My coined term from my data center analysis and commentary this year: bozosity. Bozosity is a condition brought on by an imbalance of invisible particles known as bozons. This condition causes otherwise competent and sensible people to do incomprehensibly boneheaded things.

The Winners of the 2009 Data Center Bozo Awards are:

1. Microsoft and Danger for the T-Mobile Sidekick data loss debacle. MicroDanger did not win for operating critical storage systems without backups, but for the handling of the aftermath. MicroDanger immediately announced all data was lost, then, by the time they did recover most of the data, significant damage was done to T-Mobile and the sidekick, leaving everyone involved with a reputation for incompetence.

2. Fisher Plaza for knocking out major Internet services by blowing up an antquated, obsolete, and improperly maintained electrical system in their data center building. Aluminum bus bars are evil, k?

3. IBM for blowing Air New Zealand out of the water by performing power work during peak load period of one of Air New Zealand’s busiest travel weekends, unnecessarily running ANZ’s mainframe from a fallible generator alone, and taking an inordinate amount of time to restore service.

4. IBM for allowing a state of Texas elections commission storage system in their care to fail because it wasn’t in the contract to back it up.

5. Google for their brilliant example of cascading failure by sequentially overloading every router feeding their Gmail service.

6. Research in Motion for seeing how many BlackBerry back end failures they could squeeze in before the end of the year.

7. Amazon, Rackspace, Google, and a number of other providers who managed to blacken the term cloud computing by multiple reliability problems, most of which were self inflicted. Thanks a heap guys.

8. DreamHost for giving us a shining example of how NOT to do a major data center migration.

9. The people who operate Sweden’s top level DNS domain for turning lose an untested script and taking the entire thing down. Who knew a few missing dots could be so much trouble?

10.The Perth iX data center in western Australia for allowing a smoldering mulch bed outside the building to shut down the entire data center because they couldn’t locate a miniscule amount of smoke that was infiltrating the building and setting off an overly sensitive detection system.

Finally, I’d like to add a “dishonorable mention” award to FedEx for turning overnight delivery of a critical part into 3 days and nearly sticking me with working in the data center overnight Christmas Eve.

Looks like we survived the year but it sure wasn’t pretty.

Vern, SwiftWater Telecom

มองหาสถานที่ที่ดีสำหรับการอยู่ห่างจากทุกสิ่งที่คุณสามารถผ่อนคลายและเพิ่งออกกังวลทั้งหมดของคุณหลัง! บาหลี, อินโดนีเซียเป็นปลายทาง vacation มาก! บาหลี, อินโดนีเซียเรียกว่า "เกาะแห่งพระเจ้า" อาจเป็นโซลูชันเพื่อความอยากของคุณสำหรับ การเดินทาง และการพักผ่อน. มันเป็นเกาะขนาดเล็กที่มีหลายที่ให้ตั้งแต่หาดทรายสวยงามทะเลสาบ groves ปาล์มภูเขาแนวปะการังสัตว์ป่าและวัฒนธรรมมากมาย.

บาหลีตั้งอยู่ระหว่าง Java และลอมบ็อคมีประชากรประมาณสามล้านคนแล้วบันทึกใน 2005. แม้ว่าเกาะขนาดเล็กบาหลีเป็นจุดหมายการท่องเที่ยวที่ใหญ่และพื้นที่ wealthiest ในอินโดนีเซีย. ประทับใจ aesthetically มันแกะสลักไม้ประตูหินตระหง่านวัฒนธรรมและศิลปะอันมีเหตุผลเพียงไม่กี่ไปนี้เกาะสวย.

