post

Opera Unite Turns Your Computer into a Web Server. But Will You Want It?

The little browser that could … was how the Opera browser was often referred to around 1996-98.  The best browser packed with innovative features that Internet Explorer and Firefox were forced to copy: tabbed browsing, popup-blockers, saved sessions, zooming, mouse gestures to name a few.  But it never really took off,  continuing to hover around 2% market-share forever.

Today Opera proves again they are innovators: they claim to “reinvent the web” with the launch of Opera Unite.

Read more

post

You Can’t Compare Technorati to Amazon

It’s rare that I get into a public debate with a fellow Enterprise Irregular, but today is the day:

Michael Krigsman at ZDNet’s Project Failures cites the stellar response by Technorati as exemplary customer communication at a time of system failure that Amazon should learn from.

True, Amazon did not shine (that’s an understatement) when S3 went down earlier today. I’m sure Amazon will work on not only improving infrastructure, but communication – like Salesforce.com did after their major outage, establishing an Health Monitor, reminds us Lassy Dignan at ZDNet.

True, Technorati was exceptionally forthcoming in that particular incident – but the emphasis is on exceptionally, which is why I would not set them as role model for quite a while. Infrastructure problems have been the constant state of affairs for Technorati for years, the Technorati Monster is still at large, and most of these problems have been swiped under the carpet. In fact when they recently removed old posts from their online index without any notification, they explicitly stated they hoped most users wouldn’t notice.

I salute Technorati on their new approach to transparency, if it holds – but they are very, very far from being a role model.smile_sad