Chris Whyley co-founded Zamzar with his brother. They are based in the UK.

Tell us the story of Zamzar's beginnings and development. Why did you name the service Zamzar?

Zamzar was an idea that came about mainly due to frustrations with existing technologies - Converting a file from one format to another is something that most people who use computers need to do at some point in their lives, whether it's needing to convert a document for an assignment, or some music into a different format for an MP3 player. However, current tools to do the job are cumbersome, difficult to use - especially for those who aren't technical - and often costly. We saw a gap in the market for an easy to use tool, and the idea for Zamzar was sown. The seed grew further as we brainstormed ideas and decided that a Web-based tool would be an ideal solution, especially if we could make it easy to use.

After prototyping some ideas we hit upon some designs we liked, and set about refining them. The user-interface was key to the project, as the final release had to be a tool that people would enjoy using. We went through a number of iterations before we were happy, and spent a lot of time thinking about how the tool could be intuitive for users. It made sense to use emerging Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax, simply because they give users instant feedback about their progress through the tool. The end result was launched just over a week ago, and we've been pleased with the response it's received.

The name that we chose for the company - "Zamzar" - is based on a character from the German author Franz Kafka's book "The Metamorphosis". In the novel Kafka describes the extraordinary story of a young man who is transformed overnight whilst sleeping into a gigantic beetle. The man's name - Gregor Samsa - was used as the basis for our company name because of its' powerful association with change & transformation.

What are your backgrounds, skills, and interests?

Zamzar was co-founded by two brother's - Mike and Chris Whyley - both of whom have several years experience within the I.T. industry. Mike has worked for a number of company's within the retail, insurance and digital music industries, whilst Chris has worked for a large blue-chip technology company in a variety of roles. Both of us enjoy a technical challenge and getting our hands dirty, and this project has been no exception - We've used all the usual web technologies - DHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, PHP etc - to get the job done, and have enjoyed every minute of it.

Offline we're both very much into sports - being UK-based, football plays a prominent role in our lives, along with the ancient English sport of cricket. In other areas, Chris particularly enjoys hurtling down mountainsides with his feet strapped into a thin bit of plywood and playing the guitar (although rarely both at the same time), whilst Mike has been known to find the odd fairway or two on the golf course.

What are some interesting things you've learned through developing and managing this service?

A big plus point for us during development has been the fact that as brothers we're often on the same wavelength, so communicating ideas has come easily. As for recent progress, we're only just over a week into managing the service in a live environment, and so far things have gone pretty smoothly - we're happy with both the uptake of the tool (which has been faster than we could have imagined), and the feedback we've been getting. If we had to pick out one challenge so far, it would probably be trying to survive the notorious "Digg effect" which hit us last week, and kept us on out toes for the best part of 12 hours.

Over the next few weeks one of our biggest challenges will be incorporating the feedback we've received from users about the site - We read every email, and we look forward to trying to satisfy the requests that have been steadily flowing in.