It’s come to my attention that nearly all photos posted before this week have suddenly gone AWOL.

Let me explain.

Zooomr completed a major site upgrade this week and went live last night with a new version that—not to put too fine a point on it—should embarrass Flickr and Picasa and other image hosting sites.

But that’s not the point.

Within ten minutes of going live with the new version, they suffered a major hardware failure on their primary database server.

So at this point, the site is essentially dead—as are all of the photos they host for me.

Not to worry though, poppets.  It should be fixed soon.  As soon as it is, those images will reappear like magic.

Meanwhile, I’m using Flickr for temporary hosting until Zooomr is resurrected.

And let me say that I’m not at all turned off of Zooomr because of this.  Remember that it’s a global service developed by a teenager and run by two gentlemen who feel strongly about how important pictures are to the global culture of the internet.

They’ll grow, I assure you, as they’re outpacing the competition in leaps and bounds.  The latest version, Mark III, is, as I said, something that shames every other hosting service.  They can only dream of being as advanced.

Nevertheless, accidents and emergencies befall all of us at the most inopportune times.  So it is with Zooomr.  They weren’t live for more than a quarter of an hour before servers began giving up the ghost.

How rude!

When the dust settles, I’ll migrate the recent Flickr photos to Zooomr, after which you’ll be able to view the larger versions.  Until then, however, I suggest patience.