A daily blog by the Creative Director of Zovue

Zovue.com is launched --- JOIN TODAY

2009-06-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.zovue.com/

Many chances to win an IPod Touch. Join today and build your network on the coolest site on the internet.

Zovue's Features:

- Store photos in high quality

- Upload and store videos privately or from Youtube

- Chat in real time with entertaining winks and smileys

- Communal shopping network

- Share the Zovue experience with your friends with "remote desktop" not found anywhere else

Adding Analytics to Zovue

2009-03-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Today we are adding analytics to our website. The trick was to find a good analytics company that wouldn't be very expensive.

We are on a bit of a budget, not really a burger and fries budget but more like a sirloin steak (no t-bone in this budget)

So....the trick is to do a lot with a little cash. Its like the movie Bowfinger where Steve Martin tries making a really low budget movie look like really high class.

Thats what separates the true entreprenuers from those that only know how to spend money. the real entrepreneurs risk it all, with little initial benefits but high rewards.

I like to feel that i am in that category. So, luckily i have brilliant programmers that know how to turn gold dust into gold bricks.

So in a couple of days we should have our analytics installed which means we can call advertisers very soon.....no analytics....no advertisers.

Thats the name of the game. I didn't name it, but i am going to play it!

Thanks for the one follower. Thats very encouraging :)

Smoothing of Photos in Flash

2009-03-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

We had a problem with smoothing of photos when we moved photos to another server. We had to fix the photos so that the images were loaded properly and with high quality. The flash program is near completion and we are very excited. Now we will be saving on server space and people can load as many photos and videos as they want. This is critical to maintain adequate server space - and to balance the server load.

By offloading the Zovue server, we can maintain the speed of the flash program on the main server.

Changing the Chat

2009-03-02T12:11:00.001-08:00

Luckily today i got the good news that the chat will work.....i had almost a nervous breakdown on friday because the chat wasn't working properly. AHHH....no, i was thinking. Did i go down the wrong path? Is my 2 years of work into Zovue going to be a puff of smoke? Here for a second and then gone and never more remembered?

Thank goodness one of my programmers came across another website that sells code for making chat boxes work in Flash. I paid the $60 (well worth it) and got the code. It felt very "Mission Impossible" as if i was snatching code from the Pentagon. The high is back and i am back on cloud 9 again.

lets see what tomorrow will bring. its not good to be too optimistic.

Making the Embedded Chat Work

2009-02-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

I am over joyed today. Finally the embedded chat is displaying the smileys correctly and the sentences are not being duplicated...YEY....one collosal mountain is down...approximatley 5 more to go.
Those numbers arent bad....since its been about 2.5 years into the making of Zovue.com

i am very thankful to have my team from china working with me on this project. They are very good flash programmers and have been able to do things most programmers could not achieve.

This is a short blog because i am getting hungry (its 12:30PM) and my eyes are sore because i have been looking at the computer all day.
I just added my Zovue profile to the following websites:

- Digg.com
- del.icio.us
- Stumble Upon

Look for Zovue as the user name.

I have attached a picture of the chat box... i think it looks very snazzy. What do you think?

Testing a New File Storage Method

2009-02-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

Today i am a little frustrated because i just finished talking to my programmers in China....i have been speaking Chenglish (Chinese and English) for the past 2 hours and my jaw is hurting (aww)

We are trying to stabilize the load volume for Zovue.com by saving photos and videos on a separate server.

This way we maintain the speed of Zovue, and allow users to have lots of storage space for their personal photos and videos.

The annoying thing is that ---- this new storage system is not working seamlessly as i hoped. I have attached 2 samples of the USER PROFILE in Zovue. One will hold photos of the users favorite past times and the other is their videos.

As you can see, everything has its own icons and its own description. Very user friendly...in my opinion!

Tell me what you think about Zovue from the snapshots you have seen???

The Ups and Downs of Creating a Communal Shopping Network called Zovue

2009-02-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

I just started today to write a blog about my frustrations and joys in being part of a team...that i am hoping...will revolutionize the online shopping community.

Our journey begins in June 2007 when the creators of Zovue.com decided to create a cool website in Flash.

4 months into the project, they realized that their audience was limited to young girls below the age of 17.

This was not good. They needed a larger audience. This is where i came in, along with my programmers and a few fairy god mothers thrown in (hee hee)

My team re-vamped the website...we added some cool features like rating photos, people, motorcycles,cars,fighter jet airplanes (for the testosterone fueled people). We also added a videos page..which is like Youtube...except it only features professionally made content.

In addition....the embedded chat function enables Zovue users to share the Zovue page with their friends. This means...that wherever they go in Zovue, their friends and family will see...what they see.

This is critical for the "communal shopping" because it allows users to look at interactive magazines and post notes for their friends about the products displayed.

Right now, we are trying to get Zovue stabilized...basically bug free. The plan is that it will work on operating systems such as Safari (for MAC), Firefox, Google Chrome and Explorer.

Last week, my team has been moving the storing and uploading files to a separate servers so they do not overload the main processing server.

The other team has been uploading the demo magazines so users can post feedback on this new type of advertising.

Its very stressful though, we have a 30 day deadline, as of today. So the countdown for launch is on my desktop...as a constant reminder of the tasks that still need to be completed.

Hope the rest of you guys don't have as much stress as i do. I am thinking of taking a good vacation after the launch is successful. I wonder where i should go???