[ORIGINAL]
It’s not just you – Xbox LIVE is down. If you’ve called off work to nurse your Labor Day hangover and were hoping to kick back for some Xbox multiplayer action, you may be out of luck.

The Xbox LIVE service is currently down, according to Microsoft’s own server status page. The status for Xbox LIVE states that users “may experience difficulties” signing into Xbox LIVE on their Xbox or through the xbox.com website. Microsoft is working on a fix, though. From the server status page:

We are aware of the problem and are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience

The cause of the Xbox LIVE service disruption is unknown, and Microsoft has not issued an official statement yet. This is the same LIVE service that is set to be rolled into Windows 8 with its release, though some gamers have concerns that it could mean difficulties for indie developers.

Note that Xbox LIVE is the only service that is currently down. The Xbox LIVE marketplace is still up, as well as the matchmaking service. No apps seem to be affected either, and the Zune service is still active, though that will probably be renamed soon, as the Zune brand is quickly being put out of its misery.

Updates will follow if service resumes, or if further information from Microsoft is forthcoming.

CNN reports that the outage began at 11:59pm EST, though things were returning to normal around 1pm. Of course, this moment of bliss didn’t last for long; at 2:16pm, the site went down yet again, prompting the company to post “the issue is on-going” on its status blog. According to the folks at Pingdom, this is the worst crash the site has experienced since October.

In fact, while attempting to write this article, Twitter experienced a few more outages. Like before, we weren’t greeted by the “Fail While” — the sight simply just timed out. Whatever issues the website is currently experiencing, apparently they’re still on-going. In the meantime, I suggest writing down all of the snarky 140-character comments you had planned for today in case you start to forget them. It’s been known to happen.

So what in the world does a person do when Twitter goes down? They apparently do other things for a while, come back to Twitter, see if it’s up, and go back to whatever it is they’re doing. However, once things were back in motion, people started posting their reactions to the outage under #WhileTwitterWasDown. The results, as one might imagine, are pretty entertaining.

Follow @ThelIluminati

The Illuminati
@ThelIluminati

#WhileTwitterWasDown the government was installing new surveillance software to monitor everyone’s DMs

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15 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @_vickypollard_

Vicky Pollard
@_vickypollard_

#WhileTwitterWasDown I was thinking how it was the first thing to have gone down on me in ages

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22 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @BeardedGenius

Noz
@BeardedGenius

#WhileTwitterWasDown I followed people in the street I didn’t like and had a good old moan about the way they walked.

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40 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @iKeepItTooReal

Real Tweets™
@iKeepItTooReal

Things I did #WhileTwitterWasDown: 1.) Tried to load Twitter 2.) Checked Facebook 3.) Wept 4. Tried to load Twitter 5. Tried to load Twitter

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51 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

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Ryan Wesley Smith
@ryanwesleysmith

#WhileTwitterWasDown I had to go on Facebook and talk to people I actaully know. Scariest hour of my life.

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7 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @PeytonsHead

Peyton’s Head
@PeytonsHead

#WhileTwitterWasDown there was still nobody on MySpace

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8 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

Some Cache Clusters in a single AZ in the US-EAST-1 region are currently unavailable. We are also experiencing increased error rates and latencies for the ElastiCache APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are investigating the issue.

Amazon less than an hour later discovered the source of the problem and posted the message that it was beginning to bring cache clusters back online. One hour after that, it was announced that the service was finally recovering, and at around midnight PDT Amazon announced the situation was resolved:

The service has recovered and is operating normally. All affected Cache Clusters are now back online, API error rates have recovered and customers can once again launch new Cache Clusters. We will follow up with more details of the issue.

The outage led to some sites, such as Quora, Pinterest, and Dropbox, being unavailable or unusable. This is the same type of situation Amazon Web Services faced last year, when another datacenter (in Virginia, no less) suffered the same problem. It sparked many questions about whether cloud platforms were safe for major websites to run on.

Amazon’s response to last year’s issue was to promise better accountability and transparency. To the company’s credit, it seems that the service has improved: last night its status updates came quickly and the situation was resolved in a timely fashion. Amazon Web Services just this week expanded service and lowered prices for its support packages.

(via ZDNet)

As part of that story I sent a request for comment to Verizon Wireless. They had this to say:

Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today. Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally.

