GoDaddy: isn’t your goto-daddy today!

Arg!

There, I’ve gotten that off my chest. Usually I jump on my blog early in the day and check up on a few things. You know, like comments, spam, outdated plugins, incoming links, etc… Then come back later in the day and, hopefully, get a post written and posted a couple times a week. Of course, I’ve been quite lax in that area lately. 😉

So this evening, I go to log into my blog and I get this:

rickmahn.com-network-timeout

I dig a little deeper and find that the entire godaddy.com site, services, and everyone who hosts their sites with them is offline. Heck, even TechCrunch was unreachable for me – are they on GoDaddy too?

Apparently GoDaddy is the exclusive registrar for the new .me TLD domains, and many in the blogosphere are pointing to the massive registration and failure of correct billing of these new domains. I can’t find enough time at this point this evening to really give a good account of what’s really going on. All I’m reading is people’s experiences and their frustrations, so I’ll hold off on drawing any conclusions.

At this point, about 9:00PM (CT), I’m not really upset yet. Sure, my blog is down – all my sites are down actually – but I really don’t know the facts, and I can’t blame people for things without knowing the whole story. As an IT pro – I’m continuously amazed that all this stuff works in the first place, so I’m not too surprised when a complex operation or an overabundance of traffic takes a site or service down. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s figuring out the reasons that these things happen is the puzzles that I really love to solve most. 😉

So I’m writing this post offline and will upload later when GoDaddy is back – hope it’s tonight. My comment to the team at GoDaddy right now: don’t rush, you’ve got a big outage – take the time you need to be able to come back at or near 100%. Good luck!

UPDATE: Just as I finished this post, up came GoDaddy.

UPDATE 2: I got a friendly call on Friday (July 18th) from GoDaddy’s “office of the President” from a fellow named Alon. Nice guy, he explained the challenges that GoDaddy (and other registrars) faced when new TLDs were brought online with the large number of highly sought after domains.

We also talked about the outage that I (and many others) suffered through when we couldn’t access our hosted sites. It seems that the problem was actually with Comcast and their network. Appearantly (and I have yet to verify this, but have heard rumblings about it) Comcast had a trunk issue in their network that affected customers in the midwest that affected their ability to access many sites that appear to be hosted in the Pheonix area. Strange stuff, but it happens.

So I was right, I didn’t have the whole story – still don’t, but at least it’s starting to make a bit of sense.  Also, I see that this post is attracting a bit of attention for comment spammers. Just an FYI to those types of folks: I’m deleting any spam post, so move on.

As the IT world turns

The more time I spend working in the Information Technology field, the more I see opportunities. Usually, it’s simply a an old technology being consumed by a newer one – like traditional telephones being taken over by VoIP phones on the corporate desktop. I’ve championed that notion for nearly a decade, and only now is that really happening at an increasing pace. Cool stuff if you get a chance to use it too.

However, that’s not what I see happening right now. It’s much simpler and much more fundamental than another Microsoft Windows server taking on another role from another team or technology. The changes that are afoot are at the root, the foundation of enterprise computing and it has a social media tie-in. I have a message for my peers in the Information Technologies field. Your world is already changing, and if you don’t see what’s happening, you’ll be left behind.

The change that’s taking place renders the corporate desktop as we know it, obsolete. The disparate servers, inefficient. This is something that I’ve been watching for some time, but only recently have seen some indications that convince me that the world has turned the corner.

What are these things that change the entire game? Why, virtualization, thin clients and “web 2.0” software of course. You already are talking about these things. You are probably working with a couple of them if not a combination of all in some way. What’s convinced me that IT ten years from now will be a wildly different landscape than it is today is the fact that virtualization works, thin clients are actually viable now, and “web 2.0” software is past the “wow” stage and into solving business needs. Add the idea that many software solutions don’t care if they run on Windows/Unix/Linux and you now have a broad base of reliable, sustainable open source systems to choose from.

There is also the introduction of Gen Y into the workforce, who bring a different expectation to work. By being more mobile, working remotely via the web, and having social media & networking as second nature, this workforce alone will bring an impressive amount of change.

