Zooomr, one of my favorite web apps gets a much anticipated makeover. They’ll be down for 48 hours as they make the transition, but the new stuff showing up is worth the wait.

Among the new stuff in the release (there’s lots), I love the fact that you actually get freaking unlimited storage! No more worries about when you’re goanna hit the 4 Gig mark, though I think it wouldn’t make much of a difference to their bottom line data usage. And, no they won’t be moving your photos to archive if you’re not pro or cross a limit. I emailed Thomas Hawk about it, and here’s what I got:

Unlimited means unlimited. We hate limits.

Here’s what Flickr give free account users:

• 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
• 3 sets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)

Here’s what Zooomr gives free account users:

• no monthly upload limit.
• no set limits
• no 200 image limit
• no group limit
• your originals are saved in the same size you upload them and always accessible to you.

Our open API will be very similar to Flickr. Users will need to request and receive a key in order to use it. But this will not be hard and will be open.

Also, note that Flickr will delete your account if you are not active for a set number of days. I’ll ask thomas if the case is the same with Zooomr. (Scroll down for an update.) So far, they’re competing with Flickr, and this release aims to even the playing ground and might even give Kris and co an advantage!

Another innovation(I can call this one an innovation), is that you can actually sell your photos! And, you get a whopping 90% of the selling price, which is quite cool. Just remember that you’re now competing with Getty to have your photo up on the next article that shows up on Cricinfo…

Also, he’s got 250 new improvements and features, which look impressive.

And, I also hope he fixes the speed issues. The first reaction I got from folks when I intro them to Zooomr is: sloooowww….

The new release should be up in a few hours time, so not much waiting to do now.

Update: Thomas Hawk, the CEO, emailed me back, saying that they won’t be deleting any of the free accounts. And, as of now, the only difference between Pro accounts and free accounts is that Pro accounts won’t have ads in them, though there are also future plans for Pro-only features. Here’s what the CEO said:

We like the idea of no limit photo sharing free for everyone. Also we really want Zooomr to be a global photo sharing site for the whole world and there are lots of people in the world taking amazing and beautiful photographs who can’t really afford to pay for Pro accounts.

Over time we are optimistic that by collecting a modest cut of stock photography sales that we will be able to keep the site free or everyone. We also think that by passing along 90% of stock photo sale proceeds (the highest that we know of of any stock company) that we can create an outlet where people all over the world can use their photography to make a little money. Right now the world of stock photography is closed off. If you are a Pro and shoot for Corbis or Getty then you get paid. Everyone else goes to microstock where they sell your photo typically for on average about $1.30 and (at least the leading agency) pay you 20%. We want to change all of that. Two guys going against a $2 billion industry won’t be easy, but I think there are a lot of photographers out there who could support us in this and that drives us forward.

Rock on Thomas and Kris, and more power to you!

Guest Post by Yuvi Panda, who blogs here and thinks of himself as a developer.

Featured Sites: Digital Camera Reviews

This hilarious Steve Jobs/George Bush parody is so darn hilarious that even if it’s not 100% tech news/ranting child related, I couldn’t not post this. Just check it out…

Of course, even behind the very funny video, a serious message lies. Back to the funnyness of the situation, check this comment I noticed below the video.

Repost this 6 times and you will
see the taco bell dog run across
your screen. If you repost this 8 times Ronald McDonald comes out and
attacks the taco bell dog.

It is really funny and it works!!
You have to try it!!

Gee… This one’s a classic!

Today, it seems that there’s no one thing that I really want to write about, so here’s an informal, general list of links & things that I think you guys might like.

- Social Media… The cover taken off. (This cracked me up for about 5 minutes whilst my PC was frozen thanks to some Vista-incompatible software!)

