As I write this, in the last twenty-four hours the much hyped Web 2.0 hasn't exactly lived up to it's AJAX Ruby-Railed star power like I would like it too, like I would think it should. These applications that I use to do business have been kaput — completely unreachable for one reason or another.
Basecamp, Backpack and Blinksale are all apps my clients and I use to manage business. Unfortunately these centrally hosted members of the Internet Brat Pack have been kaput and completely unreachable. Needless to say, when this happens it's difficult to conduct business.
And while I'm ranting about subscription services let me remind everyone that Cingular is the official phone service of Hell, put on this Earth by the Prince of Darkness herself. I am so, so close to declaring a fatwa on Cingular — Death to the call dropping infidels! Death to the three-day-late voicemail Cingular! Death to Steve in accounting, who single-handily came up with the idea for charging a $150 penalty for breaking a two-year contract! Grrrr, Steve, I hate you so much.
Before all the zealots and Bleeched Peridot on Pavement groupies rain down their otaku devotion, let me say that outages and crashes are not unique to the spanking new Web 2.0, but this is the first time it's impacting my ability to get things done. In the last ten years I have managed to steer clear of being caught in a large IT network of managed computing. I've always been a part of small tactical departments that were able to operate independently of poorly managed systems with brand names like Microsoft and Novell.
Bratpack Apps definitely have the Independents Day appeal and maybe that's why it's easy to forget that my account is just one tiny part of a larger, possibly Enterprise level system. It's kinda like that one time when Neo came out of his gooey Matrix comma and realized that he was nothing but a human Duracell inside a homosapien power plant the size of Rhode Island.
Despite these current circumstances I would not trade these applications in for their big brother equivalent, I don't think anything from Redmond and the like necessarily have a better track record but it does have me thinking that maybe there is such a thing as outsourcing too much business management, no matter how real-time hip and helpful it is. Perhaps these questions are better left to science but this is a thought I typically chew on at the eleventh hour of my eight-hour work day.
I wonder if the better solution would be to crack open a fresh Moleskin, unscrew the lid on the Mont Blanc and use my own internal God-given asynchronousity.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
The old hunter addage of "don't trust any meat you didn't hunt, shoot and skin yourself" springs to mind here. Once these developers start selling standalone installations of their apps, then we might be on to something that we can see being potentially reliable in the way these things need to be.
Let us buy an installation, run it on our own server, and then it will start to become "enterprise level"
These guys need (mt) hosting. If anyone would like Media Temple hosting (looks at Josh Williams and JF), give me a call.
No.. i am shortly leaving (mt) as there have been moments when i've been about to show a client something, to discover my site is down.
Furthermore the FTP access is appaling, momentarily stalling at every single file before it completes the upload. Long live TextDrive ;)
Although i think Hosting is a service where personal recommendation helps, my best advice is to go for a minmum contract and try it out with some stuff, see how you get on.
I'm currently on Host 3 (TextDrive) in my search for a decent provider with FlashLevel (they cut me off completely without warning) and "(mt)" being tried and ditched. In (mt)s favour the tech support are very fast at responding, you can measure in minutes not hours!
I agree with Jonathan. If it's not on my network, it's non-critical.
Outsourcing is a nice idea, but this lack of control is precisely why I avoid it like a plague!
Thanks for the offer Colin! Actually, the downtime we had was purely software based. We made some changes Saturday night that didn't hold up to the real-world heavy loads on Monday morning. We're past it now. Hopefully.
Ah, damage control in the age of citizen / developer journalism. It doesn't get any better than this. Oh wait, it does and will :0)
Cingular rocked until the AT&T merge. I still like rollover minutes, tho.
Here I thought I was the only one who hated Cingular. There are others like me?
It was only a matter of time before we realized what a joke all these productivity/business apps were - first of all, you have to depend on someone else's server, and if you're doing real business, this leaves you vulnerable - as with blinksale. As great as the idea is, it's tough to get everyone to switch over ot using online invoices.
> put on this Earth by the Prince of Darkness herself
Hmm, princess?
I've always been pretty displeased with Cingular, especially in the last few years. But I have never heard of a *good* wireless company, so I am still with Cingular.
Has anybody out there received the Cingular Debit card? I recently upgraded my phone because it was supposed to be free. Not free as in free, but free as in we'll send you a rebate and in 6 months you'll get your money back (not including tax, thank you very much). Well, instead of sending a rebate check like companies usually do, they have decided to send Debit cards with amount they owe you on the card. Cool right? Sure, but how do you use every last dollar on the card? You've got to monitor your balance and when it gets down to the last dollar you need to do some fancy card shuffling...
$2.55 on my Cingular card and the remainder on my Visa card. You think everybody is going to do that? Where does the leftover money go?
