get the new server online, another problem became apparent. The server needed 220v and the server rooom is wired for 110v. Well, that would be a problem.

Kristopher and Tim from Sun who personally delivered the server hung with it for most of the Day on Friday and the previous night. After some exhaustion, and I believe a lack of some focus, things seem to fall apart. Kris was understandably tired and punchy left the data center and went to the Technorati offices, Thomas Hawk was elsewhere, and users (who have been following everything on uStream for the whole 12 days so far) were getting a little frustrated for lack of information.

…and with that lack of information and frustration lead the community to create a wiki with some bullet items and information of what is going on. Additionally, Kevin Devin and I were talking on the side about what we could do, an idea popped in our heads. Why are they creating a wiki on wikidot and not on Zoho. So after I mentioned it in the chat room, and before I could do it myself, everyone loved that idea and shortly moved it over to here. (I have to mention that I like the Zoho Wiki very much)

Well, last night Robert Scoble stepped in and drove Kris back to the data center and it looks like him just showing up gave Kris a much needed shot in the arm. After a night of work, once again, it looks as though things are ready to rock and to quote Robert, “flick will be switched” on Saturday.

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.