- Silent USB Linux powered machines have hit Europe, smashing onto the arena at only €280. (Go me! I just found the euro-key on my new keyboard! Alt Gr + 4. I knew it was something like that…)

- Viacom have sued YouTube/Google $1billion for ‘unauthorized use of clips’. Seems slightly excessive to me… While I’m here, I’d like to announce that I’m suing Digg $10billion for crashing my servers. (Note to lawyerbots, that was indeed, a feeble joke. No need to smite me!)

- Having seen John Chow’s post on checking whether China is banning you blog, I decided to check it out for myself. Guess what? Turns out China have blocked me & my site. I’m not the only one though… Turns out that free-speech & wikis don’t cut the chase for the Chinese government.

- The root of all evil, John Chow is at it again… Promotional Pens maker 1234Pens, have partnered with John to give away a Nintendo Wii! *drewl* - I wanna Wii.

NOTE: The hover text over the Slashdot picture is meant to be something of an irony. Afterall ‘linking to other people’ is exactly what I’m doing now…

I feel rather sad, at present. The past two or three weeks, (Ever since I moved to Wordpress!) I’ve found myself constantly checking out & referencing my Technorati statistics for Techzi.net… The teasing button in the dashboard doesn’t help the matter, and I’ve now bookmarked my Technorati statistics page for quick reference.

Chris evidently symathises with me.

Here are Techzi’s current statistics as of today, Friday 9th March:

- 257 links coming in from…
- 157 blogs who know they’re spiffy.
- All this in exactly a month!

That reminds me, it is exactly a month since we re-launched over at Techzi.net! I think that calls for some kind of celebration, don’t you?

Featured Links: Electronic Components | Aircraft Parts | Italian Property | Funny Pictures

No more status-quo.

Education. Kids. The future. Change is a scary thing, but the fact is, it happens. In order to keep up with modern life, things need to change & fast. The government, councils and schools themselves have all rejected sensible propositions put forward by students, and if we don’t act soon, the future of education as we know it could plummet into a state of dis-repair. FrustratedStudents outlines this, and gives their own top reasons of WHY education needs to change, HOW we can change it, and MAKING a difference that will impact the generations to come.

1. Focus on tests and grades. Learning happens differently to everyone and the system must be more flexible and stop focusing a whole child’s life on “making the grade”.

2. Bureaucracy. It’s what stops thousands of dollars from actually educating a child, what keeps bad teachers securly in their jobs, and precisely why stopgap solutions such as more funding or bigger schools haven’t worked. Reduce the bureaucratic footprint, and you’ll accomplish much more with even current resources.

3. Living in 2007. Technology has completely changed the lives of people on this world. Unfortunately, schools are the last venue for adoption of these fantastic tools. Students shouldn’t have to fight the system, with only the pencil at school and only the computer at home.

Here’s a great example from what’s going on at my school. The board of govenors/head-teacher has decided that it will be great to push forward with a new method of classroom organization, known as ‘Vertical Tutorial Groups’. So what is VTG? Rather than having a class of 30 pupils, all of the same age (give or take a few months), 5 pupils from each year will be put into a single form, hence creating a ‘Vertical Group’.

Year 7 - 5 pupils
Year 8 - 5 pupils
Year 9 - 5 pupils
Year 10 - 5 pupils
Year 11 - 5 pupils

I’ve already written a double-sided A4 essay during our ‘PSHE’ lessons on my feelings about VTG, and have highlighted 101 reasons exactly WHY the scheme won’t work. The teachers have given several asemblies, in each, claiming that VTG is for the good of the school, and that together we can move forward. Oh yeah? Bullying will increase, as will peer-pressure from older students on younger ones. Foul language and aggressive behaviour and bad influences will be passed on from an earlier age. An increase of form-tutors/teachers will also be needed, as in every class, there will be 25 pupils, as opposed to 30. Change happens… But shouldn’t democracy have a say?

What would I like to see in Education 2.0? Democracy to the pupils. And not some half-hearted attempt to make us feel like we’re having a say, as is the case in our school. Whatever I say, it won’t matter. The descision has already been made, though the school point-blank denies it. The arguments against giving pupils a collective voice? We’re not responsible. Uh-huh? You wanna say that to my face?

