Artem Russakovskii's programming and technology blog

Updated: June 26th, 2008

I am usually very skeptical towards new startups, as most tend to do one thing and not so well or many things even less successfully. Zoomii, however, is what I found very useful. It creates the kind of feeling that you get when you're in control, when you can see at a glance what's going on. Zoomii is a virtual bookstore, with an Amazon backend. They took a different approach and made everything very visual, just like in the brick and mortar store – and I love it.

You can browse the latest releases or the top sellers, or perform a search and get hundreds of book covers, uncluttered by any text (until you click on any of them). The interface is amazingly friendly and simple, everything is draggable and zoomable – hence the name Zoomii, and here's the best part: it doesn't use Flash, everything is in Javascript. You can buy books without leaving the site or reloading any pages (of course, how else would they make money?). I think it's better explained through a couple of screenshots I took or by going to Zoomii itself:

My Search for 'Perl':

The Fiction bookshelf (It has Everything is Illuminated, weee!):

What a breath of fresh air, don't you think? Credit to MakeUseOf for the tip.