Digsby Goes Down

Sweet bastard! Why, oh why did Digsby have to go down today? For those of you not familiar with Digsby, read my post I wrote a few weeks ago about my new favorite IM client that not only handles all IM networks, but also handles Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc.

Well, after being rudely awoken by the east coast at 5:30am because they couldn't access Sharepoint (Seriously! You couldn't work on something else for 30 minutes until the morning Help Desk guy came in?), I took a gander at Twitter and saw a tweet from the folks over at Digsby that they were having server issues. I didn't hink much of it because I wasn't going to be signing on until I got to work anyway.

I got in this morning, and they were still down. No big deal right? I'll just wait a little while and try again later. Three hours later, they are still down! I decided to check out their blog to see if there are any updates. Here is the most detailed blog post I have ever seen:

Really? We'll be back shortly is all you can come up with? Come on guys! I know when a server is down, the last thing you are thinking of is updating your site, but still. Your users want to be kept in the loop!

Anyone else having problems with Digsby? Anyone from Digsby want to shed some light on this morning's outage? Lets hear some comments!

[EDIT] - Just checked the blog again, and they now have this update:

We are having server-side issues that brought down the service. We are working on the problem now and will be back up shortly. If you want to be notified when we come back online, send an email to bugs@digsby.com.

After a year of almost perfect uptime, this is the second outage in the last week. This is completely unacceptable and we will make sure this does not become a regular occurance!

[EDIT 12:45 Pacific]- I got this update about Digsby via Twitter:

[Edit 2:52 Pacific] - Still down... WTF?!

[Edit 3:23 Pacific] - I wonder how many users will go back to Pidgin, Trillian, or some other IM client?

[Edit 3:40 Pacific] - And Digsby is back! Just two hours shy of a 12 hour outage! (At least that is when I first saw their post on Twitter!)

Technorati Tags: digsby, down, im, client, service

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Digsby - My New Favorite IM/Social Network Client

Today I logged into my work computer like I normally do. I have my IM client set to automatically sign me in, so i never think about it. This morning that client was Pidgin.

After 30 minutes or so of being at my desk, one of my other colleagues yelled over the cubicles telling me to sign in to IM. I use MSN, and for some reason Pidgin wouldn't let me sign in anymore. Another colleague told me that MSN just made an update to their network and until Pidgin could release an update it wouldn't work.

That is when I decided that maybe it was time to try out some other products. I remembered an article my buddy Karl over at AskTheAdmin wrote about an all-in-one client called Digsby.

Digsby is a little more robust than Pidgin as it not only handles all of the different IM networks out there like AIM, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC etc. It also handles emails, and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace!

From The Digsby Site:

• Instant Messaging: digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list.
• Email Notifications: digsby is an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as 'Delete' or 'Report Spam' with just one click.
• Social Networks: digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.

You may also notice that I have put up a Digsby widget on the right side of the blog. Now you guys can shoot me an IM directly if you have any questions, or comments right from the page!

Digsby isn't all roses and sunshine though. I have noticed a couple of drawbacks. For one, the installer comes with a bunch of adware. You can cancel through all of that though to keep your system free of junk. The other thing is that it is only available for Windows right now. They do say that they will have a Mac and Linux release eventually, so keep an eye out for it.

So what IM/Social networking clients do you use? I want to know! Post links to them in the comments... Or shoot me an IM via Digsby!

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