Motorola's Reverse Psychology?
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'Tis The Season For Online Services To Go Completely Offline

Computers

from the doesn't-look-good dept

Tue, Dec 20th 2005 6:31pm — Mike Masnick
What is it about the last few days that has pretty much knocked out all sorts of online companies? It started last week with the "silence of the bloggers" as SixApart's TypePad service went missing for nearly a day. This was followed up quickly with new Yahoo property del.icio.us giving its servers a chance to rest. Then, a bunch of eBay users simply couldn't log in and now Salesforce.com left many sales people in the dark as they tried to close out their year end deals. Downtime happens -- but it seems like an awful lot of high profile sites have run into trouble suddenly. Perhaps the internet really is broken. At what point do companies start offering easy syncing/replication of services between desktops and web-based services. Or is that Web 3.0?
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10 Comments

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  • identicon
    Phil Ringnalda, 20 Dec 2005 @ 7:47pm

    Waiting for 2.1

    Depends on how broken you want it, whether it's 2.0 or 2.1 that does sync: Microsoft's throwing bodies at their RSS extension for syncing all sorts of data (and people moving to online services that aren't MS, rather than desktop clients that are, is certainly part of the reason), but given just how low the fidelity is in RSS for just simple stuff like weblog post titles, I think I'll wait a while before I bet the business on it.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Mark, 21 Dec 2005 @ 4:49am

      Also waiting for official response

      Well, it's the next day, and still no "official" word from Salesforce.... waiting......

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Bigteebo, 20 Dec 2005 @ 8:18pm

    all i know

    ...is that Comcast is ultra-slow right now, as of 7pm tonight.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Howard Lee Harkness, 21 Dec 2005 @ 8:02am

      Re: all i know (Comcast)

      Comcast (when I had them) was almost always slow -- sometimes slower that my emergency backup dialup isp account, which I had to maintain because Comcast was so ridiculously unreliable.

      Now that I have Verizon Fiber, Comcast is history. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
      --
      The Celtic Fiddler, violins for sale

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Landon, 20 Dec 2005 @ 11:07pm

    No Subject Given

    Just curious, dont those sites also have loss protection, so if their sites get shut down, the insurance company has to pay them for their losses? Doesnt seem like a bad idea, especially if you see profits are declining over the past few days. But thats just me and another one of my crazy conspiracies.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Larry, 21 Dec 2005 @ 3:34am

      Insurance for downtime... I've never heard of it.

      Although business insure against risks in the form of catastrophic loss and asset protection most of the plans I've heard of only ever kick in for replacing lost or damaged equipment. So far as I know service availability is not currently an insurable risk. Of course that may be different when you are dealing with a major player.
      And your 'crazy conspiracy theory' is known in the trade as "moral hazard" and is explicitly guarded against.
      Any Insurance company executives reading this, I would make an excellent risk assessor for mid-range installations with public facing websites. :-)

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Michael, 21 Dec 2005 @ 5:50am

        Re: Insurance for downtime... I've never heard of

        Anything can be insured, it's just a matter of finding a lender willing to calculate the risk involved. The lender can (and I'm sure does) include in the contract clauses dealing with investigating whether the cause of the loss was legitimate. Hell, you can buy insurance against rain on your wedding day. It's actually the same thing as betting. Some guy recently bet that he'd die before a certain date. He lacked insurance for that period of time, so if he died, his wife would get the profits instead of an insurance payout. Same system.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mousky, 21 Dec 2005 @ 5:41am

    No Subject Given

    Ten lashes for using the word Web together with a number, a decimal place and the number zero, for example, "Web 3.0".

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 21 Dec 2005 @ 9:54am

      Re: No Subject Given

      Ten lashes for using the word Web together with a number, a decimal place and the number zero

      Apparently the sarcasm wasn't clear enough?

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Comcaster, 6 Jan 2007 @ 7:10am

    Comcast believe the Hype

    As for Comcast, I have the products, all three; Cable, Highest Speed Internet, and Digital Voice. I think its unmatched unless you can get government level product and services free; this appears to be the best in personal communications. The prices are competitive even for a product that can't be matched but is supported by impeccable service; customer support, tech and staff:). I recommend getting on board, support and conquer your own quest. Happy New Year to all.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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