Over 20 million people affected by Skype’s network fault

With an estimated number of 20 million users, Skype is the biggest free Internet phone company from the online environment. However on 22 December at around 20:30GMT hours Skype suffered some major problems thus affecting million of users from all over the world, whether we are talking about Europe, USA or Asia.

The problem seems to have appeared due to a “supernode” outage and still persists today in many locations of the Globe. A Skype representative said that this outage was ongoing and over 20 million calls were lost since the problem occurred. Technically speaking, Skype has available not just one supernode but a large number of them, however most of them were taken offline by an issue that affected some versions of Skype application. While this service is usually at its highest standards, on 22 December it was down and not accessible from any part of the globe.

According to company’s spokespersons, Skype engineers are trying to create some mega-supernodes to solve this problem as fast as possible. Not only regular people were affected by this issue but also most of outsourcing companies providing from accounting services to search engine optimisation, web design and so on.

Skype is not just a channel for people to phone for free all over the world but in the last years it became one of the most used communication channels for small and even medium businesses all over the world, thus this outage might have cost a lot when it comes to different companies using it for communication. Furthermore, Skype recently started advertising themselves as a great service for larger firms as well, however this outage will definitely put a question mark on whether they should go with Skype’s services or not.

Diaspora, the open alternative to Facebook, to be launched on 15 September

500 million users and $33bn worth, two numbers that best describe Facebook. Facebook has been lately the fastest growing social networking website and seems that nothing can stop it from its ascenssion. Recently, developers of Diaspora, an open alternative to Facebook, announced its launch on 15 September 2010 and what it seems as an impossible task – challenging Facebook – is something the online environment should have an eye on.

The developers team made of 4 US students had a difficult time raising the funds for building this project from scratch but in the end 6,500 people contributed with money and the numbers reached $200,000. Three computer scientists and one mathematician are part of this team. Needing the money to fund this project, the four colleagues headed to fundraising website Kickstarter where their goal was to raise $10,000, but in the end more people contributed with larger amounts of money ( Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reported that he also donated to this project) so that they ended up with 20 times more that they were thinking. Earlier this year, this open-source project was a very hot subject while Facebook simplified its privacy setting after receiving lot of criticism for being too complex and confusing.

The team wrote on their blog that after spending the summer building this open-source network it is now fully functionable and will be released on September 15th. This user interface will alow users to decide by themselves where their shared content to be distributed, like from co-workers to all-day chaps or business partners.

The 15 September release will mean that the developers team are making the programming code available for anyone to see an modify, but we should be waiting for Diaspora to be available to members which are in search for more privacy through social networks nowadays.

iPhone 4 – Apple did it again

Apple’s iPhone 4 has recently launched in UK and it seems to be a hit, as it was in the US. In the first three days after release, Apple announced they sold over 1,7 million phones, making iPhone 4 the most successful launch in Apple’s history, as CE Steve Jobs stated. More than that, it seems that this latest smartphone has left behind the iPad’s recently success.

The iPhone 4 comes with a 3.5 inch Retina display, capable of a 960×640 pixels resolution, four times more pixels as previous iPhones featured. It comes in 16GB and 32GB versions, but both ones have a 5MP camera with LED flash and HD video recording at 30 fps – 720p video. The battery also seems to last 40% longer than in the previous models.

However, this model does not lack a « childhood disease », many people stating it has reception problems (which seem to get Apple into a huge lawsuit) and sometimes, the built-in camera crashes causing discomfort to users. Due to this reception problem, Apple could launch a software update for its iOS4 operating system, but official statement has never been released.

With all these pluses and minuses, it seems that along with the massive sales in US, UK market does not lack at all buyers for this smartphone. The interest for this device is enormous while UK retailers have run off iPhone 4 from their shelves, expecting new supplies from the producer. The biggest problems are with the white version while it is much more attractive among customers and Apple has stated that new models will ship at the end of July, while the iPhone 4 black model’s supply seems not to be affected by this shortage.

Apple’s iPad hit the UK market today

Yesterday afternoon, the crowds started to gather near the Apple Stores on Regent Street in order to catch the release of Apple’s iPad in Britain.

The launch of the iPad in the US created a much more buzz than the launch of the iPhone, and the numbers say it all : 1 million iPhones sold in 78 days, 1 million iPads sold in 28 days. The same could happen in the UK while large numbers of people shared their interest in this device.

However, people waiting for the store to open its doors have not been the first UK’s owners of the iPad, there are many folks that already bought it from US market or even pre-ordered the device and received it yesterday, one day before the official launch. The social networks like Twitter and Facebook were bombed yesterday with messages from the ones that already received it. It seems that due to the large demand of this gadget, numerous people standing at the line to buy one will leave disappointed since the supplies will run out in a short time.

The iPad, with a 9.7 inch screen, comes with a 16GB of storage, for the entry-level model, with a £429 price. On the other hand, the most expensive model, featuring a 64GB of storage and 3G mobile phone network comes with a price of £699.

For this « mobile phones and laptops gap filler », as Steve Jobs called the iPad, the biggest mobile phone operators in the UK like Orange and Vodafone have released some special data fees so that users can enjoy the 3G features everywhere, of course, with the high-end iPads that support this connection.

UK is not the single place where iPad hit the shelves, similar crowds also taking place in Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo or Paris, ensuring another success story for the creator of iPhone, Apple.

The iPad was also launched in many other countries around the world today, with similar queues being seen in Berlin, Paris Tokyo and Sydney.

T-Mobile and Orange merger will create the largest UK mobile phone company

 
Orange and T-Mobile merging plan can receive the approvals from European Commission next week. With an approximately number of 30 million customers and a market share touching 37% of UK’s mobile phone users, this would become the greatest UK mobile phone company if it does not face any challenges from the other two great UK operators: O2 and Vodafone.
 

European Commission’s decision to allow this merge despite the issues regarding how this merge will blow competition away is set to be released somewhere next week. According to EC officials, this resolution would solve the problems announced by Office of Fair Trading, Ofcom (telecom regulator) and legal disputes started by local competition Vodafone and O2.

 Announced in September 2009 this merger was investigated by the OFT and it seems that 1 March will be the day when conclusions and concerns will be released by the organization.

 There were two main concerns about this merging’s effect. First one it was about the smallest UK mobile phone company, 3, which is owned by Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong corporation. Last weekend it seems that 3 signed a deal with the two operators that will grant access to 3,000 mast sites in UK, reaching a grand total of 16,000 mast sites. Second concern was about the higher level of control over the wireless spectrum, so that the group would hold a substantial majority of the spectrum at 1800 MHz. This problems was also solved last week and the two operators decided to give back a quarter of the spectrum if they will receive the approvals for fusion.

Though things are not clear yet, we could assist in the future at one of the greatest merging seen lately, a combination between two of the greatest telecom operators in UK: the Orange UK, controlled by France Telecom and T-Mobile, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom. We should probably wait for tomorrow’s announcement made by OFT regarding this issue and stand by for some other legal disputes started by rivals Vodafone and O2.

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