August 2011
1 post
July 2008
2 posts
Its summer. Feel free.
I’ve tweaked iZoomr based on feedback from some of our users. The controls are now larger, easier to use and resemble more expensive solutions now on the market. Arrows do as you would expect. The little circle with a dot restores the image to original size. The square swaps to full screen mode and back. Zooming occurs from the center. The plus, minus signs zoom in and out.
Oh, its now...
June 2008
1 post
Custom iZoomr for $99!
Lately I’ve had several inquiries about purchasing iZoomr. These customers are looking for dramatic, innovative ways to improve their web sites. They also want assurance that their servers will be around for a long time, with full control over where images are encoded, stored, and served. Today we began to offer the iZoomr package for $99. Competitors cost in the thousands. Why? I...
April 2008
1 post
iZoomr in 1D
The code I wrote here for iZoomr is now part of a product from Heavy, Inc. called the “Video Guide.” The video guide has a little scroller on the right hand side. You can click & hold, then flick the video list. The list will spin ad infinitum, loading just enough data on the fly. This progressive technology is at the core if iZoomr. We only load bits and pieces of the...
January 2008
6 posts
Spreading the word
iZoomr’s are fun to create. Ross wondered how people would know to visit iZoomr when they see one on the Web? Even better, what if you allowed people to add links of their own, so that the links would travel with their pictures wherever they went? A”Powered by iZoomr” link now exists on the bottom right of an image, in a tiny 9-point font.
“Hey, its like HDTV for your images!”
– A customer at Starbucks looking over my shoulder at iZoomr
Upload URLs, too.
By popular demand iZoomr now accepts image URLs in addition to file uploads. Simply click on the little prompt that says “use a URL instead” on the upload page. Then, enter a fully qualified URL. I also fixed a small bug. The first codes I gave you did not include allowFullScreen=”true” This little feature allows you to view your images in their full screen glory. A...
Italian Zooming
Our first Italian blogger has started to share iZoomr! My wife and I always talk about visiting Italy and taking a vacation for 30 days in Tuscany. Reading about iZoomr in Italian (via Google’s translation services) makes me want to visit even more. :-)
iZoomr Widgets
iZoomr is starting to enter the blogosphere. Over Christmas break I wrapped the iZoomr into a widget container at Widgipedia and WidgetBox. Now anyone can add full-screen, HD viewing of their gorgeous images with a few simple clicks.
December 2007
26 posts
Full Screen Zooming
iZoomr can now take over the entire screen. Two things must happen: The embed tag must include allowFullScreen=”true” The user must click on the box (see above)
“So the next question is, how are you going to store such huge image...”
– enGadget
ImageMagick, I love you.
A download here, a compile there, and now we have BMP image support. ImageMagick is a like a small, server-side Photoshop. The “montage” option has me thinking about huge arrays of images. I wonder if anyone would use something like that?
BMP. Ugh.
Some friends in Japan were having trouble last night uploading images. These phones use a format from the early Windows era, “BMP.” iZoomr will soon have support for these as I upgrade the image capabilities. This early version of iZoomr supports PNG, GIF, JPEG, WBMP, and TIFF. Keep the feedback coming!
Thank you, Antonin Gutman
Way back in the day, Antonin Gutman wrote a paper entitled “R-Trees: A Dynamic Index Structure for Spatial Searching” while at UC Berkeley. R-Trees are what everyone uses to keep track of geographic maps, like Google Earth, Google Maps and others. What does that mean for us? Well, its fancy-speak for a way to search through thousands of picture elements in a jiffy. We’ll need...
WatchHere’s Washington DC as a zoomable web image.
http://www.satimagingcorp.com/ →
The satellite imaging corporation has some awesome pictures from far above us in space, staring down at man made and natural strucures on earth. We’ll post an iZoomr of Washington DC. Check them out!
Brain maps →
Now this is one big brain. This organization has mapped millions of pixels of the brain into more high resolution images than I care to count. There seem to be a lot of HD pictures out there that could use some zoomin’
“Fall in love with your pictures—all over again.”
– Ross Weale, Croton Blog
One of our earliest embeds →
My friend Ross Weale posted his first iZoomr on crotonblog.com, a high-res picture of the Croton Dam that holds a lot of New York City’s water supply. Thanks for the kind words about iZoomr, Ross!
Exact fit
The <img> tag is doomed. You can use iZoomr to replace dull, lifeless images on your site with dynamic, zoomable images. This requires us to size the iZoomr widget so that your picture fits exactly. How? Place the characters &fit=1 at the end of the URL. If we give you http://izoomr.com/view.php?id=k Use the URL http://izoomr.com/view.php?id=k&fit=1 Try it!
Multiple sizes
My monitor at home is a measly 23”. Al Gore has three 30” screens. With Flash its easy to change the size of the widget. To make things easy, I added seven different sizes to iZoomr (available when viewing on http://izoomr.com): Thumbnail 256x144 x-Small 480x270 Small 560x315 Medium 800x450 Large 1024x576 xLarge 1280x720 Giant 1600x900
1 tag
Jaw-dropping landscape photography →
QT Luong has an exceptional eye for landscape. These are some of the most beautiful high-res images I’ve seen of Mother Earth. For a fee you can download true HD images at 3000x3000 pels and more.
Spitzer telescope →
A group at CalTech has collected an incredible set of images from the Spitzer telescope. They even use a commercial zooming software package. Paying for software, installing systems, and owning infrastructure is so last decade. Amazon web services, ad & donor supported software, and freemium services are the way to go! Go iZoomr.
Zoom control
Ross said I needed a zoom control, just like Google maps. That way people can know instantly what this is all about. Tonight after work I hacked one together. I wanted it to neatly fade in & out as your mouse enters or leaves the picture. Flash has this really weird behavior where its difficult to track when the mouse is over your content, and when it is not. It mostly works. Nice. ...
“Your images. In HD.”
– me
WatchThe Space Shuttle, iZoomR Style.
Frickin' huge
Last week I was trying to load a set of images from my Mother-in-law’s camera. She was excited about all the exquisite detail in Turkish rugs and their majestic infrastructure. “Can you print these out for me?” The 8Meg images were frickin’ huge. Photobucket would crop them, I couldn’t email them, and there was no way to share all the detail with friends. ...