GMail Outage Underscores Hazards Of Freemail

It didn’t take long on Tuesday for most of the wide awake world to learn that GMail had crashed. I say wide awake because GMail went down in the wee hours of the morning, 0130 PST to be exact, when most of North America was still sleeping.

That was no consolation for people in Europe who were just starting out or in the middle of their day or for folks in Asia who were finishing up their work or checking email at home. For 2 1/2 hours the vaunted email system was down, causing more than a little bit of an inconvenience for many.

For some businesses, reliance on GMail is exclusive as they have replaced their in-house emailing system with an advanced, paid version of GMail. The way that the advanced version works is that companies can set up GMail accounts for $50 a year per user account which also gives users access to messaging, Google Docs, video and more. No longer the worry of an internal I.T. department, Google handles everything for the customer.

I use the freebie version of GMail because that is all that I need. Though I am a sole proprietor, I don’t rely on GMail exclusively nor do I use its advanced applications. Yes, I use GMail as my email gateway, but if it should go down, I can send many of my messages out via Yahoo or private accounts I have with my web hosts. But, like everyone else, I cannot access my email archives which houses mission critical data.

On the Official GMail Blog, Google offered the following explanation for their recent outage:

This morning, there was a routine maintenance event in one of our European data centers. This typically causes no disruption because accounts are simply served out of another data center.

Unexpected side effects of some new code that tries to keep data geographically close to its owner caused another data center in Europe to become overloaded, and that caused cascading problems from one data center to another. It took us about an hour to get it all back under control.

The bugs have been found and fixed, and we’re in the process of pushing out changes. We know how painful an outage like this is — we run Google on Gmail, so outages like this affect us the same way they affect you. We always investigate the root causes of rare outages like this one, so we can prevent similar problems in the future.

Quite honestly, I would be upset too if my reliance on GMail caused me to miss a critical deadline as some people have been reporting. These days we’re so well interconnected that any outage or glitch can adversely impact the way that we touch base with people perhaps losing business in a very short period of time.

I have no idea how many of my own clients communicate with me exclusively via GMail, but I think that number must be quite large. Still, I believe using GMail for business can be an attractive option, one that shouldn’t be avoided even with this recent outage. After all, how many of us have endured lengthy email outages that our company’s I.T. team took hours to fix and at what cost to the company?

You Can Work Better, Faster and Smarter Without Feeling Overburdened

Do you curl up in a ball and cry in a corner when your workload becomes too burdensome? All right, maybe you don’t take the actual steps to run away from your work, but that doesn’t mean you don’t find yourself stressed, harassed, pressed down, wrung out, or otherwise overwhelmed by your work.

Whenever I take on a new project, I carefully examine how that task will impact everything else I do. Some projects look quite daunting, but if it is something I really want to do, I’ll find a way to get it done. Hell, high water, and hassles cannot stop me!

Those Deadly Time Wasters!

Time wasters are efficiency killers and the only way to work better, faster, and smarter is to control those things which take up too much of your time. I bet you can name a few, but I’ll kick things off by listing the following:

Email: Many people praise the reality that email has essentially replaced snail mail. It has also brought junk mail from the mailbox to the inbox.

To avoid excess solicitations, I do not share my email addresses as readily as I once did. I ignore the majority of the messages and I only respond to those inquiries which are of interest to me.

Social Media: I am active with a handful of social communities, but I do maintain accounts with many other ones. I’ll take a decent free link where I can get it, but I won’t waste my time where little benefit can be derived through my participation. I tend to ignore people on social sites who are overly zealous with their sphinn and/or stumble requests.

Phone Calls: Before I conference over the phone, I strongly prefer to make an appointment via email to arrange a mutually convenient time to hold our discussion. Brevity is essential, though a lengthy conversation can be beneficial when multiple points must be covered.

Customers: Customers who are a good fit, I keep close to my side.

I know what they want and I respond in a timely manner with work that meets or exceeds their expectations. These are people who trust my professional expertise and are confident that I am a man of my word. Penny pinchers, doubters, and people who aren’t trusting are one time customers.

Personal Marketing: I don’t mean social media (mentioned earlier), rather the marketing of my personal brand as noted by me yesterday. As a freelance writer, I can spend hours on a daily basis soliciting new business, writing proposals, and doing whatever it takes to bring in new work. Blogging is part of my personal marketing strategy as this blog is usually the first page my future customers land on when they visit my site.

I do not engage in memes, respond to tagging, or write special “blog day” articles just because everyone else does. On the other hand, I am generous with my outbound linking and blog commenting. Guess which method takes up the least amount of my time?

Control Your Time and You Control Your Financial Picture

When you are the master of your time you work better, earn more money, and you can chase other pursuits. Burdens sap you of your energy, steal your peace, and make you highly unproductive. The choice is yours — how well do you manage your time?