Kris Tate
Zooomr Update
Things are starting to look better for Kris Tate and Thomas Hawk, the unfortunate souls behind Zooomr.
As I’ve written before, things went a bit pear shaped for them earlier this week, and after a fifteen minute launch, their server died. Which might not seem like such a big deal, until you realise that it meant that all Zooomr hosted images went offline. Prior to the database crash, even though Zooomr was offline, the static images were still being served.
Happily, the images are now back online. Which is reason enough for me to repost the hideous picture of me in the cooler bag.
According to reports from the Zooomr.tv chatroom, Dell flew some parts out to fix the ailing database server. In addition to that, Sun have loaned the guys a monster machine to support the increased demand that’s sure to come their way when the site does launch. And Zoho have given them some rack space in which to keep the server.
However, it sounds like the new monster actually consumes roughly the same amount of power as a small third-world country, and the Zoho hosting facility wasn’t geared up for that. This could be nonsense, of course, but it’s the impression I’m getting from the chat. It looks like the final hurdle, for now, will be to get power to the new uber-server, and relaunch Zooomr Mark 3.
Kudos to Kris for continuing to broadcast the Zooomr.tv feed, even while the guys from Sun were installing the new server. His composure and attitude in the face of everything that’s going on is quite inspirational. You can say what you like about their business plan, the downtime, and the future; but you can’t fault the manner in which the two of them are conducting themselves throughout all of this.
Oh, and apparently their blog has died, which would explain the lack of updates in the last couple of days. The priority at the moment is fixing Zooomr, not the blog, which is fair enough really. That said, if either of the guys read this, Twitter is your friend. If the blog’s down, create a Zooomr Twitter account, and throw some javascript onto the holding page at beta.zooomr.com to display the most recent Twitter: instant mini-blog.
Zooomr should be back really soon; as I said, things are looking up.
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?
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