อิทธิพลอย่างมากจากวัฒนธรรมอินเดียและจีนศาสนาในบาหลีคือศาสนาฮินดูอย่างเหนือกว่าแต่ในรูปของ "Agama-Hindu." นี้จะปรากฏในดนตรีศิลปะของพวกเขาเครื่องแต่งกายและเทศกาลที่เกิดขึ้นทุกวัน. ภาษาพูดอย่างกว้างขวางที่สุดในบาหลีเป็นบาหลีหรือเพียงบาหลี. คนที่อาศัยอยู่ในบาหลีมีทั้งสองภาษาหรือ trilingual. ถ้าคุณถามชั้นฟ้าสิ่งที่บาหลีเป็นเหมือนเขาก็มักจะกล่าวเช่นเดียวกับบาหลี.

ที่แนะนำสถานที่ท่องเที่ยวมากที่สุดในบาหลีพบส่วนใหญ่ในส่วนใต้ของเกาะ. หาดใต้มีน้ำสีฟ้าที่สวยที่สุดและเก่าแก่หาดทรายสีขาวที่คุณจะพบตัวเองเพียงที่ต้องการพักผ่อนและสนุกกับดวงอาทิตย์. บางท่านจะได้เห็นหาดทรายคุณจะไปดูที่ซานัวหาด Kuta และนูซา Dusa.

บรรดาผู้สมัครรับชมบางและการผจญภัยสามารถไปที่เกาะของ 10,000 วัด. พวกเขาทั้งหมดมีความหมายต่างกันในทิศทางของพวกเขาที่พวกเขาจะหัน. เป็นที่เชื่อกันในบาหลีที่พระเจ้าอยู่ในภูเขาและ demons ในมหาสมุทร.

ที่นี่บางเว็บไซต์ที่แนะนำเพิ่มเติมไปในบาหลีคือ

* สวนบาหลี Orchid
* ลิงหะSanctuary ป่าไม้
* Bratan Pura Ulun ทนุ
* Kawi Gunung
* Mayeur Museum Le

ดังนั้นสิ่งที่คุณรอ? หากคุณต้องการหนีจากความเครียดและเมืองแล้วบาหลีเป็นสถานที่ที่สมบูรณ์แบบเพื่อพักผ่อนและผ่อนคลายเป็นจุดหมายปลายทางที่สมบูรณ์อย่างแท้จริงสำหรับผู้ที่จะต้องการใช้เวลาอยู่กับคนอื่นๆหรือเวลาที่จะได้รับประสบการณ์ enlightening และหรูหรา enriching, ! ประสบการณ์ที่นี่สวรรค์บนดินประสบการณ์บาหลีอินโดนีเซีย.

It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook’s popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 — the most epic “fails” of the year.

Your mileage may vary. If you think something doesn’t deserve to be here, or think we missed a noteworthy clunker, let us know in the comments section. And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails …

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year’s Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft’s Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune’s 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device’s internal clock recognized (or didn’t recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn’t help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple’s iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, “Huh?”

Sure, there are some people who don’t have smartphones and don’t want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage yourTwitter feed?

“I already have a $200 device to update Twitter,” said one techie we spoke to. “It’s called my iPhone.”

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto — a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK … so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called “an almost incomprehensible data disaster,” T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users’ personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone — and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn’t stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again — in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That’s good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that’s not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom’s knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we’re glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm’s coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools’ Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet — a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

“I think the joke’s on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date,” Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM’s X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn’t seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for “When Twitter Was Down.”

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year’s string of outages or slowdowns of Google’s popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves “into the cloud,” people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009’s were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: “Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, ‘Gmail is down!’ and inquiring, ‘Is Gmail down?’ “)

I got Google Wave — now what?

OK, so it’s a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, “OK … now what?”

