(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Update: The Old Reader back up at end of work day Thursday – that makes 1 1/2 days of the weekend and 4 workdays it was down.
Update 2: Shortly after coming back up, Old Reader went down again. After coming back up, they announced the move to a ‘private model’, meaning anyone who signed up after the Google announcement would get dropped. I understand – this has been a hobby for them and free to users. Then they said ‘never mind’, everyone could stay. They have been down a few times since then while migrating to new hardware. Um, that sort of proves the point of this post.
Your tech provider may go off-line for an indefinite time. Another reason not to let your technology hold you captive.
The Old Reader went down around lunchtime on Saturday, 7-20, and isn’t back up just before lunch on Wednesday, 7-24. That’s four days – most of the weekend and one-half of a work-week. No public estimate when it will return.
Don’t be held captive by your technology.
Google pulled the plug on their popular RSS Reader the first of July. That means lots of people have moved to another reader which has swamped those providers.
The Old Reader migrated their data on Saturday. Cascading failures of servers (3 in a short time) shut them down. They replaced the servers and are rebuilding their database from the last good backup with layering on all incremental changes (hope I got close on the description).
In the meantime you are not reading your RSS feeds if you use The Old Reader. I’m in that category.
For some of us this is a big deal.
If you need your RSS feed for your ministry or business, you are in trouble.
If your favorite addiction is reading blogs (that’s my addiction of choice), then you are in serious trouble.
I’ve imported the OPML file from Google’s Reader into Outlook and am feeding my addiction there. Looked at Outlook after my friend John Bredehoft said he was using it. Decided to stay with Old Reader.
My point?
Have a backup plan
For RSS readers, keep a recent copy of the OPML file around. Know how to use another service. Know how to make a fast jump if you have to.
Lessons learned for all of us?
- Don’t let your technology hold you captive.
- Have a backup plan.
- Keep good backups of whatever info is mission critical for you.
I can think of a few places I need to get a backup plan.
RSS readers are typically not a big deal on the list of mission critical applications. The current situation highlights the serious question for the applications that are mission critical –
What do you do if your cloud-based mission critical application is down for an indefinite time?