Zymmetrical reviews

gbcimages

« on: November 07, 2007, 17:19 »

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Hi Everyone,

Just curious to know if anyone is uploading to Zymmetrical these days? I've uploaded to them for awhile and have had one sale. Lately thou haven't had any reviews on my images and was wondering if anyone else hasn't had any? Thanks

Gary


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ZymmMan

« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2007, 11:25 »

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Gary,

Thanks for the post. As you might know, Zymmetrical is still in Beta as we are hard at working receiving feedback from users on how to improve our platform. Keith has been extremely busy in building a leaner and faster admission tool that will allow us to accelerate the process and bring in some more freelance reviewers.

As with anything in programming, we had to sometime stop the approval process in order to complete the progress. We also received more than 10,000 new images from contributors worldwide, exceeded 3,000 registered members and are putting the final touches on advanced search features that will enhance the buyers experience. Stay tune.

I am sorry you personally have not seen any sales yet but we have been tracking increase activity on our site and it is only the beginning. As I posted on the Zymmetrcial blog (http://www.zymmetrical.com/blog/), I have just returned from the International Picture Archive Council of America conference (http://www.pacaoffice.org/) in Las Vegas where I was a guest speaker. The comments from key image buyers from the advertising community was extremely positive as they really appreciate the value of a midstock platform like ours. It allows for value photography, fonts, graphics and videos without killing the artists. They told me that they avoid microstock sites because they do not want to contribute to asphyxiating the market by paying such a low price. Midstock, however, allows them to still purchase at a very interesting price without punishing the photographers.

They are also looking to see more of your images, Gary, and anyone that wishes to contribute. Hint: these guys were particularly looking for "gambling" images. Keith and I will continue making the approval process leaner, faster and smoother for everyone as well as making the purchasing experience a comfortable summer breeze.

Hope that helps.

Let us know if you have any other comments/ suggestions /questions

Sincerely,

Paul M


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sharpshot

« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2007, 03:51 »

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I have just noticed that the link on the right window of this site for Zymmetrical is wrong. There is an extra 'n' that needs to be deleted. I also found Zymetrical takes me to a different site. Is this owned by Zymmetrical?


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XeniaII

« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2007, 08:10 »

#link

is it right that it is not possible to upload images there in the moment?

regards
yvonne


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null

« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2007, 08:31 »

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Quote from: sharpshot on November 15, 2007, 03:51

I also found Zymetrical takes me to a different site. Is this owned by Zymmetrical?

Zymetrical is another company than Zymmetrical.


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null

« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2007, 09:01 »

#link

My experiences with Zymmetrical are these.

- About 2 months ago I did a test upload of 10 shots: 5 models, 5 nature. After the upload I had not the faintest idea what to do. The workflow was unclear on the site. Where did those shots go, was the IPTC accepted, how to attach the model releases? As it turned out later, 4 nature shots were accepted, but I didn't know.

Since the site was in beta and just beginning, I couldn't afford to spend much time on it, especially since I'm in rural SE-Asia on very limited and interrupted bandwidth.
A year ago, LuckyOliver was at the same stage. I mailed them often for support and to report site glitches, and they got their things right (especially IPTC support) like 4 months later. Till now (a year later), I made just 15$ on LO, so the time spent on it was totally unproductive.

- Then, about 2 weeks ago, I got a mail from Zymmetrical that I had 7$ in my account. Quite unbelievable with just 4 photos on a beginning site and just after 2 months. Especially since I saw a while ago my shots had no keywords/description at all. This would mean that Zymmetrical can yield a tenfold of LO.
While both the CEOs of LO and Zym seem to act on Prozac and they are quite outspoken, obviously Paul can deliver on his promises while Bryan can't.

- So I gave Zymmetrical another shot today. It is possible to upload model releases now, but it's still totally unclear (at least to me) how and where to attach those to the photos. The worst is that the IPTC still isn't accepted and that it seems you have to cut-and-paste your tags one by one on a webform.

So my questions/suggestions to the Zymmetrical programmer(s) are these:
- Is IPTC accepted now? If no, when will it be?
- How and where do I attach model releases?
- Can the workflow be made more clear? Upload > finalizing > pending > accepted/rejected, with the possibility to edit tags/description + adding model releases at any stage.

You should realize that uploading a 700 photo fully IPTC-ed portfolio with manual cut&paste of tags is even too much for Mother Theresa ;-)


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2007, 10:38 »

#link

Hi,

I will try to answer your questions. I'll be brief as i've got my hands in the cookie jar with the programming of all of this stuff .. just took a little break.

Yvonne - Uploads are accepted as normal and the form and FTP should be working currently. For an hour or two last night the upload form was offline for some upgrading.

