Zoomorama Blog

Servers Upgrade at 9:00am EST Thursday the 9th of July

We are upgrading our servers, and migrating at the same time on a new web architecture for improved performance, and easier maintenance.

There will be a 10min service interruption at 9:00am eastern standard time today, Thursday July 9th.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We hope you will enjoy the new performance level of our service.

Let us know if you experience any problem after the upgrade.

Beautiful Exhibit of Japanese Prints at the Royal Belgium Museum

The Musée Royal de Mariemont in Belgium is organizing a spectacular exhibit of Japanese Prints illustrating the famous story of the 47 Ronins.

The story is about the Samurai Code of honor, and not letting anger get the better of you.

Here is an introduction from Wikipedia:

"the revenge of the Forty-seven Ronin took place in Japan at the start of the eighteenth century. The tale has been described by one noted Japanese scholar as the country's "national legend." It recounts the most famous case involving the samurai code of honor, bushidō.

The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (became ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzukeno suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for over a year to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku — as they had known they would be — for committing the crime of murder. "

More here: the Wikipedia entry, as well as another nice explanation on the Samurai Archive.

World's Leading Antiquities e-Commerce Store Launches with Zoomorama

Phoenix Ancient Art, the world's leading dealer in rare antiquities from the ancient Mediterranean world, has launched its new site using Zoomorama's full resolution image viewing technology.

Each precious piece can be viewed in full details from multiple viewpoints and in full screen! Potential customers can do a better evaluation of each piece, in full confidence, for a quicker purchase decision.

"Zoomorama has enhanced our site tremendously; the idea of showing multiple high-resolution pictures in the same window has given our clients the ability to come closer to our pieces than ever before” says Alexander Gherardi, President of e-Tiquities, the online subsidiary of Phoenix Ancient Art. "Many people are intimidated by the thought of purchasing antiquities. They fear buying something that is inauthentic, illegally acquired or overpriced.  E-tiquities.com eliminates this anxiety. It is truly an innovation in the field."

Studio K&M, the site designer and producer, integrated Zooming from the get go into their design of the e-Tiquities site. "Integration of zoomable images was a breeze, and updating images is entirely handled by our client through the Zoomorama web site, freeing us to concentrate on design rather than technology" says Cathline Marshall, CEO of Studio K&M.

Zoomorama integrates seamlessly within the site, using a Flash viewer for cross platform compatibility but an XML document for full SEO optimization. Publication of high resolution images (10 Mpx)is entirely handled online with Zoomorama's ZoomExpress interface for one click publishing.

E-Tiquities is a wonderful example of how zooming is an indispensable feature of high-end e-commerce sites. The more details the better to give customers confidence in the product they will receive in the mail. The only way to get a closer look at e-Tiquities' antiques is to visit Phoenix Ancient Art stores in New York and Geneva !

Go to e-Tiquities.com

Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition with DSL Collection

Zoomorama worked with the most innovative Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery, the DSL Gallery, to deliver a next generation viewing experience using the Zooming Technology.

Sylvain Levy is the owner of the Gallery, and also a professor of Art History at the University of Shanghai. After seeing what Zoomorama could do for presentations online he asked us to help him create a new viewing experience for his gallery online.

You can see the result by clicking HERE.

Most important the gallery required NO PROGRAMMING, but only simple ZML (Zooming Markup Language) and CSS - as easy as putting together a web page. "What you have done is fantastic for designers," told us Daniel de Fuenmayor, the designer of the gallery, "your  technology is simple to use for a designers like me but very powerful." We are happy you liked it Daniel !

We will release over the summer the APIs and a tutorial that will go along the upcoming ZoomCreator. Standby for more news in the coming weeks.

Beautiful Rodin Sculptures with Exquisite Details

Never before seen portraits by August Rodin are currently exhibited at the Rodin Museum in Paris. Cristianne Rodriguez, author of the ZoomArt.fr blog, got her hand on some finely detailed photographs. Zoom in to admire the artist's hand at work. When technique makes art it becomes magical.

Blog: ZOOMART.fr