Blogger Outage Caused by "Data Corruption"

Google's Blogger service was restored on April 13, 2011, after a global outage that lasted at least 20.5 hours.

"During scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior," the company says on the Blogger blog. "Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages."

A small subset of Blogger users (Google estimates 0.16 percent) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts.

All day April 12, 2011, Google put Blogger in read-only mode while restoring content. As part of the repair process, Blogger rolled back to a Wednesday May 11th version, leading to deletion of material on a temporarily basis.

In the afternoon of April 13, Twitter is reporting service disruptions as well.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back

Now Twitter is "Having Stability Issues"

Experiencing site stability issues 1 hour ago

We are currently experiencing site stability issues. There may be intermittent issues loading twitter.com and Twitter clients.  We’re working to fix it as soon as possible.

   
Google "Blogger" has just been restored, after a global outage that lasted more than 24 hours. Now Twitter says it has an outage.

How "Open" is Android?

Engineering always involves tradeoffs. Smaller size might be an advantage, but smaller size limits input and output options. Bigger smart phone screens are a plus, but at the cost of battery life. More features can enhance user experience, but means more complexity. "Open" systems encourage innovation, at the cost of standardization and interoperability.

Observers have faulted Android for its fragmentation, over the last year, for example, a somewhat inevitable result of allowing choices. But Android seems to realize it has to limit the amount of freedom developers have, in order to ensure that users and customers can be sure "Android" apps and devices actually work on the devices they buy.

As it turns out, Android code is made available without charge to device manufacturers, but those manufacturers must adhere to a “compatibility” standard determined by Google. Some will complain about the threat to "openness." Others will cheer the consumer interface advantages, among them the assurance that software and hardware actually works.

Skyhook Wireless v. Google Case Yields E-Mail Insight - NYTimes.com

Dish Network Might Offer "Early Release" VOD

Dish Network is considering offering an "early release" video-on-demand for films that are about eight weeks out of theaters, similar to what DirecTV already offers. The DirecTV offer shows new-release movies about eight weeks after they have ended theater exhibition, for a $30 price.

Dish is in negotiations with Hollywood studios and no final decision has been made on whether to introduce the service.

Dish Network in Talks to Offer Premium Video Rental Service - Bloomberg

Google Launches "Google Guides" Program

Apple has for decades made quite a decent business supporting the education market, and then reaping benefits as those users moved along in life.

Google is trying something similar, launching a program to turn its college Google Apps users into evangelists as they hit the workplace.

"If you attended a university that’s “gone Google” or just sought out Google products on your own, you’ve learned how to use Apps to collaborate and communicate with your professors and peers," Google says.

"With this in mind, we’ve created the Google Guides program to help you take your Google Apps expertise to your future job."

"When you become a Google Guide, we’ll equip you with resources to introduce and implement Apps in your workplace."

Official Google Blog: Graduate with Google Apps

HEAnet, Juniper, ADVA Demo Automated Router and Optical Layer Provisioning

Communications networks are not loosely-coupled systems, as a user's PC, tablet or smart phone is loosely coupled to that user's web services, local applications, peripherals

HEAnet, Juniper Networks and ADVA Optical Networking have successfully demonstrated the automated setup of optical circuits between Juniper Networks routers using an ADVA Optical Networking Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network, using a common signaling protocol.

The typical end user of services won't care. The carriers that have to create and maintain services will care quite a lot.

Using the control plane, HEAnet was able to provision end–to-end circuits between the routers over the optical network, using equipment from multiple suppliers. That typically is harder than first appears.

The deployment of the control plane enabled the initiating router to discover, reserve and then build an optical circuit across the optical network without any user intervention beyond the original user commands on the initiating router.

Rapidly growing traffic levels in both metro and core networks are driving many network operators to deploy a new network architecture based on integrated packet-layer routers and optical-transport systems, the companies say.

That is the optical core network equivalent to the requirement that retail service providers likewise operate their networks at lower cost as well.

“This is one of the first customer GMPLS interworking tests between router and optical equipment manufacturers,” said Eoin Kenny, project leader, HEAnet.

Sprint Offers Switchers $175 to $75

Sprint is offering up to $175 to business customers who switch from other wireless carriers, and $125 for individual customers who buy a smart phone. Sprint will pay $75 for individuals who buy a low-end "feature phone."

The credit is meant to "give customers a chance to try Sprint without having to worry about fees or charges for terminating their contracts with their current carriers," Sprint spokesman Lloyd Karnes said, according to CNN.

To get the credit, all accounts must be ported from existing contracts, and they must remain active for 61 days. A two-year contract is required. The offer began May 4.

read more here