Zoomorama Blog

2010 United States Federal Budget in Full Details with Zooming

Jess Bachman, creator of the now famous Death and Taxes poster depicting the US Federal Budget, relied once again on Zoomorama to present his poster. With Zoomorama to show all the details we hope to sell more posters than with a regular presentation.

On Twitter Jess (mibi) wrote: "preparing the Death and Taxes zoomorama today. Is there a better zooming application out there? I doubt it.". Thanks Jess for the nice words ! We hope you sell a lot of posters

This year we added a "Quick Find" menu, implemented with simple CSS. There is not programming in the implementation, just notifying in the ZML (Zooming Markup Language) the area of focus associated with each menu entry. Done in no time. Here is the CCS for the left side menu:

.leftpan-hover:hover + .leftpan {
  -zm-transition-duration:0.2;
  -zm-transition-timing-function:linear;
  -zm-transition-property:left;
  left:0;
 }

Anyone cares to make it any simpler to create of pop-up menu ? 
You can access the full ZML (Zooming Markup Language) of the page by clicking HERE.

Another nifty idea is to send a view by mail, not just the poster but the actual part of the poster that you want to share. Simply zoom to the part you want, to to "Menu" at the top right, and click on "send to a friend". The URL in the reciptient's email will have the correct focus when he opens the poster. Try it !

Soon we will allow anyone to do the same on their own, using XML, CSS, and Javascript. Just a few more weeks of patience !

BBC relies on Zoomorama for a new generation of art experience online

The BBC launched today a mini site using Zoomorama's technology to accompany its new television series "Desperate Romantics". The paintings featured in the series can be explored in full details while listening to an audio commentary.

Go visit the site, in full screen for a  better experience: http://www.bbc.co.uk/desperateromantics/paintings/

Chris Hellowell, Managing Director of Cogent Design in charge of the project for the BBC writes: "Zoomorama’s unique technology opens up an exciting new world of creative opportunities. It is easy to integrate with Flash so our in house programmers are off to a flying start.”

Cogent and the BBC wanted a highly fluid zooming function  that could easily integrate within a Flash movie containing audio, multiple selectors, and which could easily go full screen. It also needed to be fully CDN compatible so the whole world could enjoy the experience.

Zoomorama responded perfectly to their special needs. What we delivered is a blueprint for all museums on how to share their treasures with the online public. Simple to implement, and delivered on Flash for full cross platform compatibility !

We are proud and honored to have delivered a great project for the BBC. We hope you enjoy it.

 

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