Facebook Releases Code Prematurely, Takes Site Offline

For about 30 Minutes the worlds largest social network was offline after releasing code to the public that was not quite ready for prime time. The Facebook blog described the situation as such: "For a brief period of time, some internal prototypes were made public to a number of people externally. As a result, we took the site down for a few minutes. It's back up, and we apologise for the inconvenience."

Wired.com's Sam Gustin says "They're not pleased that they had to shut the website down for 30 minutes," "But it comes with the territory when you have a culture of iterative innovation, they say," he said. "Sometimes code gets pushed out before it's ready."  

All of us in the software biz can feel their pain, it's especially difficult when you have the number of users that Facebook has, one can only imagine the financial loss that being offline for 30 minutes brings for a behemoth like Facebook. 

Source: bbc.co.uk

Winter Solstice And Lunar Eclipse Tuesday

North Americans will have the best seats in the house on Tuesday as the winter solstice and a total lunar eclipse colide for the first time in 456 years, the last time being in AD 1554.

The arrival of the winter solstice cannot be seen, but is described as the instant when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun, resulting in the shortest day of the year as well as the longest night of the year. The summer solstice happens in June when the reverse is true.

This year the winter solstice begins on Tuesday evening at 6:38 p.m. ET, which is 8:08 p.m. NT, 7:38 p.m. AT, 5:38 p.m. CT, 4:38 p.m. MT, and 3:38 p.m. PT.

NASA predicts that at 1:33 a.m. ET on Tuesday, "Earth's shadow will appear as a dark red bite at the edge of the lunar disk." After aboun an hour, the "bite" will  grow to cover the entire moon. This stage, known as "totality," will probably start at 2:41 a.m. ET and last 72 minutes.

NASA suggests the best time to view the event, will be at 3:17a.m. ET, "when the moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red."

I might be a little groggy at work on Wednesday!

Blogger Not Playing Nice

I am having great difficulty getting posts out of any length. If you are a regular reader you will have noticed yesterdays post was cut mid sentence. It seems as though Blogger is having fits over the past day or so... I'll touch base with support and hopefully get back on track soon.

Have iPad, Will Travel... Awkwardly

So it seems that some men are envious of the iPad but are not willing to purchase one because of the difficulty transporting it. I actually lug mine around, in the official Apple case, like a note pad, in my hand and held against my hip but then again I am not very concerned that the device will be recognized by would be thieves. I also don't typically carry too much else into the office and my parking is just steps away from our building.

It seems that in larger cities guys are both more leery of displaying the device openly and more fashion conscious. The New York Times discusses....

Note: This post seems to have been partially lost, I'll come back to it once I locate the link to the NYT story.  

Crime Too, It Seems, Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

This morning I read in this Technically Incorrect post of Norwegian author Anne B. Ragde who publicly  spoke out about the amount of money she has estimated to have lost due to piracy of her e-books, apparently about $72,500. "I cannot stand the thought of someone stealing something. I look at Norwegian musicians who have to do live concerts. We have nothing to live on other than the physical product."

She then goes on to say that she buys knock off hand bags because the originals are too expensive. Say what?

Further, her son Jo has outed her for having some 1,800 pirated songs on her iPod! To which she originally admitted, then blamed Jo, and now is promising to delete the pirated music... I'm not about to stand on any soapbox and preach the virtues of good versus evil, but I do think we all need to step back and seriously consider what our values are, and then be true to them, and to ourselves. 

The Year That Was - YouTube Style

The YouTube team has counted the clicks and tallied the views an as of the end of November 2010 this is what the world was tuned into:

Globally, as of November 2010, the most-watched YouTube videos (excluding major label music videos) were:

1. BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes)
2. TIK TOK KESHA Parody: Glitter Puke - Key of Awe$ome #13
3. Greyson Chance Singing Paparazzi
4. Annoying Orange Wazzup
5. Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
6. Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10
7. OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version
8. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE - Trailer
9. Jimmy Surprises Bieber Fan
10. Ken Block's Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l'Autodrome

Justin Bieber took 4 of the top ten major music label video views while Eminem, Shakira, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga comprised the rest of the list. I refuse to link to Justiin Beiber, just sayin! 

The most-searched for queries on YouTube during the year:

January - haiti

February - luge

March - eclipse trailer

April - ipad

May - eminem not afraid

June - shakira waka waka

July - double rainbow

August - bed intruder

Can't wait to see the top 10 sporting clips!

September - halo reach

October - whip my hair

November - firework

Global Reactions to Leaked Documents - WikiLeaks Saga Continues

The reactions to the recently leaked U.S. Government cables by WikiLeaks are wide and varied, depending on who you talk to. As one would imagine it's been more than just water cooler talk at the office. The Guardian has compiled a list of global reactions and quotes in the wake of the political storm that has brewed and it ranges from "grossly irresponsible" to calling Julian Assange a "hero".

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the incident "psychological warfare."

Libian leader Muammar Gaddafi praised WikiLeaks for exposing US "hypocrisy."

While China's Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Beijing hoped the emergence of the cables would not affect relations with Washington.

In Assange's homeland of Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the publication of the cables is illegal, and Assange's actions are "grossly irresponsible" but on the other hand former Prime Minister Paul Rudd said "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. "The Americans are responsible for that,".

Oh how interesting this has all become...

A Little Angry Bird Humor

Ha!

Twitter A-buzz With The Arrest Of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

Fired up my Twitter account this morning and every other tweet is about the arrest of Julian Assange in London. Here is the Associated Press story: http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16026/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=6qEaVSwN

LONDON (AP) - Police say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested on a Swedish warrant.

Assange was arrested at 9:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) Tuesday and was due to appear at Westminster Magistrate's Court later in the day.

The Low Tech Low Cost Solution To Digital TV

According to this NY Times article, rabbit ears are making a come back! If you are too young to know what rabbit ears are then this might not make a lot of sense to you. Think about an antenna with two adjustable prongs protruding from the top of a base that, "back in the day" would sit on top of your television set and bring in two or three channels. Incredible as it might sound, this is how we consumed our Saturday morning cartoons and Hockey Night in Canada when I was growing up.

Of course today your television won't provide a stable resting place for the old rabbit ears but the primitive antennas are apparently still able to haul in digital TV signals and if you are willing to put up with the flakiness of the device you can save yourself a cable bill. While I've not tried it, I understand that subscribing to Internet service only via a cable provider will also provide a number of "free" channels if you connect the coaxial cable to your HDTV. Oddly enough the channels appear to be different than those offered via subscription, my guess is that they are otherwise filtered out by the provider with your normal subscription though this is only an assumption.

In these tough economic times, the cable providers might wish to take notice and price their services reasonably for the average consumer. Just a thought.