Andrew Natoli » Internet

Optimum Online Customers Experiencing Email Outage

Andrew — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:39:02 +0000

This morning I took what is nowadays a rare opportunity and tried to sleep in a bit. (Which in my world, was now what I called sleeping until 10am, compared to 2pm one short year ago. The future sure does look bright!) That plan was foiled however, when suddenly I heard my phone going off. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, but when it happened again, and then again, I got a little curious and decided to give it a look.

I painfully twisted and stretched to grab my phone to check what the alerts were for. I had gotten an email sent to my newsfeed account from News12. The mail stated that Cablevision customers were experiencing slowdowns with their Optimum Online email accounts. Eh, whatever, doesn’t apply to me. Next however, was a tweet from @SmithtownRadio, saying Cablevision was experiencing outages with their mail service. Lastly, to guarantee I wouldn’t be falling back to sleep, my tech customers, messaging me, asking why they couldn’t log into their email and seeing if I could come over to fix it.

So by that point, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and headed over to the internet to see what was really going on. The issue was real, but much more severe than News12 had claimed. (Well what can you expect by a news company owned by the company experiencing the issue?)

According to Long Island Business News, Cablevision began experiencing issues with their service around 11am Thursday morning, which can be backed up by one of my customers saying they have had the issue for a day now.

Cablevision as of Friday morning has not released an ETA until when the problem will be fixed, however they do claim they will be issuing a statement regarding the issue soon.

For now, many Cablevision customers seem to be in a state of panic and others frustration, without their email. Many for example have been flocking to Twitter to share their feelings on the issue, while others have found themselves making calls using a telephone for the first time since the creation of their first mail account.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Is email always being there something we take for granted and don’t realize the magnitude of disaster that can be obtained without it? Discuss in the comments below!

[Update: 3:59pm]: Cablevision has announced the issue with Optimum Online’s e-mail service has been resolved, stating it was caused by a malfunction with one of their storage devices. Cablevision claims none of its customers’ e-mails were lost in the disruption.

Google Wave? Do Want.

Andrew — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:14:29 +0000

Just recently like a lot of people, I have learned of the new and upcoming Google Wave. For those of you unfamiliar and don’t have time to watch a one hour and twenty minute video, Google Wave appears to be the next big thing for collaboration and communication online. By now I’m sure a large number of us know the practical uses for a Wiki. From creating a public database to simply organizing data and projects, Wiki’s have become one of the bigger methods of online collaboration, seeing as users can write and edit data with their peers.

One of Google Wave’s primary features includes something very much like e-mail, but a step further. Rather than continually “forwarding” messages between a group of people, Wave lets you add and remove people from the conversation whenever and they won’t miss anything. Wave also offers a new chat system where users can actually see what the other is typing, live, rather than “Buddy is typing…” Perhaps the most impressive feature Wave offers however is its Collaboration feature. Imagine working on a Wiki with others but only one person is allowed to edit the page at a time. Here’s where things have changed; apparently anyone who’s part of a project can edit a page live with everyone else. This meaning, you see every letter they add and word they change, as they’re doing it, and you see what you’re doing to. Very impressive.

Google is also offering API’s so developers can build onto what Wave can do.

If anyone has spare invitations to send out, please feel free to send me one. I might just give you a *high-five!*

Facebook Fanpages Have Gone Too Far

Andrew — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:38:42 +0000

Originally intended as a marketing tool to help businesses and developers advertise their products to a large mass of active users, Facebook’s Page system has gotten a bit way out of hand. We remember when “groups” came around, right? There had become a group for everything. If the title of the group described you, you’d join it. Suddenly you were cool. That hasn’t become enough though; soon after Facebook’s most recent change which included adding “Suggested Pages” to the homepage, the abuse of the page system has exploded. No longer are people joining the “I like blowing myself up” group, they’re becoming “fans” of blowing themselves up. Just think of how sick it sounds already!

Pages have just become downright annoying. I mean, is it really that necessary to announce to your friends that you’re a fan of partying? The beach? Or how about laughing?! Who needs to tell their friends they like laughing because its not already obvious whether or not they do? My entire sidebar is now bogged down with mindless crap such as “50 friends are fans of not being on fire.” After the 1997 movie “Volcano,” I’m pretty sure we all know it’s not fun at all to be on fire. Thanks for the reminder though, I’ll be sure to pull the fire alarm next time I feel a rush of warm air entering a room.

Oh hey, It’s “Google Feedburner?”

Andrew — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:00:27 +0000

I’ve used Feedburner a few times in the past and have run a few feeds through it, but a visit by me to their site was more of a tri-monthly thing, and in return I wasn’t aware of what had been going on there over the past two years. In May of 2007, Google had acquired Feedburner but not until about two years later was the change complete. Browsing through some old blog entries from April, I’ve read up on complaints by users on how the service had become very peevish and unreliable. “The RSS Blog” even asked Is Feedburner Dying? Perhaps the developers behind Feedburner were just too busy with what surfaced a few weeks later; users flocking to feedburner.com found themselves on a Google login page and from there-on, feedburner.com became feedburner.google.com. Not the biggest inconvinience perhaps, but it probably would have been nice to users if Google could have just kept Feedburner under its original domain like Yahoo! did with Flickr.