It was only a matter of time before we realized what a joke all these productivity/business apps were
Sorry Grace, I think you're wrong. The apps I mentioned here, and use often, are not a joke at all. Each of them has been very helpful to me and my need for green. But I do wonder if relying too much on another companies infrastructure makes good business sense. I suppose it all matters on your information management philosophy and hate level for similar products from companies like Microsoft.
Here I thought I was the only one who hated Cingular. There are others like me?
I want to return my phone to Cingular, only as a timer for the dynamite it's strapped to. They simply can not handle the extra volume from AT&T. What's worse, they don't awknowlege that there is a problem Rat bastards.
Greg,
The fatwa section is hilarious. A truly genuine one. I am sure Force will be with you in your battle with darkness
Each of them has been very helpful to me and my need for green
Ok Grace - maybe they'll send you a free basecamp shirt or something!
I've been with AT&T for years and my service only got better with Cingular. Sorry guys, I really don't think it's crappy at all. As for load from AT&T, I believe Cingular also gained AT&T's infrastructure so the load should be the same unless, in your area, AT&T was swamped and Cingular wasn't.
Ahh gee... burned. Ours, unlike BC was a problem with our host. Somebody rebooted the server last night into an alternate webserver. Sadly this happened as there was a "changing of the guards" between two of us rotating in and out of summer vacation schedules. Oh, the sick irony of it going down during our 12 hours of non-overlapping hours.
Well I can really only comment on Cingular. They sucked hard hairy buttocks before they merged with AT&T - I switched to AT&T to get away, and they sucked almost as hard - and now I'm back with Cingular (against my will) where the sucking continues. Suck. Suck. Suck!
I agree with your Cingular comments. I used to be an ATT customer, wasn't crazy about the service, late voice mails, coverage...it was really terrible. I always felt that I was a beta-tester for them. I used to rant that it was a crime that could even charge anything for this service! When ATT was eaten by Cingular absolutely nothing changed for me, except that Cingular started charging me on a totally different plan than I had been using for the last 3 years. They would always make good with a credit but it never got fixed. Every month I had to spend an hour on the phone...
Last month I moved over to T-Mobile, got a simple (no camera, no video) Motorola V188 quad-band and I've been a happy camper ever since. No dropped calls, almost a full 5-bar signal everywhere I go and the best part...I can make and receive calls inside my house! No more pacing the front lawn just to find the sweet spot! Woo-hoo!
As others have commented I think the Base_____ apps will really take off when they can be installed on other systems.
There does seem to be a bit of backlash against the hype of Web 2.0 apps at the moment though (for example) which I will qualify by pointing out that the backlash isn't against the PRODUCTS, it's against the "It's Web 2.0 so it MUST be AWESOME (dude)" proclamations.
Maybe we are still awaiting a "Tipping Point" so we can "Get Things Done" in better fashion.
*gets coat*
I wonder if anyone would create a small program that syncs with Basecamp/Backpack/Blinksale so that problems like this aren't so severe to the subscribers. At least it be something to work with instead of nothing. Anyway, I too felt the pain of Backpack being down. I had phone numbers stored in my account that I needed in order to close on my house. Talk about getting behind.
Jason has made it clear that it was a software problem, which only came to light when the code was stressed by the real world. I have no reason to not believe Jason.
At the same time, 37S and SvN have made quite a big deal out of their agile software development process - small, fast, nimble, unencumbered by bureacracy, process, formality, and documentation (see http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/001050.php and http://getreal.37signals.com/).
So here's another point of view... "Getting Real", which they believe is the secret sauce to their implementation of Web 2.0, may not be compatible with the stress of a 24x7 operation with many, many paying users. Maybe "Getting Real" - or at least the agile software development part - doesn't scale past the really cool, small-time, utility app. After all, as your app gets bigger, and your customer base more sophisticated and demanding, how much testing can you really do when you update/release your software every day or two?
I went T-Mobile to AT&T to (the merged) Cingular, all with fairly poor service. When Cingular merged with ATT&T I used the opportunity to get a new phone early and the rollover minutes with Cingular. I had reception problems with AT&T, and they were even worse with Cingular, dropped calls -- even on my last call to cancel my service!
Then . . . EUREKA!!!
Verizon comes to the rescue. I got the phone that everyone and their sister has right now, the Samsung SCH-A670, and I feel like I'm talking on a landline, even in the basement of brick buildings! Before I thought all cell phone services were the same, but tis not true! Customer service is really good too, I can't recommend them enough. Best reception ever -- death to Cingular! And I've said my piece. Good day.
Good point here. Can't fault the products for being anything less than great but reliability is pretty business-critical.
New Web, old problems, I guess.
Come to T-mobile! T-mobile will treat you right! Seriously, they have SUCH GOOD customer service; it's like they actually have the customer's best interest in mind! I switched from ATT/Cingular, and haven't looked back. And I get 5 bars reception in my house now, instead of 1-2. Only problem is, non-urban coverage is spotty at best, and you might want to use their "personal coverage check" to make sure you get signal in your area.