Time: Sept 6^th, 12:30 p.m. – Sept. 7^th, 12:00 p.m.

All facilities will be affected by this maintenance timeframe.

But by all accounts, it was mostly iPhone users who complained -- vociferously -- in e-mail messages, in Twitter postings, on Apple and AT&T forums.

At DSLReports.com, where many of the early complaints were posted, there were message from the occasional BlackJack II and Nokia N95 user. But headline was "iPhone Users Greeted With Morning Outage," and that's who weighed in the loudest.

"This is insanity," wrote "WildGod" at 10:23 a.m. from Brooklyn. "I never thought I would miss Verizon and my Treo as much as I do now." (link)

iPhone owners, of course, make more demands on their cellphones than most users. But they also have a long history of complaints against AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. carrier since June 2007, for slow and often inconsistent service.

Last week in San Diego, the second class action suit in as many weeks was filed against Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) for failing to deliver the "twice as fast" network speeds promised in the iPhone 3G promotional material. (See here and here.) The latest suit draws heavily on reports suggesting that heavy iPhone use is pulling more power from AT&T's antennas than its network is prepared to provide. See Roughly Drafted for more detail.

According to AT&T spokesman Brad Mays, last night's outage was caused by a "routing issue" that affected "some wireless data," but not voice calling, text messaging or Blackberry e-mail.

Service was restored by 11:56 a.m. EDT.

In fact Mr. Hoovers article is titled;

Outages Force Cloud Computing Users To Rethink Tactics

In the SMB / SME Space? Well lets keep it real Yo!

Yes outages are a concern, yes outages are a risk.

But before someone throws the concept out of the window because they heard about an outage somewhere. Ask;

Well - Can We Do Better?

In the SMB / SME space - I bet not.

I know that I can't.

I am located in a region with frequent power outages, and the building does not have an emergency generator.

The backup batteries on the servers and other devices hold everything for a while, but not long enough.

So as part of your evaluation and due diligence - be aware of the risks - but ask yourself if realistically you can do better.

When a computer glitch at a Federal Aviation Administration center caused widespread airline delays this week, it served as a reminder that the U.S. flight system is waiting for a modernizing overhaul. But it also appears the FAA's management of its existing technologies falls short of standards in other vital sectors.

Because the FAA relies on just two computing systems, one in Atlanta and one in Salt Lake City, to handle that chore for the entire nation, the software glitch all but sank the system Tuesday. The Salt Lake center remained up and served as a backup, but it became overloaded by information coming from airlines. More than 600 flights were delayed from Atlanta all the way to Boston and Chicago.

At the Atlanta center that saw this week's failure, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network computer has been owned and operated by the FAA since the 1980s, after the Dutch company that developed it went out of business. The agency also is considering adding a third backup site for that and other systems at a technology center in New Jersey, but no final decisions have been made, she added.

However, Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association cited the agency's lack of a ''safety net of redundancy,'' but he also pointed to its ''fix-on-fail'' policy of waiting for something to break before addressing a problem.

The FAA is now being run by the beancounters who've already destroyed FEMA and the FDA.

OWA unavailable today, 8/29 from 12:00PM to 12:15PM

The server that houses our owa website has a physical hardware issue that requires IT to shutdown the server for maintenance.  This will affect access to owa dot com and possibly prevent Smart phones from connecting to email during the outage.  We are working to make this outage as short as possible to prevent interruptions.  Please submit any questions or issues to the IT Help Desk at 3338.

Saturday, September 6^th – 7^th , i-Series (AS400 / Mapics) will be unavailable for planned maintenance

Time: Sept 6^th, 12:30 p.m. – Sept. 7^th, 12:00 p.m.

All facilities will be affected by this maintenance timeframe.

As with any planned maintenance we attempt to schedule these during a time frame that will have the least amount of impact on the business.  If you have any concerns regarding this upgrade please feel free to contact me.

Thank you

The driver did his best and so did the passengers. With not a single person raising a finger.

The driver didn't explain the cause. Just came back, sat down and got on with it. True Brit style.

I called Vodafone yesterday, and got a "sorry, we are experiencing high call volume. Please call back" message. And then it hung up! No queue, no way to set up a call from Vodafone back to me to help. Just hanging up on me.

Today, I go to the Vodafone website (because it appears that their DNS servers are dead; thank goodness for OpenDNS) and I get:

If an ISP can't handle serving up their own homepage, are they really a good choice? If you're a business, would you even consider talking to them at this point?