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video — leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It’s designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time — a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it’s inspired the creation of a Web site — Easier to Understand Than Wave — on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

Historically noted for technological record books, 2009 provided exceptional influence with regard of substantial sharing of user-generated content; gaining nobility for revolutionizing social media, establishing socialization between a globally interconnected technological era. No longer just an average user, social media, gave forth the ability for diverse users to become media resources; privileged in creating, personalizing, modifying, censoring, sharing, and deleting content. Shadowed in the background, often taken for granted, current day technology encapsulates global life; complex in its mechanisms, a simplistic error can set off an intensive chain reaction that directly affects millions world-wide as servers collapse — if only for a few minutes. A data center, also known as a server farm, is an extensive collection of computer servers that usually operates by an enterprise or enterprise host; these ‘farms’ accomplish server related requirements far beyond the sustained utilization of one machine. Secure in purpose, each data center often complete themselves with a back up generated server that takes over processes if the main server ceases to function properly; alas, even these backup servers are not safe from failure themselves as all technological gadgets go astray from time to time.

While technological data cannot grant the answer as to if 2009’s data center outages surpassed prior years; they were undoubtedly more visible due to the heightened focus and influence on around-the-clock social mediums. With the largest percentage being single data center downtime, at times these outages occurred in clusters; statistical measurements developed from expansive technological research, list the top 10 — in no statistical order.

[1] The Death of a Legend — On June 25, 2009 social media news sites were the earliest to report the death of Micheal Jackson, resulting in many websites to slow to a crawl; while others experienced data server issues that lead to outages. At a time frame beginning at 5:30pm (EDT) the excessive traffic on prominent news sites, reporting Jackson’s tragic death, more than doubled downloading bit rates from four seconds to nine. During the same period of time the average availability of these sites dropped from 100% to 86%, on index.  News sites were not the only sites to experience delays, social networking giant Twitter became so overloaded that spotty sever issues were noted; while posting time quadrupled to a snail’s pace. Preserving the memory, music sites also increased in data server related problems; as well as video platform Youtube.

[2/3] Twitter DDoS — On August 6, 2009 an electronic attack, known as distributed denial of service, plagued Twitter; crashing the interface for three hours while interfering with functionality for the better part of twelve — these attacks continued for weeks. Thousands of computers networked as “bots” were used in these attacks to overload the circuit infrastructure, causing frustration for the enterprise as well as panic for thousands of tweeting addicts. Twitter worked in conjunction with NTT America, host of the popular network’s server farm, to put in effect defense tools. In relation to overly popularized Twitter’s downtime; Facebook, LiveJournal, Myspace, Friendfeed, and a slew of other networks slowed in bit rates; due to taking on Twitter’s unhappy crowd of users. With no way to determine a relation; seven DDoS attacks were reported in 2009, on various servers, since late January to the time of Twitter’s DDoS mayhem.

[4/5] Gmail Outage — Leading to a massive social media content storm on September 1, 2009 Google’s Gmail crashed; the problem a faulty router. Responsible, for such professional problem, multi-billion dollar Google; as an underestimation was made on routine maintenance of a reported ‘small fraction’ of routers, which placed a mass strain on supporting routers of the Gmail application. Unmaintained routers ceased functioning as they could not handle the bulk overload of traffic, that traffic was rerouted to remaining maintained and/or new routers which returned an overage. Overloaded routers caused a major headache, for many business professionals who relied on Gmail for its exceptional service and average users too, as once overloaded the web interface couldn’t be accessed; saving many IMAP/POP accessed mail continued to function normally. Google’s Gmail also suffered from extended outages in February 2009 when a single code change trigged a domino effect, overloading the data centers in Europe. Since this outage was so large in scale, Google offered 15-days of service credit for Google mobile phone application users who pay a fee to use Google on their web domains.

[6] Paypal Meter Ticket — While ecommerce functioned normally, a data server error on August 3, 2009 left popular Paypal unable to process transactions made through their servers. Estimated, by technologists, this colossal downtime cost eBay business units in excess of $7 million per hour in missed transaction fees; servers slowly started to come back up after two hours. Paypal indicated that this huge encounter was a problem with its API, offering up immense frustrations as merchants lost heaps of money.

