Coming soon

I'm excited. Switched my desktop to Ubuntu a while ago. Just recently switched my media center over to Mythbuntu. It's better than Windows MCE in a few key areas. My only PC hangup is for when I teach classes for Canine Camera. I'm too lazy to fix the few formatting and transition errors in the powerpoints for class. Maybe the next time the classes are updated.

Any Excuse

It's the dawn of a new era. Or at least, the month or two trial period while I decide if I want the new era. See, I made a big switch two days ago. I'm running Ubuntu (Linux) on my laptop.

Three nights ago, a sector went bad on my hard drive. And the luck of the summer being what it is... It was a damn important sector. The poor laptop couldn't even boot fully.

It took some time to diagnose. (Honestly, what does "hard error D0000144" mean to you? Here's a hint for you computer help forum guys... not every problem is adware, virus or spyware.) And more time to run a few disk repairs and get it bootable again. But it wasn't usable, things were goofy, it wasn't stable and it was going to need a good reformatting kick in the ass.

I've been waiting for an excuse to try out linux, more specifically Ubuntu. I can see the writing on the wall, Vista is a big bag of suck. (In the sense of DRM and 'premium content' [aka High Definition] restrictions and control.) My control over my computer will be severely limited if I keep marching down the Windows road. I don't see things as being much better over in Mac land, especially when money is factored in.

If I'm going to have to spend a bunch of time reformatting, and rebuilding my laptop... why not go ahead and try something new? I like the idea of free, community supported, open source software. I'm not talking about being cheap. (Though that's a nice touch.) I'm talking about the kind of freedom, choice and ownership that you can't get from a company which shows a strong interest in locking me into their software/hardware and restricting my ability to use things things which I own (hardware, media, ideas, etc.). I'm looking at you Apple. And you Microsoft.

We're talking about a lifestyle change here people.

So I tried the live CDs of Ubuntu and it's cousin Kubuntu. They're same but different.) Made the decision to go with Ubuntu and started the installation. The basics have been silky smooth. Overall everything works well. I've got OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim & Evolution. So the basics are covered.

It's the not so basic stuff that's been giving me headaches.

• Here at the house we use an SC101 from Netgear for networked backup. It's basically a networked harddrive. However, there is no Linux support for this product. So I've had to do a large amount of gyration to get connected to it via a share from my Windows Media Center (MCE). (Figuring out that I needed samba set up and resolving a master browser conflict on my network were the big issues.) That took up most of yesterday.
• Getting my Outlook 2k3 email converted and imported was also a PITA. I had all my data backed up, but Evolution doesn't import directly from pst. So I had to upgrade my Outlook on my MCE, so it could open the pst formatted files. Then install Mozilla's Thunderbird on the MCE machine to convert all the email folders to mbox. (It would only convert active pst) Copy all those files to my laptop and import each folder individually. That is a process in progress.
• I'm also worried about editing my photographs. I use a Canon RebelXT which has a RAW format of CR2. (RAW is like a digital negative, you have more control over image processing if you use it.) I haven't had the chance to start using GIMP or any other photo editing/converting software. But I've not seen much encouraging information. This process is soon to be in progress.
• I used to sync my phone and calendar via bluetooth. But I haven't really even started looking into getting that working.
• I have a GPS unit that was originally used with the Palm III, which I hacked apart and converted to a serial connection. I'll need to look into getting software to run that, and then maps to navigate with. A headache to look forward to.
  

Other than those headaches (future and current) I'm pretty pleased so far. Adding software has been a snap, and aside from my own goofy needs/requirements (to steal a phrase from the Mac people) 'everything just works'...

Anyway, I've got a paper due today...

Testament of Time

Zooomr is back up. And it is amazing. Much thanks to Kristopher Tate, Thomas Hawk, Zoho, Sun, Dell, [hide] and everybody else who helped.

Much love to Zoho!

It's amazing what happens in times of need. Amongst the people listening to Zooomr's problems were a few willing to help. The Sun reps in Zooomr's area responded quickly. Micheal Dell personally opened a help ticket to get the old server fixed. One of the evangelists from Microsoft even offered help.

The most amazing story has to be the help that Raju and his company Zoho. They've moved Zooomr into their data center, sticking with Kristopher Tate (CTO) to get the servers relocated, and have offered a lot of help during this tough time.

I can't thank them enough.

Zooomr and it's community has become incredibly important to me (I've donated a large chunk of money I don't really have to help out) and each bit of help we receive is personal. So if there's anything we (as a community) can do to thank our benefactors?.. You just have to ask.

Heartbreak

I feel like somebody kicked my dog.

See, I've been following the Zooomr launch all week or however long it's been. We've watched the whole thing live on USTREAM, with accompanying chat. That 24 hour stream, and chat are living web2.0 transparency. No, not all the secrets were released, but the loyal fans were able to chat with Thomas Hawk and Kris Tate the masterminds of Zooomr.

Getting to interact with the owners built a connection to the website, but getting to interact with soooo many other photo lovers built a community. I'm not just connected, but I'm part of it.

You AIESEC'rs know what I'm talking about... think about the first conference where you really belonged.

Anyway, after all the sharing and hoping, chatting with Rober Scoble, battling griefers, building cliques, hitting on chicks, throwing love and support to Kris & Thomas, the surge of a couple hundred people chanting ... Zooomr Mark 3 was LIVE.

All the new features were working, and it was fast. So sweet. It's gonna change photosharing. I promise you that.

But a db server went down. And things came to a screeching halt. And that's where things stand at the moment. Kris is going to go look at the server to see if anything can be done.

Robert Scoble put up an awesome post about how this is an amazing opportunity for evangelism... think how much good will a few boxes and techs would create among the zooomrati.

Thomas Hawk has a post up on the Official Zooomr Blog.

We'll be back soon, and when the world changes, we can look back and say... "Zooomr launch?. Yeah, I was there for that. I lost sleep for that. I was a part of that. I believed. And it was worth it."

**Update** Kris posted a video from the data center. It explains why this release has been sooo hard to do, and why things went down.






Zooomr Mark III: Hardware Crash from Kristopher on Vimeo

Upgrade

Zooomr is doing their upgrade to Mark III.

Lots of cool upgrades, improvements and new ideas about how photo sharing should work. Definetely worth checking out when it's done.

In the mean time, they're keeping people in the loop via streaming webcasts. It's a great way to get your questions answered about zooomr, the upgrade or life in general. It's one of those things that builds community, and helps channel the anxiety in the upgrade mean time.