New Feature: Momentum Dragging.

If you've used the iPhone/iPod Touch, you've probably liked how when you can flick your way through scrollable sections, a twitch of the finger resulting in a long, smooth scrolls.

Well, now you can do the same in Zoomii. And wow, it sure makes the interface feel more alive. I'm loving it. Give it a try!

Thanks for the suggestion, Anand. (creator of BumpTop)

-Chris

A very cool visualization of book relationships.

I ran across this link I know not where. It's a huge image of 735,323 books arranged in a big grid, colored by category.

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/amazonviz/index.html

A view like that might be really fun to browse around through Zoomii.

Zoomii now blazing fast on Firefox 3!

The fix is in. Firefox 3, which once chugged like a steam engine, now
runs Zoomii with buttery-smoothness. Excellent.

For the technically inclined, the reason seemed to be that Firefox 3
is just really slow at drawing stretched images which are overlapped.
I worked around the problem via the canvas element.

Waterloo readers: I'm going to be on the Radio!

570 AM at 1:50pm for 6 minutes on the Gary Doyle show.

A big thank you to my friend Ray Vander Veen for hooking this up.

Post-Launch Blog Posts

Since yesterday, when I opened Zoomii to the public, it's been a bit of a whirlwind. Starting with just two blog posts, and one tweet, word has rippled out to bring over 6,000 people to the site. The site seems to be running smoothly, but nerves keep me glued to my monitoring page and blackberry. Sleep? Hah! :)

There's also been a number of posts that mention Zoomii. These are a few of my favorites:

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/06/zooming-in-on-i.html
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/zoomii-a-real-bookstore-online/
http://www.profy.com/2008/06/16/zoomii/
http://blog.libinpan.com/2008/06/15/using-zoomii-to-find-your-books-on-amazon/
http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2008/06/if-google-maps-had-built-a-bookstore-zoomii.php


Thanks everyone!
-Chris

Zoomii Grand Opening Day!

Today the doors swing open! No more logins required!

The grand pre-opening went flawlessly: no technical glitches, a lot of happy people, and great feedback.

To start off the day, here's a great post about Zoomii on the Amazon Web Services blog, written by Mike Culver, an AWS evangelist I had the privilege to meet in Toronto last year. http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/06/zooming-in-on-i.html

Enjoy the store!
-Chris

Grand Pre-Opening Day

I've been working on Zoomii a long while - full time since December 2006. I never thought it would take as long as it has, but it's also turned out better than I hoped, I've learned more than I expected, and I've met a lot of great people.

Today the doors start opening. First to the 110 people who already have accounts, and the 200 people waiting for accounts. Then, in a few days, to the general public.

A huge thank you to everyone who's helped Zoomii get to this point with feedback, encouragement, ideas, and investments. I truly appreciate it.

Enjoy,
-Chris