I’m in the process of installing patches and upgrades at all levels (OS, system, security and blog).  For that reason, you might see errors and/or weird behavior for the next hour.

I’ve decided to migrate all of my photos to a new hosting service.  I’m leaving both Flickr and Zooomr.  Here’s why:

1. Flickr, via it being owned by Yahoo!, appears destined to become a Microsoft service.  I will not financially support or utilize Microsoft for any reason.  Period.
2. Flickr presently has Carl Icahn breathing down its neck.  I have no respect for Icahn.  He seems destined to ruin everything he touches, at least from the consumer perspective.
3. Zooomr suffers from performance issues now that it moved to Japan.  This was expected.
4. Zooomr still has many unfulfilled promises to keep, and I keep running across features that simply don’t work (e.g., for months now it has refused to save my web site in my profile and I still can’t switch it from OpenID authentication to username/password authentication).  I’m tired of waiting.
5. Unless signed in (and with a Pro account on Flickr IIRC), both Zooomr and Flickr offer up advertisements alongside my photographs.  In essence, they are using my copyrighted material for profit.  I find that unacceptable.

In my search for a new image host, I evaluated many.  All have their shortcomings; most have far too many.

The one I settled on is SmugMug.  As a fully for-pay hosting provider, there are no advertisements.  I have full control over my images.  They provide a meaningful and robust service (albeit with a few things I would change, but that’s true of all of them).  The company is stable, profitable and free of debt.  The interface is sleek and stylish, and it’s customizable.  I can use my own domain to access my SmugMug galleries.  The list goes on (and on and on and on…).

The shortcomings are few (from my perspective):

1. Every image has to be in a gallery.
2. The default image sizes, while numerous, seem to contradict the standard sizes so many others offer (e.g., 500×375 or 375×500).  This is hardly worth mentioning since I’m allowed to create custom sizes, yet it bears remark in that many blogs use this size by default and it seems backward to have to configure a personal option to create it.

I couldn’t find any other issues.  At least not yet, and I doubt I’ll run across anything that would be catastrophic.  In truth, they do what they do and they do it well: host images for paying customers.

I will likely reduce the embedded image size I use so I don’t have to worry about creating custom sizes on SmugMug.  No big deal as far as I’m concerned.  The reduction will be minimal and will probably create a better contrast between the content column and the images included.

As for the transition, it will take time.  There are thousands of photos on this blog spanning a thousand posts.  There’s no easy way to move all the images and update all the posts except on a one-by-one basis.

I also have begun work on trimming my blogroll.  Thus a thing is necessary now, what with my time limited and my focus elsewhere.  This requires serious evaluation on my part.

Neither of these changes should be traumatic except for me and the work necessary to make them happen.

[btw, if you ever decide to go with SmugMug as your photograph host, contact me and I’ll be happy to provide a referral code that will save you and me some money]

[Update] One thing I forgot: I’m switching to tags both here and at xenogere unseen.  That provides a significant improvement over the category system I use now by offering something more dynamic and malleable.  This too will take much time to complete.