Typepad issues shake user confidence

These are difficult days for Six Apart, the wiz-bang blogging company behind Movable Type and Typepad, the service I use for this blog. There has been a rash of service slowdowns and interruptions this fall but yesterday was the worse, with sites essentially unusable for more than 12 hours.
The company is taking lots of flack from bloggers and online news outfits like Between the Lines | ZDNet.com and Macdev and Corante.
I couldn’t update all day yesterday, nor could thousands of other users ranging from the Chicago Tribune to the UK’s Register.
The company insists this was a "single point of failure" whatever that means but it’s left me and I’m sure many others with shaken confidence. I’m about to head to Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show and plan lots of blog reporting on new products and services. I’m worried that this will happen again and, though I’ve been a Typepad customer since Day One, I am seriously considering changing platforms.
I like the folks at Six Apart a lot. But I suspect they have a major convincing job to do if they are going to keep a lot of customers. There’s no room for anything but near flawless performance. Typepad is a terrific product. But I’m wondering - based on the past few months - whether it is meant for serios blogging.
I had hoped to move to its flagship Movable Type platform over on Yahoo! this week but after wasting a dozen hours unsuccesfully trying to get it to display as a three-colum blog, gave up in frustration.
I hope the problems were just growing pains and yesterday’s incident was the end of Typepad’s problems. But one more meltdown and I’m outta here and switching to WordPress.

What we searching for online

This has been a big year for online search. The number of people using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 – an increase of about 55%, according to a study just released from Dogpile.com - the metasearch engine that searches Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves
Tracking search queries is becoming the online equivalent on Nielsen data and as 2005 comes to a close, Dogpile.com says the year’s most popular search term was “music lyrics,” as no single comprehensive site catalogs lyrics and consumers must rely heavily on search to get them there
Paris Hilton topped the most-searched celebrity list and came in #2 overall.
Here’s something that I found most fascinating from the study: Did you know only 1.1% of search results from the top four search engines overlap. Try it yourself by clicking here.

Aerial photography to sell houses

A Web site called HomePages takes high-resolution aerial photography and applies it to finding homes and businesses. Check our your neighborood by entering your address. If Google’s Earthmap impresses you, wait till you see this. The site is aimed at home buyers but, right now at least, it’s open for a sneak peak. They’ll be announcing this site at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month but you can check it out now.

Virtual family reunions via Web cam

I did my column today on Web cams and holiday visiting. Web cams bring loved ones together was the headline but so many people use two-way video conferencing that it’s now a major part of the digital lifestyle.
Take this e-mail sent by Gary Gray, one of my group of Technofolk advisors who responded to a query I sent out yesterday asking people how they used their Web cams:

“Both I and my wife have PowerBooks running Mac OS X 10.4.X (Tiger)  and we use iChat and iSight video cameras to keep in touch with friends and family. I video chat with my Dad (who is also running Mac OS X  10.4.X with iChat and iSight) every week or two. He lives in Iowa and I live in Pennsylvania and it is a really nice way to casually talk about what has been happening in our lives. I also video chat every month or so with a good friend who lives in Chicago (also a Mac user). My wife uses this technology to keep up with her Sister and nieces (one is 2 and the other is 5 years old) who live in central Illinois. Her nieces really get a kick out of it since they get to see my wife and she can do things like play with Elmo, who the girls just love. Mac OS X is a wonderful solution for this because iSight cameras are cheap and the capability is built right into the OS via iChat. None of my family members are very tech savvy, but they had no trouble getting videoconferencing working.By the way, I have a friend who does weekly 4-way video chats with his parents in Italy, his sister in Pennsylvania, and his brother in Maryland — all of whom are running Mac OS X 10.4 and have iSight cameras.”

Holiday Party Excuse Generator

The folks at Enlighten, a very slick Web development and Internet services company have done us all a great service with their interactive Holiday Party Excuse Generator. It’s going to prove very handy this season.

xBox and nano shortages

I visited a Wal-Mart the other day and got to talking with one of the stockers back in the toy department. He told me the store gets in a few xBox 360’s several times a week but they go so fast most never make the store shelves.
They typically arrive around 11 pm and "people are actually here waitng for them to get put out (from the back room)," said the clerk.
Meanwhile, the xBox 360 isn’t the only hard-to-get Christmas product this season. On eBay, people are willingly spending $100 over retail for the nano. Link: iPod nano shortage sends users to eBay.

SunRocket seems much improved

I promised an update when I reinstalled it and tonight, after a week’s worth of renewed experience with SunRocket, one of the cheapest VoIP providers around, I can give it a favorable review. I’ve used it several times a day since reinstalling it and, except for occasional lags in dialing (it sometimes takes 20 seconds or so for the number I’m calling to start ringing), I have had no serious issues. It’s much improved over my last try in the fall. The company just came out with a $9.95-a-month offer and seems to be bending over backwards trying to woo consumers.

Wide Open West sold - no changes planned

The Midwestern cable company Wide Open West which operates in Southeastern Michigan and across parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio has, in effect, been sold to Avista Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity company.
The deal will take several months to go through legal review and franchise agreement procedures with the various local governments that WOW deals with. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Mark Dineen, WOW’s Michigan Senior Vice President and General Manager, tells me the sale will be “invisible” to the cable company’s employees, Internet and cable TV customers. “This will be seamless,” he said. “This is really a stock transfer agreement with Avista becoming the majority owner.”
The company’s name will stay the same, rates will not be changed, and there are no changes in employees planned, said Dineen.

Movable Type and blogging hell

I like the folks at Six Apart and when I saw their news release announcing Business Blogging - Yahoo! Small Business web hosting with Movable Type I figured it would be worth a try. But 24 hours later, I’ve given up. I can’t figure the platform out and have - after long, long hours of frustration - gone back to Typepad. There’s no design help available for all this and while I was able to get my MT blog up and running all attempts to use it’s Style Generator service and set up a three-column blog look like this met with dismal failure. I suppose I should turn to a design professional but getting fast help - I’m losing traffic during all this - makes that pretty unworkable, too.
Sorry, readers, for the hassles and site unavailability.

Fujitsu P1500 Tablet PC video

Here's a vBlog post about that new Fujitsu P1500 convertible Tablet PC that I've been raving about.

My desktop picks for 2005

Continuing with my Christmas gift picks for the year, today in the Freep are my top two recommendations for a desktop computer system. Link: MIKE WENDLAND: Here’s good news if you want to upgrade that old desktop.

My Christmas 2005 laptop picks

My annual high tech holiday gift guide started today in the Detroit Free Press.  MIKE WENDLAND: Shopping for a laptop? Here are 3 good ones. I started today with laptops and picked three woith some alternates. Winners were the Apple G4 15-in PowerBook, the Toshiba Satellite M45 and what has tro be the coolest Tablet PC  ever released, the Fujitsu P1500 LifeBook, an amazing 2.2 convertible tablet model that is so good that I think I’ll buy it myself and put my curent Motion 1400 Tablet up for sale on eBay.
I’ll put up a video of the LifeBook later today. Tomorrow I pick two desktop systems. Tuesday it’s gizmos and gadgets.

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