[7] Amazon Strike — Lightening struck, and caused damage to a power distribution unit at Amazon on June 11, 2009. EC2 cloud users were offline for more than four hours, as a result of this weather related occurrence; which began at 6:30pm Pacific and ended at 11. Amazon, like most large corporations, place servers on grids; saving them only one of the four gigantic grids had issues — nonetheless the same grid had issues in 2007 and 2008, indicating a possible issue for 2010.

[8/9] Microsoft Lost Backups — In an almost incomprehensible October 10, 2009 data disaster T-Mobile informed users of its popular ‘SideKick’ mobile that virtually all data had vanished; lost by Microsoft. The email read “Regrettably based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must inform you that personal information stored on your devices – such as contacts, calendar events, to-do lists, and/or photos – that are no longer on your SideKick are certainly lost as result of Microsoft/Danger server failure.” T-mobile worked around the clock to possibly figure a way to regain information, for their thousands of highly angered clients, without success. In early October 2009, users started to experience trouble connecting to the serves that are used in the store of contact lists, T-mobile and Microsoft both expressed optimism that a service would be restored.

[10] Lost Ma.gnolia — Suffering from full data loss, social media site Ma.gnolia lost everything on January 30, 2009, due to an enormous database crash that knocked their server’s offline without backup. Member’s bookmarks, previously lost, were never able to be restored to any percentage. As it turned out, social networking Ma.gnolia was a one man operation, running on two MAC OS X servers and four MAC mini’s.

Cheers, to a much better 2010.

(Copyright © Social Media News)

17/08/07 – 11/12/09. RIP braces.

In the sidekick download catalog there is a new category called “customer appreciation”. This is filled with various free apps for downloading including Twiiter, 2010 NFL, Prank box, sudoku hq and more. This is likely happening because of the outage and you will need to download before december 11th.

I recently walked into T Mobile and saw there were no sidekicks on display, anywhere. Now the Global outage that erased thousands of people’s information began around October 3rd. At that time T Mobile stopped selling the Sidekick but it is now December 3rd. I myself have a sidekick and all the problems from the outage were corrected over 2 weeks ago so why is T Mobile not selling the sidekicks anymore? Is the Microsoft purchase of Danger recently a sign to the end of the sidekicks? Are they going windows mobile? Hopefully these questions get answered pretty soon because the sidekicks have pretty good following but people are realizing there are better phones out there and will switch.

I recently walked into T Mobile and saw there were no sidekicks on display, anywhere. Now the Global outage that erased thousands of people’s information began around October 3rd. At that time T Mobile stopped selling the Sidekick but it is now December 3rd. I myself have a sidekick and all the problems from the outage were corrected over 2 weeks ago so why is T Mobile not selling the sidekicks anymore? Is the Microsoft purchase of Danger recently a sign to the end of the sidekicks? Are they going windows mobile? Hopefully these questions get answered pretty soon because the sidekicks have pretty good following but people are realizing there are better phones out there and will switch.

cloud computing
KLOWD kom-PYU-ting

If you want to get technical, cloud computing is a very cool way to keep all your stuff in internet-land, where you can access it from anywhere because you don’t own the media or servers upon which it’s stored. But if you want to get corporate, all you need to know is that corporations are likely to be very, very leery about implementing it despite how into it their tech folks are.

The problem with cloud computing, from a corporate perspective, is all about control. Most people have Google accounts, and already live somewhat in the cloud — if you have webmail, you’re doing cloud computing. Google is by far the king of the cloud, though Microsoft’s Office 10 is going to attempt to make some inroads into that market share. But whether it’s via Google, Microsoft, or even Yahoo (anyone remember Yahoo Briefcase?), the company doesn’t own the data. The data is held by the third party, who has their own set of terms and conditions as to the warranty of the data (T-Mobile Sidekick Fail, for example), the accessibility of the data (you can’t call Google and complain that Docs is down), and their right to read the data or be subpoenaed and hand the data over. And what happens if the third party suffers a hacking attack that ends with the data being taken by hostile parties? What’s the company’s recourse?

