Tech

Technology Can Be Cruel

Last night, after months of hard work, Zooomr Mark 3 launched.

Kris Tate’s been working all week under the scrutiny of the community via a webcast at Ustream.tv to try to get the site launched. After a server crash earlier in the week things were looking good. At one point I suggested I was going to go to bed and Kris insisted that I stay up; I’d been there all night, he wanted me to see the launch. His enthusiasm and passion at that moment, minutes before he knew he’d be in a position to launch Zooomr, was a joy to see.

A few hours later, Zooomr launched. I wasn’t around to see it, but for about fifteen minutes the site was online and from what I hear, things were looking great.

And then…their database server died. You can see Kris’s broadcast from their server room here. It looks like their RAID controller has died. They don’t have any spare hardware, or massive amounts of fault tolerant equipment, because they’re just two guys trying to create an awesome site.

Kris’s desperately trying to remain optimistic in that video, but the difference between him here, and when he realised he was going to be able to launch are night and day.

What Zooomr now need are servers. Scoble’s put the word out, and Kris has asked everyone to blog about their predicament. I’d echo what Scoble’s got to say: this is a great opportunity for someone to get some positive PR. He mentioned last night that he was trying to convince Sun to give Zooomr some Blade servers. In the grand scheme of things, a few Blades from Sun isn’t going to cost them very much and in the eyes of the Zooomr community, and potentially the rest of the online community, it would be a great PR move.

It would make all the difference to Kris right now.

So, come on someone: be a hero. Save the photo-sharing site, save the world?

© 2007 Is there food?.