Gmail really down? Twitter can tell
Posted February 24, 2009 
Comments(4)
Comments(4) At Sogyo the internet connection is really bad and often it just doesn’t work. Today Gmail didn’t work so I naturally assumed it was the Sogyo network again. But, after a while it turned out that the problem was really Gmail. I found a site that seems to check if a site is still working or not: downforeveryoneorjustme.com, but according to that site gmail was still up. I got kinda frustrated and started to doubt the Sogyo network again, but then I found a post of somebody who explained the power of Twitter. Just search for gmail down and you instantly know that you’re not the only one with the problem. Finally something useful that you can do with Twitter :P
Finally something useful for Twitter? You can do more with it than that, like: read/write a novel, get out of jail, get news or traffic reports, meet up with friends, find out about in-game events, or keep up with spectrial. But the cool stuff is all in the trends – its great that you can find out what everybody in the world is excited about at any given moment. Check out twitterfall.com for a nice example :P
also, with twitter you can be first to let others know there was a plane crash near you! oh man too bad i don’t have twitter it could have been ME today!
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/25/twitter.amsterdam.plane.crash/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
Hmm, cool stuff. Maybe I should check out Twitter a little more then.
It seems that Gmail is down all the time according to Twitter users.
The problem with Gmail is that it uses a couple of 302 redirects (based on your location) before you end up where you’re supposed to be. So, downforeveryoneorjustme.com was probably checking a different IP address than you were.
The best way to figure out what’s going wrong is using a protocol analyzer and see after which redirect it stops responding. For less computer savvy people connecting through an open web proxy like hidemyass.com might also just work.