We have just added an opensearch plugin for search ZoomIn.
You’ll need to click on the following link to install the plugin for IE7 and Firefox – Install ZoomIn Open Search Plugin.
Kudos to our Summer of Code student Mat Campbell-Adams for implementing the plugin.
We have been silently watching what happens on our site. You, our community, are an invaluable source of inspiration and ideas. Your positive feedback makes us feel good and your bug reports and requests for new features keep up too busy to ever rest on our laurels.
One of the guiding principles for the redesign of ZoomIn was to make the information accessible through a pyramid. We wanted people who come to our site to start at the top of the pyramid where we present little but most relevant information. So when you search for an address, a place or a tag you get instant results shown on the map. As you become more interested in the places which you visit you can use various links on the site to travel to the base of our information pyramid where we show full details currently known about the given place.
We have realised that sometimes walking up and down the pyramid can be quite an effort so we have provided you with a teleport device which gives you instant access to frequently used functions without having to go all the way to the bottom of the pyramid.
The above screenshot illustrates the new search result panel. We have 3 results there. “Cool Store Gallery” and “Chow” are unexpanded and “Midnight Espresso” is expanded (hint: you can expand results by clicking on the 
icon). Once a result has been expanded you have instant access to functionality which lets you add your own information to that place. In this example you can add your own rating, tags or leave a comment about “Midnight Espresso”.
If you search for an address, as in the following screenshot, you will also have the option of adding a new place at that address. This is useful for adding shops to a shopping mall, lookout points to a national park or even to add locations of your utility sheds on your farm.
We hope that you will find these little improvements quite helpful. Let us know what you think. Happy Zooming!
– ZoomIn development team
Reuben Swartz has written a piece on ZoomIn in this weeks Infotech Zooming in on Investment after re-jig.
Thanks for the article Reuben.
The new ZoomIn is the news. Peter Griffin of NZ Herald has written a piece on the ZoomIn v2.0 – ZoomIn puts dynamic mapping on the map.
Thanks to Peter for the article.
ZoomIn is back in action again!
We’ve been struck by Murphy this morning. One of our disk on our servers has been giving problems this morning . We have reverted to our back-up server.
Unfortunately, dns is playing up so some of you are struggling to get to ZoomIn. We are working to resolve the problem asap.
Note: These problems do not affect the ZoomIn Mapping System or the API.
ZoomIn Team
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Sometimes you need to take a minute to catch your breath. Its nice to stop and think about what we’ve actually acheived. It’s great to get some recognition from the industry for the hard work we’ve put in for the last 14 months. Score one for the little guys!
I want to dedicate the awards to my team. You are truly world class and it’s been my pleasure and honor to work with you.
Tomek (The Rock) Piatek – Your attention to detail and dedication to ZoomIn have been an inspiration.
Nick (Local Search) Chapman – The brains behind our search engine. Thanks for sticking with rails and making ZoomIn fast !
Ross (Map Master) Lin – Your map fu is superior! Thanks for making ZoomIn maps the best looking maps in NZ!
Ben (Javascript Master) Nolan – You took the idea of ZoomIn and made it real ! People are finally starting to get it!
Thanks for doing the hard yards guys and thanks for making it FUN!
Also thanks to all support from everyone in and around Creative HQ.
Finally, a big thank you to Lulu – my partner. Thank you for the support and putting up with all the long hours, the weekends, and the endless ranting about ZoomIn and ProjectX.
Its been a big night – Thank you and Good Night ! – Go ZoomIn !
ZoomIn V2.0 has been live for most of the day. A couple of niggling bugs have emerged and will be swatted soon. The focus on the next couple of days will be to fix bugs and improve the speed of the site. (There’s nothing like real traffic to put you through your paces!)
We’re really happy with the site and it provides a strong platform for all the new features going forward.
New ZoomIn is coming 9am.
For your enjoyment, check out William Shatner’s Rocket Man
With the new zoomin only hours away, we’d thought we’d cue the music…