That’s why so many companies use VPNs instead of cloud computing — they let employees log into their work PCs using secure connections that they control. It’s way slower than the cloud, but it lets the corporations exercise their own security measures. And, I have to admit, as much as I love cloud computing (I do most of my first drafts on Docs), there’s a big difference between running a blog and running a multi-million-dollar corporation.

Of course, all companies have to do their due diligence and pretend to be interested in cloud computing, as illustrated by the above Dilbert strip. The tech guys always get excited about it, hoping they can link their tricked-out Google accounts to their work life. Just remember — if the company does go with the cloud, you’re going to have to make all your Google stuff available to them upon request. You know it’ll show up in the IT policy. I’d certainly put it there.

Sorry I missed last week, the musical and Operation Red Nose had me running on empty.  Here is what’s happening in our fair city this week… and there is tons going on to get you in the holiday spirit:

• CHEER ON THE OLYMPIC FLAME (Tue 24, Marco Polo Cruise Terminal, 5-8pm -FREE)  www.uptownsj.com
• Introduction to Wine w/ Peter Smit (Tue 24, Happinez Wine Bar, 7-9:30pm – $35 + HST) Pre-registration required.
• Meet the Artist: Sue Hopper (Wed 25, Saint John Arts Centre, 12-1pm – Free)
• All you can eat wing night (Wed 25, Boilerworks, 6pm+)
• Operation Red Nose Volunteer Info & Training Session (Wed 25, Boilerworks, 7pm sharp – Free munchies & info)  Fill out your application form at this 1/2 hour session!  
• Holiday Fashion Party (Wed 25, Je Suis Prest Boutique, 7-9pm – Fundraiser for The Coverdale Women’s Centre)
• Open Mic w/Brent Mason (Wed 25, O’Leary’s Pub)
• William Forrestall – Artist Talk (Thu 26, NB Museum – Market Square, 7-9pm – Regular Admission)
• FUSION Party with a Purpose: TIES 2 Work (Fri 27, Hilton Hotel – Lower atrium, 5:30-7pm – Free)
• Dave Shoots, Bookseller: Christmas Open House (Fri 27 & Sat 28, 40 Coburg St., 8am-5pm)
• UPTOWN SPARKLES – Open House (Fri 27 & Sat 28, Uptown Saint John, 4-9pm & 10am-5pm)
• Warm Drinks & Cool Tunes – City Market Open Late! (Fri 27 & Sat 28, Saint John City Market, 5-8pm & 11am-2pm - shopping!)  
• Ron James – Mental as Anything (Fri 27, Imperial Theatre, 8pm – $48)
• Barnacle (Fri 27 & Sat 28, O’Leary’s Pub, 9pm – Regular Cover Charge)
• OPERATION RED NOSE (Fri 27 & Sat 28, Driving you home in your own car, 9pm-3am – FREE!)  CALL US!  693-6810
• Mayor’s Tree Lighting Ceremony (Fri 27, Market Square Atrium, 6pm – Free)
• Sea Dogs vs. Drummondville (Fri 27, Harbour Station, 7:30pm – $10.50-$16)
• Bigg Medicine (Fri 27, The Blue Olive, 10pm – $5)
• Uptown Saint John’s Traditional Holiday Open House:  Full calendar (Sat 28, 8am-10:30pm – FREE)
• Wendy Neilson & Friends Red Carpet Gala (Sat 28, Imperial Theatre, 7pm – $50-$250 Fundraiser) *black tie optional
• Sidekick (Sat 28, The Blue Olive, 9:30pm – $5)
• Sea Dogs vs. Quebec (Sun 29, Harbour Station, 4pm – $10.50-$16)
• The Straight Ahead Show “Git-er-boil’n” (Sun 29, Imperial Theatre, 7:30pm – $23)

I think another apology is in order. (: I’ve been busy for the past three weeks, just trying to absorb all of my studies. And in doing that, have cut down on my internet usage. It’s this ”balance” that is hard to maintain, it’s going okay.. well so far. I’m just worried that I’ll lose my self-motivation, which leads to not studying, then bad marks and less self-motivation. And its hard to stay out of this whirling, incapacitating cycle that seems to just hover the one step behind me.