Anyhow, if only children/teenagers/kids were treated with the respect they deserve, given appropriate responsibilites, given a voice, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in the educational pickle that we are in at the moment? Who knows.

The fact is, CHANGE HAPPENS. Education needs to change, and fast…

I’m tagging Chris Pirillo, Darren Rowse, John Chow, Ilker Yoldas and Nate Whitehill to carry on the conversation. Who says only kids have to get involved? If some adults voice their opinions on the matter too, then maybe we will get somewhere.

In a blatant attempt to copy John Chow, Techzi is throwing it’s very own re-launch competition! There’s already a great piece of gear which you can get your hands on, with at least one confirmed other on it’s way! So how can you win one of these spiffy prizes?

Simple! Just join our MyBlogLog communtiy! Where can you do this? Right here of course! The Techzi MyBlogLog Community already has over 60 members, and we’re throwing this competition in the hope of increasing that number further. If you’re interested in expensive gadgets, a thriving community & the latest technology news, you know this is the one for you. Winners will be announced on April 1st. “What if I’m already a member?” Great! You’ll be automatically entered into the prize drawing! Winners will be selected randomly, and the judge’s descision is final. In the event that a winner becomes unavailable, a new winner will be randomly selected.

If you have any questions or queries, or simply want to do some flaming, e-mail us at Competition@Techzi.net, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible! I won’t be writing many, if any updates today though as it’s my Birthday, so make me proud and enter. This is just the beginning!

Featured Sites: Cheap Gadget Shops

It seems that Yahoo have taken a whole new leaf out of Google’s overlarge, already brimming book by incorporating Yahoo Messenger into the latest update of their online, web-based Yahoo Mail client. Clearly seeing the success that Google have had this past year with their community, and the benefits of being able to access your entire GChat contacts list within your Google Mail webpage, it will be interesting to see if Yahoo can successfully pull this one off.

The community has already reacted with mized feelings, but all-in-all, it seems that this may be a wise move in the long-run for the Internet giant, who currently hold the number one spot on Alexa. 49% of this Alexa traffic is down to Yahoo Mail, and if this can increase it’s market share further, potential investors and users alike will be buzzing with excitement.

Here’s the Yahoo stats breakdown.

mail.yahoo.com - 49%
search.yahoo.com - 11%
news.yahoo.com - 3%
bid.yahoo.com - 3%
login.yahoo.com - 2%
yahoo.com - 2%
wrs.yahoo.com - 2%
360.yahoo.com - 1%
auctions.yahoo.com - 1%
groups.yahoo.com - 1%
finance.yahoo.com - 1%
knowledge.yahoo.com - 1%
sports.yahoo.com - 1%
stock.yahoo.com - 1%
music.yahoo.com - 1%
answers.yahoo.com - 1%
europe.yahoo.com - 1%
myblog.yahoo.com - 1%
photos.yahoo.com - 1%
games.yahoo.com - 1%
fantasysports.yahoo.com - 1%
dictionary.yahoo.com - 1%
tw.yahoo.com - 1%
video.yahoo.com - 1%
movies.yahoo.com - 1%
Other websites - 10%

Incredible that only 2% of traffic goes to the Yahoo.com website, the rest to subdomains! Quite shocking to me. I think it’s a safe bet to say we can expect Google to rise into first place within the next year though, as Gmail has just launched out of private beta!

Well, as you can see (unless your viewing this from an RSS reader), we’ve got ourselves a new layout! If you are using an RSS feed, come visit for the sake of seeing the spiffyness. I guarantee that you’ll be impressed.

Speaking of RSS feeds, we’ve updated our RSS area in the sidebar, to display our current numbers of readers who are subscribed to our main feed. Currently? 574. That’s gone up alot… Here are the stats.