While the spokesperson’s statement about the 3G network doesn’t seem to jive with what customers on the support forum were saying, it is nice to finally have some sort of statement from the company. The latest reports on the original support forum thread seem to indicate that the network is in the process of coming back online. Hopefully Verizon customers will be back to normal service soon.

This is actually the second such outage in recent memory. Just two weeks ago (when the support thread was started) Verizon suffered another major data network outage two weeks ago that lasted for most of a day.

Were you affected by today’s outage? If so, have you gotten service back? Let us know in the comments.

The company has been making a minimal effort at damage control via their customer support Twitter feed this morning, but have remained quiet on the details. No comment has been made either on the outage itself or on when Verizon customers can expect the problem to be resolved.

I have sent Verizon a request for comment which has yet to be answered. The Verge, however, is reporting that they did manage to speak to a Verizon spokesperson who only acknowledged the outage without giving any further information.

As one might expect, Twitter has been abuzz with complaints about the outage:

Meanwhile, either someone at Verizon Support has a sense of humor, or they haven’t been paying attention. Just a few minutes ago they responded to this tweet…

With the following:

The timing of the outage is particularly problematic for Verizon, who have been pushing their 4G network heavily in holiday shopping ads for their phones.

Sure, the BlackBerry outage inconvenienced tons of people, but could it have saved lives? That’s what the police in the United Arab Emirates are claim. They’re reporting that traffic accidents dropped by a staggering 40% in Abu Dhabi, and 20% in Dubai this past week. Their reasoning: driver’s BlackBerry’s weren’t working so drivers couldn’t text or check email forcing them to concentrate on driving.

Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the chief of Dubai Police, and Brig Gen Hussein Al Harethi, the director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, both told The National newspaper:

“Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we’re really glad about that … People are slowly starting to realise the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working.”

It’s likely that the BlackBerry outage did cause some drivers to concentrate solely on driving, but their might be another explanation to those stats, as Naked Security points out.

In late September a talented UAE soccer player by the name of Theyab Awana, died in a car accident when he crashed into a stationary lorry on the Eastern Road near Sheikh Zayed Bridge. Awana’s own father, Awana Ahmad Al Mosabi, said that his son was sending messages on his BlackBerry the time of the accident. Mosabi issued a statement asking drivers to be careful and not use electronic devices while driving:

“There were no skid marks on the road, and Theyab’s friend who was driving behind him said he didn’t see Theyab brake before crashing into the lorry,” Mr Al Mosabi said. “We are not certain that he was using his BlackBerry, but that’s what everything indicates. Too many people are texting while driving, so I ask all drivers not to use their mobile phones or other electronics while driving.”

It goes without saying that texting, emailing, or doing anything with your phone while driving is incredibly dangerous… so don’t do it. What happened to common sense?

What are your thoughts? Do you think the BlackBerry outage played a part in the reduction of traffic accidents? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Well, whether you want it or not, Sony has announced the details of their apology, dubbed the “Welcome Back Customer Appreciation Program.”

Over on the PlayStation blog, embattled updater Patrick Seybold says that the welcome back package will be made available shortly after Sony has “fully restored the service.” Of course, online multiplayer was restored over the weekend, along with other services like chat and trophy comparison. But “full restoration” has been hinted as late as May 31st.

Without further ado, here is your appreciation package PlayStation faithful:

All PlayStation Network customers can select two PS3 games from the following list. The games will be available for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.

Dead Nation
inFAMOUS
LittleBigPlanet
Super Stardust HD
Wipeout HD + Fury

For PSP owners, you will be eligible to download two PSP games from the following list. The games will be available for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.

LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
ModNation Racers
Pursuit Force
Killzone Liberation

• A selection of “On Us” rental movie titles will be available to PlayStation Network customers over one weekend, where Video Service is available. Those titles will be announced soon.
• 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PlayStation Plus subscribers.
• Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription.
• Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
• Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
• To welcome users Home, PlayStation Home will be offering 100 free virtual items. Additional free content will be released soon, including the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclusive game.

So, how does that sound? Kotaku has an interesting take on the package, saying that based on retail prices for the games and PS plus account costs, Sony thinks that gamers’ inconvenience is worth about $104. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the 100 free virtual items and the TBA selection of “on us” rentals.