Computer systems availability will generally be disrupted beginning at 6:00 PM on Saturday, August 30, when systems will be taken down on a phased basis. Electrical work will begin at 10:00 PM and it should conclude around 7:00 AM on Sunday morning, August 31. Power will be restored at approximately that time. All systems should be back on-line no later than 12:00 noon on Sunday, August 31.

The patience and tolerance of the University's user community is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

To update those of you looking currently Netflix is experiancing issues with their shipping system that is delaying their ability to ship in a timely manner.  Please refer to www.Netflix.com and log in to get the latest information.  This time, everyone, they have stated "We apologize and we'll be automatically issuing credits to all of you whose shipments have been delayed. "  So no need to wonder like we did when they had their website outage last time.  :)

It is a day that no one would absolutely forget. On August 14th, 2003 - a major power outage has wiped out parts of Ontario and the Eastern Seaboard such as New York state, Ohio, parts of Pennsylvania, just to name a few.

I was about 17 years old at the time and I have a story that I want to tell you guys. I spent all on my ordinary afternoon, while sitting around the computer, surfing over eBay. At approximately 4:15p.m. (Eastern Time), the power suddenly went off. I thought to myself "Did a transformer blew up at the substation or electrcity pole near me?". I then waited for moments and moments until the power came back on. Meanwhile in the big city of Toronto, people are stuck on elevators at office towers, the subway was completely offline, train stations were clogged, the list goes on and on....

Two hours later, my mom and dad came back to my home and told me the havoc about the power outage. My older sister Susan called me on my cell phone and then she told me that "there was a power outage originated somewhere in Ohio". Night began to fall and the neighbourhood is completely without power. It's completely pitch black! The people began to see the stars outside and it was a perfect night without all the lights on. As I began to go to sleep, I began to wonder, "What's gonna happen the very next day?"

The next day, things turned out for the worse. Traffic lights were out and people have to improvise on directing traffic until the police stepped in. Grocery stores were packed with people trying to salvage on what they can to survive the blackout. Luckily, they have some barbeques to reheat all the leftovers they had from last night - but the refrigerators weren't working at the time because of the power outage. That could risk food being spoiled. Gas stations meanwhile were packed and ATMs (bank machines) were completely out. I listen to my clock-radio that was battery operated mentioning about the blackout and what effects it had. The Canadian National Exhibition has to be delayed because of the blackout. Many businesses were suffering massive losses contributed to the blackout.

At approximately 6:30 to 7:00p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, August 15th, 2003 - a matter of hope happened. All the power came back on! I began to rush to my desktop computer to chat with my friends about the power outage on they coped. Cell phone usuage was very high at the time with many loved ones concerned about their safety and security of their families, friends, whoever.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, people there decided to flock over to Gatineau over the Ottawa River to face some relief down there. This Quebec city situated just north of the Ottawa River dealed with the influx of people from Ottawa finding relief. From getting beer at the local depanneur (conveinience store), to finding gas and walking around on air-conditioning powered shopping malls.

The week suddenly dragged on, the then former premier at the time Ernie Eves, told an important public appeal to all members of the public. Non-essential personnel were not allowed to go back to work for their usual duties. People are urged to conserve power because of the sudden instability of the power grid and rolling blackouts were the threat. But after a week of a brutal post-blackout journey, the people managed to pull themselves through. The CNE meanwhile decided to open early instead of delaying it. It suffered some massive losses sustained during the blackout, but it managed to rebound slightly after a few years.  I managed to find a few videos about the blackout coverage. It can be viewed here or here. If you are lucky, I also found some in-depth coverage from the CBC about the 2003 blackout. It can be viewed here.

Coincidentally, I also mange to scour a few youtube videos about the blackout, including a few some Irish Tourists visit the city 5 years ago.

The blackout reminded me of the 1998 icestorm that hit through Quebec. This and the 2003 blackout reminded all of us to use one big word: "Conservation". Anyways, to view the chronology about the 2003 blackout, you can click here.

My question to you is, "what your were doing when the lights suddenly go out back in August 2003?"

Irish Reporter filming about the Blackout - #1:

Irish Report filming about the Blackout - #2:

Irish Report filming about the Blackout - #3:

Irish Report filming about the Blackout - #4:

Irish Report filming about the Blackout - #5:

CNBC aired a CBC report about the blackout:

CBC news report - August 15th, 2003, part 1 of 3:

CBC news report - August 15th, 2003, part 2 of 3:

CBC news report - August 15th, 2003, part 3 of 3:

According to Google the issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Google promised that it will conduct a full review of what went wrong and it will update its internal systems and procedures accordingly.

Links

Google's official apology: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/we-feel-your-pain-and-were-sorry.html.