Sunday - 59 RSS Readers
Monday - 71 RSS Readers
Tuesday - 141 RSS Readers
Wednesday - 574 RSS Readers

So as you can see, some pretty impressive progress! People clearly liked that post I wrote on ProBlogger, what with it hovering just under 1,000 Diggs and all.

We’ve also changed our advertising options, and now as you can see, we have space in the header for advertising. If you’re interested, just drop us a line at Sponsorship@Techzi.net, and we’ll chase you up. Thanks for your patience during this ever-changing time!

UPDATE: A fellow Blogger requested an interview, and seeming as his blog was fairly new, why not? It could turn on to be the next TechCrunch.

21st Century Philosophy. Defined.

Just like that! Could this seriously be the future? Wouldn’t it rock if it was.

Over this week, I’ve done several different interviews with people for both Profy and Techzi… Today, I managed to catch up with Gary Jones from BlueFur, the site I reviewed not so long ago in exchange for a domain. Here’s what he had to say about his company, services, and how everything works at BlueFur.

Gary, it’s great to have you here with us today on Techzi.net - Now I’m led to believe that you’re the owner of BlueFur. Is this correct?
I am part owner of the company, but my main day to day responsibilities is to look after Sales & Marketing. I am more of the front man who you see in the public and on the internet.

Great… Sorry about getting that wrong. How does your hosting at BlueFur match up and compare to that of you competitors? Would bonuses do you offer? Why should people go with you?
Most people would agree that choosing hosting is a very hard choice as there are many providers with very few distinguishing factors other then
space/bandwidth and price. We do have several distinctive features that makes us different.

One of the distinctive features is that throughout the year we provide free online courses. These courses range from MySQL, PHP and basic cPanel usage to marketing. The courses are all done live over the phone with a screen that they can watch the presenter demonstrate the course material.

Another distinguishing factor is we offer 2 automated backup tools. These tools allow you to back up your site files and mySQL with a set it and
forget it software. This software we created so that customers can feel secure in knowing that they have there own copy of there site.

Although there are many hosts in Canada we are one of the few that take Canadian Currency with servers and staff in Canada. We are one of the only providers that has 2 locations in Canada one in Montreal and one in Vancouver. This allows us to provide a unique failover solution where if
your site were to be down on one server it would come up in a separate server in a different geographical location. This means that if the
datacenter is having issues your site and email would still function to work in a separate location.

Wow… If the courses alone aren’t a good enough reason, I don’t know what is! How does the hosting work, and what plans do you offer? Do you offer customized plans to cater for all types of people?
We have close to 130+ plans and options to choose from. We have something that fits every budget and requirement. We do provide custom plans based on the requirements of an individual.

130? Brilliant stuff! Does the company have any future activities planned? Any aims or goals for the near future?
Our immediate goal is to finish our change from MonsterHosting.ca to BlueFur.com as smoothly as possible.

Ah yes, I did read up on that. So why did you decide to run the domain-for-a-review scheme in the first place? I myself was granted ZiMedia.net with it, as you know…
Part of the move of names is that we are going to loose Mind Share for the old name. I wanted to create some new Mind Share for the new name and a bit of buzz in the blog sphere with the new name. I was also looking for some honest opinions on the name from people outside of the hosting industry. The feedback thus far has been great.

Nice to hear. Can you tell us more about the team involved? Where are you based, and how many people work on the various parts of BlueFur?
Our staff all work through Tele-Office style where they work from home. We currently have 12 full time staff and several part time staff. I am
located in Surrey, BC but the staff are located across North America.

What unique approaches does your company take, to achieve the goals that they do?
We sound board a lot of our ideas off real world business people before pushing to far into it. We listen to our customers and build plans around
there suggestions to solve problems long term. We also try to have fun in everything we do.

It’s been a pleasure to talk to you. Everybody, that was Gary Jones from BlueFur.com! I hope you learned something new there! That said, I’m sure that the BlueFur hosting is great, but I’m with InfinFX, and with them we survived the Digg Effect hitch-free! Not bad going I say. They’re even using my Plesk control panel in their screenshots.