To those of you who thought Sony needed to do something like this – is it enough?

At this moment China’s Internet users cannot view YouTube. The Chinese government claims that it had nothing to do with the outage but its timing with the airing of footage on YouTube of detained Tibetan protesters being beaten seems a bit more than a coincidence to the rest of the thinking world.

Google’s take on this is

Google spokesman Scott Rubin told InternetNews.com that it is still working to bring its video-sharing site back online and identify the cause of the outage.

The Internet News article goes into the specifics of this incident very well. Some highlights include:

• According to the Global Network Initiative at least a dozen countries with less than pristine human rights records have blocked YouTube access since 2007

• The Chinese government calls the videos fraudulent and does not say that the outage is due to government activity

• The CTA (Central Tibetan Administration) is accused of a propaganda campaign that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising

All of this interesting in the context of how most of us view the Internet. With Internet access comes the freedom to do and please with it however you want. I can watch videos and interviews that are anti US government all day long if I choose to waste my time doing that. How many more police brutality videos can you see as well. No one is stopping us from doing any of this. What’s China afraid of? Is it fearful that the rest of the world will discover their human rights violations? News alert – That cat’s been out of the bag for a long time.

So back to the Internet marketing part of this. It ties back to us ever being able to truly engage in Internet commerce with a country that will shut down access to whatever it is threatened by. Do we want to do business with them? Of course, for many the allure of a billion or so potential customers may override any human rights concerns. Many companies (US government included) still do business with countries that are blatantly in violation of human rights.

So does this even mean anything at all to the rest of the world? If Google and YouTube can’t work in China will Google just abandon their efforts there? Not likely. There are too many people there.

Comments

Cyber Monday may as well have been a day where Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees all stopped by Yahoo’s small business operations and killed various merchants in graphic and creative ways.

We will give Yahoo’s Rich Riley credit for stepping up today, with a mea culpa on Yahoo’s official blog about the problems. He offered apologies for the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, but did not provide details as to what happened or why.

"On Monday at 6:00AM PT, the systems that power our merchant stores experienced outages, and shoppers of those stores were met with either error messages or they were unable to complete the checkout process," he wrote.

"These issues lasted until about 1:00PM PT when, despite slow performance, transactions began going through at a much higher rate. By 6:00 PM PT things were back to normal and the performance of our systems was at 100%."

Small business customers commenting on Riley’s post were not happy with the lack of disclosure over what happened, nor Yahoo’s failure to publicize a workaround related to the checkout process that other merchants happened upon on a support forum.

Some noted the rollout of a new cross-selling feature before Thanksgiving, and suggested it was responsible for the problems as traffic began to arrive at merchant sites. Another noted sites using an older checkout process had no downtime issues.

"This outage cost us big time in terms of money, our time and customer goodwill," Craig Clark said in the comments.

As bad as this outage was, at least it did not happen later in December, when shoppers do a lot more buying. Cyber Monday, for all of its hype, is a marketing term created a couple of years ago. Merchants should see more business, barring any more outages, in the days closer to Christmas.

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Yahoo Merchants Toasted By Monday Outage

Heavy holiday traffic crushed Yahoo’s Merchant Solutions service on the mythical Cyber Monday, leaving merchants angry and customers frustrated. Many merchants expecting to see transactions merrily rolling through the system found themselves watching an error message from Yahoo.

"Some merchants are reporting that shoppers are receiving an error message indicating ‘system unavailable’ during the checkout process. We are aware of this issue and are currently investigating," Yahoo advised merchants, according to MarketWatch.

One merchant cited in the report had to post a telephone number for customers to call to place orders. Others waited fruitlessly for the situation to be corrected.

Even worse, sites impacted by the lengthy service outage will likely suffer the brunt of consumer anger, rather than Yahoo. CNBC said the error messages encountered by visitors did not make it clear Yahoo, not the merchant, was responsible for the problem.

Despite the lousy performance by Yahoo, merchants should take heart. Cyber Monday is a marketing creation dreamed up by Shop.org two years ago. The heaviest shopping tends to take place much closer to the middle of December than the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Perhaps a prudent merchant can turn the outage to an advantage. Acknowledging and apologizing for the irritation consumers endured, and offering some sort of mild incentive to return, may help bring those visitors back for another go at making a purchase.

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