So what is the bottom line I’m saying for corporate IT? I’m saying that the desktop as we know it is dead. Windows “7” may be the last “legacy” operating system to be deployed. Desktops will disappear completely as well as individual servers. Servers in general will all be virtual machines run from high availability clusters (OS does not matter) in remote data centers. If you don’t have room for one, it’ll probably be cost-effective to simply lease them from companies like Amazon and such.

While Microsoft Office will still be the “gold standard” that we compare things to, it will become irrelevant in the coming years as open source and online versions of this type of software bring more options faster, and simply chip away at the venerable office suite.

Windows itself will still remain – remaining a popular option for the consumer computing device, all of which will end up being the laptop format. Windows, along with OS X and a couple popular Linux distributions will continue to drive these machines, merging more business and entertainment functions together.

The coming change is huge, and with it the opportunities as well. Like the change that started 20 years ago where mainframe and minicomputers were starting to be replaced with microcomputers, our current definitions of enterprise computing will change radically in the next few years. Are you ready? Will you be a part of it? What else do you see?

Social Media Breakfast – Twin Cities 5

SMB-TwinCities Join us to network and chat about using social media and social networking tools in your business and careers.

Our fifth gathering will be at the beautiful Minneapolis Central Library in the Doty Board Room. They’ll be plenty of room, Wi-Fi, and lots of coffee and pastries (thanks to our generous sponsors!). What a perfect opportunity to show off your new 3G iPod!

Agenda:

  • Special guest speaker: Jon Gordon (@jongordon onTwitter, Public Radio Tech Reporter and host of “Future Tense“)
  • Special guest speaker: Paul Saarinen (@taulpaul on Twitter – talking about “How online gaming taught me everything about social media”)
  • Presentation on how Hennepin County Library uses social media by Meg Canada and Jody Wurl (@MegCanada & @Jodyth on Twitter)
  • Review of PublicRadioCamp
  • SMBMSP logo reviewOpen discussion (Anything left over from last time, or things you want to see addressed, or things you had heard in conversations on Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Identi.ca etc.)

Visit & join our own social networking site: http://smbmsp.ning.com

RSVP Here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/872412/?ps=7

Maps, Buses, Rail, Bikes, Parking, Directions: http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/centralmap.asp

See you there!

A special thank-you to @myklroventine and @megcanada for their work on putting this event together!

Happy Birthday Jon

Jon Swanson by Jon Swanson I wanted to write a different post wishing Jon a happy 50th birthday, but he didn’t want that. Instead, Jon suggested 8 ways to celebrate his birthday.  You see, Jon has a way of finding the truth of things and sharing them. He’s brought many of the best ideas forward on his blog, and in person, in a way to make a person think of them in new ways. I always like that.

Jon, you asked for us to try and do one of those 8 things, and I’m glad to say I do two of them every day (makes me think I’m doing better at being the person I want to be than I thought)!  So I see a couple more that I can do today, and will do so in honor of your birthday.

So, Happy Birthday Jon – and thank you for giving us ideas on how to give back.

🙂

Photo Credit: Jon Swanson (of course!)

Reducing social networking increases productivity?

So I’ve been doing an experiment of sorts. Staying off most social networks, answering requests and status on only those I believe actually bring value. This was not totally planned, but is something I have meant to do for some time, as it’s my opinion that I was spending too much time on social networks.

During this period, I have also been paying attention to my productivity. You know, the real work I do to actually make real money. Of course, it’s not surprising that reducing the time involved in social networking will increase productivity, it is the ratio that seems interesting. I’ve no scientific data that indicates anything, and it doesn’t seem anything more than a one to one relationship to me.

That’s the main reason I’m not very active right now on many social networks. So that begs the question: What social networks do I find valuable right now? That would be Twitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed – not in any particular order. These are the networks that I’m finding value, sharing with friends, and meeting business opportunities.

I am, however, curious about other’s experiences. What networks do you find the most valuable right now, and why? Is it the tried & true, or the up & coming?

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