Gmail outage bigger than Obama on Twitter

Earlier this week Gmail crashed for half a day and caused quite an uproar as personal and business accounts couldn't be accessed. Now if we compare the Twitter Trends over the last couple of days against the same time as the inauguration of Obama happened. Interesting stuff:


Something else that is interesting is that their is now a Google account on Twitter, does this mean that Google does not intent to acquire Twitter or is merely testing it out. Either way it would have helped if Google had the account on Monday to let us know whats happening with Gmail as a blog post about it took quite a while to come up.

Facebook offered $500million for Twitter last year... wonder how much its valued at now especially after it received another round of funding at $35million. There is a lot of talk that this could be the next 'google'.

Gmail has a bad day and the online world moans...

Wow, who would have thought how many people would be affected by Google's Gmail going down for a bit. You'll be pleased to know if you are reading this now that it is back up and working but no official explanation as to what happened.

When trying to load Gmail earlier you were greated with this image:

People who were tweeting about it on Twitter actually brought Twitter search down also due to the sheer number of people searching for similar tweets etc. I wonder what sort of spike Hotmail received today...

Coldplay + The Killers + Bono = ridiculous amazing concert

Unfortunately for us here in South Africa it happened this week in London at Shepherd's Bush but was for a good cause - 'War Child' a friend of mine went and I am very bleak I missed out.

Below is quite a good video of one of my most favourite songs ever been sung by The Killers + Coldplay + Bono, enjoy

The bundling of Social Websites on Cellphones

Facebook, just the word is been used everything to suddenly make everything online hip and cool or at least that is what the big corporates are thinking as they slowly wake up to the Web 2.0 social scene.

And in order to appear that they are with it they are starting to try make everything work with Facebook and especially with your mobile phone. Apparently Nokia and Facebook are in heavy talks with creating more interactivity between Nokia users and Facebook.

Nokia has to face the decision to we try use our vast user base and create our own social network or do we jump on board with Facebook?

I certainly don't think they should create another new social network and that they should use Facebook like Apple and Blackberry are doing. Soon when going through your contacts on your phone you'll be able to see who is online etc. and start a chat with them - I like that idea.

BUT and for me this is a big BUT:

Is Facebook going to be the new Microsoft?

And this question is with reference to how Microsoft was so 'cool' back in the early nineties and started to bundle everything together and eventually got slapped with law suits and paid millions and millions in fines.

If I was from My Space or Orkut I would be upset and cry FOWL when all these cellphones start coming out working so closely with Facebook. This time it won't be Facebook/Microsoft that could get fined but rather the cellular companies like Nokia and Apple.

If they don't give their users the option of selecting which Social Engine they would like to connect to when using their phone it could be seen as creating a monopoly for Facebook. If I was Facebook I would be pushing hard to strike up these deals with the phone companies as fast as possible.

Calvin and Hobbs explain bank bailouts

A mate emailed me this, funny stuff.

Twestival heads to Cape Town - 12 Feb 2009

So after this rapid arise of charity driven twestivals held around the globe Cape Town is to get its own and best of all the funds raised will go to the charity : Water.

If you don't want to donate your hard earned money to 'water' then go along and donate your bucks to Cycle2Learn.org - mates of mine who are cycling from Cairo to Cape Town to build 2 classrooms for a rural school in the Eastern Cape.


Jennifer Connelly in charity: water Public Service Announcement from charity: water on Vimeo.

CharityWater is a legit site and is looking to raise $500,000 and awareness so join in for an evening of fun and games. CharityWater is trying to bring water to the people in need, a worthy cause if I say so myself and knowing that hundreds of cities around the world will be doing the same thing on the 12th is awesome.

Will each phone company have their own App store?

They way its going it certainly looks like it... I wonder where the common sense is in these big corporations when they just don't get together and launch one common App store? Do they really think that developers will create and maintain Apps for each different store - what a nightmare!

So far the following have or are indicating that they will launch an App store soon:

The Apple App marketplace which was the first I reckon

Blackberry is releasing one soon

Nokia has mentioned one (though a bit quiet on it at the mo)

Google's android market

Palm with their App Catalog

Samsung


The one problem with Samsung's App store is that they don't control the platform it will be launched on like Apple, Google, RIM and Palm. So in the near future everything could be a big messy market.

The coolest guy on the internet

So, recently on a couple of websites there is a competition going around to see who can get the highest placed position in Google's organic search results for the wording 'The coolest guy on the internet' - the guys at the MIH group started it with Justin Hartman writing the first blog. He posted a random video of this 'cool guy', here is my random video of my vote for the coolest guy - though with over 112million views I think he comes in pretty close to the top for the coolest guy on the internet!

For me this was also the first video I watched on YouTube... was definitely one of the first videos that I got sent which spread virally.