outages

Gmail Slow Or Down For Some, IMAP Still Working

12:55AM Kevin Purdy | Trouble grabbing your mail this morning? Google says Gmail’s web interface is unavailable to an uncannily familiar “small subset of users”. They officially recommend accessing Gmail through an IMAP mail client, among other ways to access Gmail when it’s down. More »

Focus On Offline Work To Stay Productive When Your Email Crashes

5:30AM Adam Pash | The recent Gmail outage put a giant productivity wall in front of a whole lot of people, but over at Harvard Business our own Gina Trapani suggests that an email outage can be turned into a productivity boost with the right plan. More »

Google Explains Yesterday’s Gmail Outage

1:30AM Kevin Purdy | Gmail’s reliability honcho jumped on the webmail’s official blog last night to explain what happened during yesterday’s repeated outages. The gist? They took down a few servers for maintenance Tuesday morning (US Pacific time) for maintenance, expected the webapp’s “request” routers to handle all the re-directs to valid servers, and … were unpleasantly surprised. The Gmail team notes that IMAP/POP worked throughout the outages, and that they’re working on a fix for similar problems in the future. More »

Use Web Outages To Establish Internet-Free Zones

3:30AM Azadeh Ensha | We’ve offered our own suggestions for what to do when your internet goes down in the past, but today weblog WebWorkerDaily weighs in with some additional ideas for using the outage time well by establishing internet-free zones. More »

Rolling Outages Frustrate Gmail Users

5:30AM Adam Pash | Gmail acting a bit flaky for you lately? You’re not a lone. According to CNET, several Gmail users were unable to access their email yesterday. Ditto, according to a couple of your Lifehacker editors. In fact, we’ve been seeing quite a bit of flakiness from Lifehacker’s Google Apps Gmail lately—another sobering reminder that reliance on the web can be problematic. The small silver lining: With Offline Gmail, you can at least continue to access any email you’ve got downloaded for offline access. If you’ve been affected by the recent Gmail outages, let’s hear about it in the comments. [CNET] More »

What You Should Do When Your Internet’s Out

1:00AM Kevin Purdy | It’s going to be a long wait for the NBN, and even if that eventually makes the Internet faster, there’s still going to be the odd occasion when you can’t get connected We’ve got suggestions for the best uses of time when a disconnection happens. More »

BigPond Outage Across NSW, Victoria

10:30AM Angus Kidman | Telstra-owned BigPond is Australia’s largest ISP, which means that its glitches tend to affect more people than anyone else. Suzanne Tindal at ZDNet reports that a number of NSW and Victorian customers were left without access to email and other services over the weekend, though Telstra claims those services were due to be restored by Monday evening. Have you been hit by the outage? Is it still a problem? Share your experience in the comments. Telstra fights with BigPond glitch [ZDNet] More »

Gmail Goes Down Again For Some Users

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | The BBC reports that Gmail went down before 6:30am EST for “a small subset of users,” less than two weeks after the service’s 2.5-hour downtime. Having login problems, or otherwise irked? Tell us in the comments. (Lifehacker AU is obviously not surprised.) More »

Gmail Outage Lasts Two And A Half Hours

1:55AM Adam Pash | According to the BBC, the Official Google Blog, and a handful of upset tipsters, Gmail went offline for roughly two and a half hours yesterday —with some users reporting up to four hours of downtime. I’m not sure if the alternate options for accessing Gmail when it’s down worked for anyone, but if you’re rocking the new Offline Gmail, you probably felt pretty smart. Did you suffer the brunt of a down Gmail? Feeling angry at the big G? Vent and commiserate in the comments. [Official Google Blog, BBC] More »