Two places I’ve been regularly going into while on the internet, have been GaiaOnline and Neopets. Yeah, yeah both have similar target markets, yet Gaia has the look and feel of being more suited to older teens. Gaia is currently finishing up its post-Halloween festivities which involves all Gaians (people/users) to choose a side- B.O.O. stands for the Benevolent Order of the Overseer aka. the good guys vs. S.I.N (Sentinel’s Infernal Nation or the bad guys). Personally, I always side with the good guys. ;D A little repetitive, but with the promise of some unlockables/prizes it’s up to the participant to decide if a little time and clicking skills are worth it.

Back on Neopets, they have a new plot called Atlas of the Ancients, set out in chapters (story mode) which lets participants follow the adventures of the good guy hero, his sidekick and smart/damsel in distress to save Neopia and its residents, the Neopians. Not too bad, colourful, bright and engaging- however a little let down due to the simple plot steps. One or two clicks to finish a stage (in a chapter) of the plot. As a Neopian who was around for the Altador Plot (Dark Faeries Plot) which involved timing, and various steps to follow, it was one of the best plots the Neopet’s team came up with. Overall, not bad.. 4/5 stars.

Until next blog post (which hopefully won’t be another three weeks :p) — Sparkles. xx.

YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAH!!

Jag blev uppringd av Anton som kör kvällspassen mellan 19-22 på NRJ. Han hade spanat in I Date Joo och gillade vad han såg. 

Så i går träffade jag denna härliga kille för ett möte.

Kan man kalla det möte förresten? Nja, det vet jag inte. Ärligt talat snackade vi mest massa skit och lärde känna varann lite. Han var en riktigt skön snubbe kan jag säga!…Och så bestämde vi att jag ska bli hans och Emmys nya sidekick på onsdagkvällar i programmet Loveline.

Jag ska alltså ge lyssnarna tips om kärlek, dejting, raggning, relationer m.m. Jag kommer även att ta lyssnarsamtal och försöka guida alla som behöver lite råd i dejtingdjungeln.

Aaaaaahhhh, det ska bli sjukt kul! Så håll öronen öppna i framtiden.

If you’re brave enough to want a Sidekick from T-Mobile after last month’s data loss fiasco, wait no longer. The carrier has resumed sales of the device, even throwing a price cut in for good measure. The older Sidekick 2008 is $49.99, and the fancier Sidekick LX will retail for $149.99, both with a two-year contract commitment. The meager price drops (about $25) may not be enough for many to take a chance on the company, however.

At least two states, California and Washington, are in the process of suing the company over the data loss. T-Mobile itself has done a little damage control by giving $100 credits to unhappy customers. All in all, October was a month the carrier would like to forget. Let’s just hope this time they have a backup…

This is the script for third issue of my superhero comic book, Rapid City.

Read it here.

Panel 2 Shot of Glyph talking.

GLYPH

It’s like if you’re backstage after a concert, or at an after-party, no one picks up a guitar and starts jamming. Not because they don’t love the music, but because they just need a break from it. See, with great responsibility there must also come great pressure. This is just a friendly way for these people to all blow off the same steam.

Panel 3 A pull back to see both of them again.

KINETIC

Maybe I just haven’t been at this long enough to really get it.

GLYPH

Could be. Or it could be parties just aren’t your scene.

In this issue, Kinetic compares different views of what it means to be a superhero, and begins to realize what it will take for him to live that life.

This is the latest version of the second issue of my superhero comic book, Rapid City.

Read it here.

SIDEKICK

It’s a science word, right? Means, like, motion energy? Right?

