Updated 10/29/2007: I’ve revised my opinion of Zooomr since I wrote this. See “Taking a break from Zooomr” for the details.

I’m sure we’re all waiting for Zooomr’s Mark III and wondering what’s going on with Kris. There have been a lot of questions floating in the air since Zooomr missed its scheduled launch date for their third release. What sorts of questions? Well, stuff like this:

• What happened?
• No, what really happened?
• Is it ever going to ship?
• Is it vaporware?
• Will it ship during my lifetime?
• Why was Kris in Japan?

Let me try to answer them.

We know from one of Kris’ video blogs that there was a major problem with the external storage services they were using. Basically, they were much too slow, and given the throughput rate Zooomr was getting when migrating their content to Mark III, it just wasn’t feasible to continue. After trying all sorts of things to make it work, they had to make the hard decision to pull the plug. That was a real disappointment, not only for the users like me, who’d been waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the new release, but for Kris and Tom as well. They’d poured their hearts and souls into the new release, and honestly hoped to ship it when they promised. Not only this, but Kris had architected Mark III based on the external storage service. Now he needed to re-architect the entire release to bring it all back in-house. Not cool. Not surprisingly, he was very frustrated and exhausted, and needed to unplug for a while. That’s why he went to Japan, to try and get away and clear his head.

That’s what really happened. Kris is now back, of course, and working on Mark III again. They’re going to do it all in-house now, and it’s going to be great, since they’ll be able to control every aspect of the user experience. Mark III isn’t vaporware. It’s a real product, and Kris really has been working for the past 6 months on it, 16 hour days. I chatted with him just this morning, and it was just 5:15 AM PST in SF. He’s up, putting in the long hours, and working hard to make sure Mark III ships soon. He won’t give a ship date, he says it’ll “ship when it ships”. But, it will ship soon. That I know. I can’t disclose anything beyond that, but it will ship sooner than people think. Just stay tuned.

I, um, “found” a screenshot from Mark III as well. Here it is:

Keep your hopes up, Zooomr users! Mark III will ship soon! And, let’s not forget, we’re using a limitless Mark II release right now. It’s easy to overlook this, but there are NO limits on any account, free or Pro alike. That means you can upload all you want and have it all archived for posterity. Where else can you get that?

Added 4/21/07: Kris has made public the projected re-launch date for Mark III in a recent live video stream, so I guess I can come clean as well and tell you what I already knew. He’s going to do his best to get Mark III out the door by May 1st, which is his birthday.

Updated 5/22/07: Though delayed, the transition to Mark III began yesterday around noon EDT. At the time of this update, the transition is still taking place. Kris and Tom have kept a live video feed going the whole time, answering questions as well. So far, it looks like Mark III is on track to launch today. Let’s hope everything goes according to plan. I blogged about this yesterday, just as the upgrade process got underway.