FlemishDreams - 1. IPTC and EXIF are scanned and stored, every last piece of it. The way our tagging/keywording works is this: We have 20 inputs, the first 18 are filled by existing IPTC keywords (if they are in the file). The 19th tag is for color vs black and white, 20th tag is the aspect description (Profile, Landscape, Square).

If there are no IPTC keywords stored in the photo, we choose the first 18 tags ourselves using our wit, and increasingly, the Controlled Vocabulary database. We also edit the first 18 IPTC keywords as needed - for example, some contributors have 'color' already in there, or their own inventory names: these are redundant and are replaced with descriptive tags.

Now, on your Art Manager (http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/art-manager/) page, you can Update Tags. Which in reality, is an additional set of 20 tag slots you can use. In the near future, this will show your original IPTC/EXIF data for easy drag and drop insertion.

So.. does this part make sense? In a nutshell, there are 20 core tags input by us. We may or may not use any existing IPTC data in there (usually most get used). These cannot be changed by the artist. Then there are an additional 20 tags that can be completely controlled and changed by yourself, in your Art Manager.

2 + 3. Model Releases / Form integration - As described on http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/submissions/photos/, the Model Release upload page is here: http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/modelreleases/ . Yes it's not perfect but for now it works. Simply upload the releases for all your submitted pics and you're covered legally - the association with the particular pics is nice but we'd like to hope you'll be available for any inquiries regarding particular pics should they occcur. This whole Art Manager / Model Releases system is being integrated into one form, so please, do not worry too much about this aspect of the site - soon it will be a nostalgic memory - "hey bill, remember when Zymm had that barbaric model release form system? .. those were the days".

ps. I am the CEO not Paul. Wink

Cheers,
Keith


« Last Edit: November 15, 2007, 10:45 by zymmetricaldotcom »	Logged

XeniaII

« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2007, 11:03 »

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I am sorry, but everytime when i try to upload the whole day i get this error-message:

Es ist ein kritischer Fehler aufgetreten!
The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range datetime value. The statement has been terminated.

I really understand what it mean, sorry

regards
yvonne


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2007, 11:35 »

#link

Oops! Fixed now.

This occurred because your account is obviously set to German, and it was having a problem inserting the date into the database, 15-11-07 instead of 11-15-07. Our site really does think 'think' in the locale of the user, including currency. It's sometimes a problem for programming, as this situation showed.

Thanks for pointing this out, seems to work ok in my German test account now!


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2007, 11:41 »

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I also had error messages in the uplod page yesterday.

Is it possible that we set prices when we upload? As I said another thread, after uploading 3 images on October 23rd (one is still pending!), I returned to the site. One of the two images was set at a very high price - I don't remember now, but something like US$50. The other, set at US$10, much to my suprise had already had a sale.

And Keith, see also the sales report error I mentioned in that thread.

Regards,
Adelaide


« Last Edit: November 15, 2007, 11:44 by madelaide »	Ignore \| Logged

zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2007, 03:36 »

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Thanks for the info, the Sales Manager is corrected to reflect the 70% commission now.

We had hopes of getting the new submissions admin system (for us to review files) online yesterday, but it ran into yet another snag.

On the bright side, the new system is:
- 70% faster for reviews (we can batch approve/reject/comment on multiple files now)
- down to less than 500 lines of code from 3000+ in the old system (this a good thing)
- much more server-memory friendly
- reliable so many editors can work at once

So.. if it's not done today, it's going to be another working weekend here in the office. Once this new system is online the queue will be fluid again.


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #11 on: November 16, 2007, 15:38 »

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Keith,

Good to know improvements are on their way. Another bug is that when I see my submissions, the approved images don't show (I get a small square with an X). I think you could use smaller thumbnails in that page, don't you think? Faster to load, less scrolling down.

Regards,
Adelaide


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fotoxalia

« Reply #12 on: November 17, 2007, 02:14 »

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last couple of hours seems than none of the links are working.
It look like a server problem.


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yingyang0

« Reply #13 on: November 17, 2007, 03:35 »

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Quote from: fotoxalia on November 17, 2007, 02:14

last couple of hours seems than none of the links are working.
It look like a server problem.

website works fine for me, and I'm not a big fan if the site.


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #14 on: November 17, 2007, 06:31 »

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Quote from: madelaide on November 16, 2007, 15:38

Oops thought we had cleared up all the missing thumbs in that area. I will get this checked out. We will be using this fancy new interface we made for our internal Submissions Admin area and applying it to the Submissions, Sales, and Art Manager areas. A really nice, compact AJAX datagrid that can be sorted by any column, exported to excel, drag and drop column re-order, etc. Yes I agree the initial thumbs shouldn't be so big as you certainly know what your photos look like.