Archive for 2009

Rackspace experienced an outage yesterday–a recurring issue this year for the hosted data center provider–which took down a number of high profile sites including the popular blog site TechCrunch. No network is impervious to outages, but a company like Rackspace needs to provide consistent and reliable service.

The Official Rackspace Blog explains “On December 18, 2009 between 3:37 p.m. and 4:12 p.m. CST, Rackspace experienced network connectivity problems.” The timeline doesn’t jive with the fact that the timestamp on the TechCrunch report on the Washington Post site says 12:17pm. Assuming the TechCrunch timestamp is Pacific time, it would mean that the outage began more like 2pm Central time, or possibly even earlier.

It would be nice if we could get insurance quotes for site outages, you know to help compensate those sites that go down for extended periods. Everyone things about the money they lose during downtime, don’t they?

It’s one thing to criticize someone because of their choice of discount rugs in their home, but to criticize someone in the loss of their child is stupid. Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves and since Shellie knew a lot of people online it made sense to ask those people to pray for her son. I did.

A Florida mother is being criticized by bloggers and Twitter users for posting a tweet less than an hour after her 2-year-old son drowned in a swimming pool at her home.

Shellie Ross, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mother who lives outside Patrick Air Force Base, posted a message asking that people pray for her son after he had fallen into the family’s swimming pool on Monday.

If people spent half the energy they put into criticizing other people on being compassionate, they themselves would be much happier.

It’s time to find some cheap health insurance for Windows Mobile.

The iPhone has leapfrogged Windows Mobile to jump into the number two position for smartphone platforms in the United States. That news could be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back for the floundering Windows Mobile operating system.

The latest ComScore report shows that Windows Mobile market share is stagnant for the year. After climbing to 7 million users in May, Windows Mobile market share dropped precipitously to 6.6 million in July, then scratched its way back to 7.1 million in October–most likely due to the release of Windows Mobile 6.5.

At this rate, within a year or so Windows Mobile won’t be around to bring the blue screen of death to the device in your pocket.

While we all sit here following developments in Iran from the safety of our 22 inch monitors, some people in Iran search for whole life insurance just so they can walk down the street. Now this.

A computer hacker briefly hijacked Twitter.com on Thursday, redirecting users to a website and claiming to represent a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army.

Twitter, which in June became a key communication channel for Iranian protesters disputing the country’s election results, said it was disrupted for a little more than an hour.

Twitter’s home page was replaced with one whose headline read “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army” and an anti-American message.

Isn’t it funny, Iran tries to block access to the internet as a whole, but they can’t stop a stupid attack on Twitter. Nice. Not.

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Have a laptop or netbook and want to get more out of it? You’re not alone. We’ve experienced the frustration of trying to keep data or bookmarks on a portable synchronized with those of a desktop PC or other laptops. We’ve struggled with diminishing battery life. We’ve needed assistance getting connected at hotspots or staying safe once online. And we’ve wondered how to take full advantage of USB flash drives.

Check out the Yahoo! tech site for 10 free downloads that might make your life much easier.

The iPhone is coming to South Korea. Finally.

South Korean carrier KT will start selling the iPhone this month, the company said Monday, bringing the hit device to another Asian country.

KT will start offering the 32GB and 16GB versions of iPhone 3GS on Nov. 28, the company said in a statement on its Web site. It will also offer the 8GB iPhone 3G.

My wife would collect a nice amount of life insurance if I ever had to go without my iPhone. I thought I was the last one to get one.

You watch, Microsoft is going to make a deal with News Corp. Microsoft couldn’t hide their flaws even if they tried. If they were bald and used hair supplements, we’d still see their bald spot.

Microsoft Corp has had talks with News Corp about a tie up, which would involve News Corp getting paid to take its news websites off Google Inc, a source familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
News Corp, which owns such papers as the Wall Street Journal and the Sun, started the discussions, which were at an early stage, the source said.

Whether or not you’re on some sort of weight loss diet, this new game sounds very entertaining. Nothing like seeing your chubby self on screen, eh?

French videogame powerhouse Ubisoft will have a virtual fitness coach whipping Wii users into shape starting Tuesday.

“Your Shape” ramps up the healthy videogame genre with a custom camera that puts people on-screen and under the scrutiny of an animated coach devoted to making workouts go strong.

When you’ve walked a mile in worn out shoes, it only makes sense that you pass on a few tips for the next guy. It’s nice to see the guys from Canonical helping out with the new Chrome OS, under contract of course. If you’re going to help you may as well get some new shoes while you’re at it. I wonder if those shoes will be Naot?

Google has an important ally in its newly revealed Chrome OS. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu–one of the more user-friendly versions of Linux around–has agreed to contribute engineering to the project, under contract.

I can’t believe it took this long for this to play out. It only makes sense that it would end this way. It makes you wonder if the executives at Psystar could have looked better if they had tried to burn fat rather than provoke Apple.

Psystar can’t catch a break. After spending more than a year in a legal battle with Apple for selling Intel based systems pre-loaded with Mac OS X, the company lost its battle on Friday when a federal judge ruled in favor of Apple.

Apparently the federal government doesn’t support companies violating copyright law, EULA restrictions, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — too bad for Psystar.