KINETIC

Right. Like my powers. Kinetic energy.

SIDEKICK

That makes sense. I like it when names make sense.

In this issue, Kinetic gets closer to acting on his dream, and Maxwell Murder makes a move. In this version, some of the secenes were tightened up to make room for Max.

Today was going nicely, no work, just a day to myself.  Then around 2pm I had just gotten off my cell phone (the dreaded Sidekick) when everything freezes and I see a big RED X and then quickly the phones shuts off by itself.  When the phone turns back on, all info lost again – no contacts, emails, texts, settings etc.  This has happened one too many times and today this was the straw that broke…well, you know…and I sort of lost my mind.  I took the phone and hurled it across my office and it landed in a few separate pieces.  I waited about 10 minutes, then gathered the remains and locked them away in a drawer.  I never want to see it again.  If you have read any of my other blog postings on the subject, you know my frustration.  I really could lose it any day now.  Just a warning to anyone who looks at me the wrong way, or says the wrong thing to me this day forth.

T-Mobile said Wednesday it’s fixed the technical problems that caused about 5 percent of its customers in the U.S. to lose phone, text-messaging and Internet service Tuesday night.

Now, the mobile carrier is moving on to find the root cause of the problem, the company said in a statement.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers,” the company said in a statement.

T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, is the nation’s fourth-largest cell carrier but lags significantly behind the big three of AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

A representative of the company reached by phone on Tuesday said there were outages, but technicians are working on a solution.

She could not provide more technical detail. Not all customers were affected by the outage.

“We’re making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers. At this time (9 p.m. Tuesday), approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions. Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. Our rapid response team is working continuously to fully resolve this disruption. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said in a press release.

T-Mobile also had trouble in early October when Sidekick phone users were unable to connect to the Internet or use their contact list for about two weeks.

Those still experiencing problems should contact T-Mobile. A forum has been set up for those affected by the outage.

Props: Ajc

P.S. SOOOOOO, NO “IM SORRY” CHECK FOR TMOBILE CUSTOMERS??

Recently, a number of customers read about the issue Sidekick user’s experienced and contacted Vorsite with their concerns. This information is relevant if you are a Microsoft Online Services subscriber of the Business Online Productivity Suite (BPOS) or if you are evaluating the services.

The main concern being, how is “The Sidekick Incident” related to BPOS. The answer being, it is not.  BPOS hosting infrastructure completely separate from Sidekick’s.

Please see the article below, it is an interview with Steve Ballmer and his direct statement to this issue.  Specifically he speaks to the fact that “Sidekick” is NOT run on the same infrastructure as BPOS, and is completely unrelated. 

 From Network world:

 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101909-microsoft-balmer-sidekick.html?hpg1=bn

SharePoint Online, part of its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), has one million users. The majority of those customers use the service to store data online as it does not yet have full-feature parity with the enterprise version of SharePoint Server. In addition, Exchange Online is another data-intensive application within BPOS, a set of service run by Microsoft. Also, Microsoft next year plans to offer Office Web Applications, online versions of the popular productivity applications, which will feature SharePoint as their back-end data storage infrastructure.  BPOS however is not run on the same infrastructure that hosted Sidekick, which was operated by Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary and was not running on Microsoft software or its Azure cloud platform.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Online Services (BPOS), go to www.TryMSOnline.com, or start a 30-day free trial of the services.

This is the script for the second issue of my monthly superhero comic book, Rapid City.

Read Issue #2 here.

Panel 4: Rat’s eye view, peeking out from some hidey-hole as the two walk past.

SIDEKICK

“Could be I’m shooting at the same 3 or 4 rats every day and they don’t mind it at all…”

In this issue, the running changes start to show. The character who had been named Rampart in the previous issue is now named Kinetic. There are a few other details that, as of “press time”, have not been ironed out. They aren’t that important, and apart from some name confusion, the story is intact.

Enjoy.