Todd Watson is in his 18th year with IBM. He began his career working on two software magazines, for which he wrote on a variety of business technology topics before joining IBM's Internet division in 1995. He later led the development of the IBM e-business Web site, and most recently has been responsible for helping drive the strategy and optimization of the IBM Software Group Web presence. His longstanding personal mission at IBM has been to use the Web to drive business effectiveness and efficiencies, and to better serve IBM customers leveraging the unique capabilities of the Internet. He can be reached at turbotodd@us.ibm.com

Judgment Day

Today is the day that Bernie Madoff will learn his fate.

The U.S. Attorney's office in NYC has asked for the statutory maximum of 150 years.

Whatever the sentence, hopefully this will bring at least some closure to the thousands who were swindled out of their life savings.

As for closure, we received some soccer closure yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa, as Brazil upended the USA 3-2 in the Confederations Cup, in the U.S.' first ever appearance in a FIFA match final anywhere.

If you watched the game, you know it was a game of halves, the first belonging to the U.S., the second belonging to Brazil.

It was great fun following the Twitterstream live during the game, as more and more people "awakened" to the possibility that the U.S. might take the match, considering they outscored Brazil 2-0 in the first half.

Alas, it wasn't to be, but hey, who the heck expected the USA to make it to a FIFA match final in the first place???  And to beat the European national champion, Spain, to get there?  Are you serious??!

No matter the outcome, it was an incredible soccer match, with both teams giving it their all, and a nice appetizer as we futbol fans around the globe unite in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

As Brazil scooted past the U.S. in Johannesburg, news is scooting out that Microsoft may be putting digital marketing arm Razorfish up for sale, with French marketing company Publicis expected to be a possible bidder, according to the Financial Times.

I would expect some serious consolidation in the digital space as companies prepare for the (eventual?) upturn, but am finding many of those partners are ill-equipped to understand and embrace the social media space.

But more on that in a future post.

Technorati Tags: bernie madoff, world cup, soccer, social media, throw the keys away

Homeward Bound

Speaking of London, I'm headed back to Austin, Texas, today, where at last count, it was about 40 degrees Centigrade (for my Londoner friends).

Want to come with? Ha, I thought not.

I've quite enjoyed the sunny and brilliant June weather here all week, and I've enjoyed even more the company of my fellow colleagues and business associates.

Thanks to the folks with the MTO Summit for the speaking opportunity that brought me here to begin with, where we discussed how social media can be leveraged with events exhibitors in the UK marketplace (which seemingly needs a good shot in the arm about now!).

Also, thanks for the sharing and insights from the various agency partners and vendors with whom I spent some time, including the folks at Neo, Text100 and BazaarVoice. I hope you enjoyed our time together as much as I.

And for now, I'm off to Heathrow on my last Underground ride for this visit, and into the clearly climate-change impacted city of Austin, Texas., where it was balmy 108 degrees Fahrenheit there yesterday.

Oy vey!

Technorati Tags: business travel, london, climate change

Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'

When I went to bed last night here in London, I had just caught the news that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital.

When I awakened this morning, the news reported that he had passed away.

Jackson was scheduled to perform 50 farewell concerts here in London starting in early July, a sort of "comeback" tour for the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson always seemed to stir up a lot of mixed emotions in people, but for my generation, who grew up with Michael's visage constantly on MTV, he was an icon.

When the Thriller album came out in 1982, and the subsequent groundbreaking music video...well, everybody was talking about it and emulating it. Remember the robot and the moonwalk??

It was the kind of phenomenon we see today with Twitter.

So it was probably apt and in accordance with Jackson's fame that Twitter servers (and the Web in general) redlined overnight.

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning that the volume of Jackson-related messages was up to 5,000 per minute at peak, with Twitter seeing an "instant doubling of Tweets per second the moment the story broke."

The story goes on to say other social hubs, including AOL Instant Messenger, blog hosting site LiveJournal, and Facebook all saw some major performance slowdowns with the emerging news of Jackson's death.

AOL even released a statement that read: "Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

That may be, but let's not forget the real story: The premature passing of a musical icon who, in spite of a troubled upbringing and early fame that stole a childhood, brought joy to millions around the world and helped shape a generation.

May Michael Jackson finally rest in peace.

Technorati Tags: fame, michael jackson, thriller, twitter

Love-Wimbledon

I almost made my way out to Wimbledon yesterday morning...by accident.

I was heading out to West London on the Underground to meet up with a colleague before heading on to IBM's Bedfont Lakes location for an all-day workshop.

And, well, let's just say I briefly got navigationally challenged for a moment there. But, I regrouped (and asked for directions...imagine that) and found my way to my car ride out to Bedfont.

(BTW, thanks very much again to the UK team for their gracious hospitality and great enthusiasm and interest in all things digital marketing. You all are welcome to come visit me in Texas anytime!)

Me, I've never actually been to Wimbledon, but I have watched it on the telly.

However, were I to go this year, I'd probably check out the really cool Google Android "G-Phone" application that uses geolocation tagging and GPS to get the informational lowdown as you walk around the grounds of Wimbledon.

Watch the video, as the application really defies description and it's much better to see it in action.

And of course, as always, you can check out the IBM-built Wimbledon Web site to keep track of all the action on (and off) the courts.

Good luck to Scotland tennis phenom Andy Murray, one of the few top-seeded British players left in the tournament.

And finally, back to my previous post about smarter cities, I must say, never having spent several days in a row in London, how impressed I am with the London Underground.

Having lived in NYC for several years, and having experienced subways and metros in numerous cities around the globe, I'm finding my way around the City of London quite nicely via the Tube (near-Wimbledon detour aside), thank you very much.

I think it may be at the top of the subway list (but I'll reserve judgment until I've experienced a few more subway lines).

Off to more meetings!

Building Smarter Cities

"When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it." -- Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen

I've had the good fortune to visit a garden variety of great cities around this globe during my employ at IBM, and in fact I write this particular post firmly ensconced down the street from the British Library in London on a beautiful early summer morning.

During my travels, I get to see, and experience, the best and the worst of the world's cities, in terms of infrastructure, transport, and the like.

I've sat in some heavy-duty traffic in places ranging from Paris, Seoul, and Dublin, as well as Los Angeles, Houston, and my own Austin.

I've ridden some of the great trains of the world, particularly in Europe (and was shocked and saddened to hear of last night's tragedy on the Washington, D.C. Metro.)

For the first time in history, 2007 saw the majority of the world's population living in cities -- some 3.3 billion people.

By 2050, city dwellers are expected to make up 70 percent of the Earth's total population: 6.4 billion.

Cities are small (and sometimes not-so-small) microcosms of the major challenges and opportunities facing our planet, only intensified and accelerated.

It is in the city where all man-made systems come together and interact with one another: government services, transportation, public safety, healthcare, education, and energy and utilities.

If we can collectively increase the efficiency and sustainability of all those systems, we have the opportunity to create the most livable environment for the greatest number of people.

With that as backdrop, today and tomorrow, in Berlin, Germany, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and 250+ senior public leaders and select influencers from around the globe will be gathering to explore and discuss ways to rethink current approaches to urban issues.

In Berlin, IBM is also inaugurating the Smarter Cities program, intended to help city leaders around the world build smarter infrastructures.

This will include examining how cities are already using smart solutions to improve city life, with behind-the-scenes accounts of such solutions from the city leaders themselves.

Keep an eye on the Smarter Planet site to follow the dialogue, to learn more about this program, and to find out how you can get involved in making your little corner of world a better and smarter place.

Now if you'll excuse me, here in London I have a train to catch.

Technorati Tags: london, smarter cities, smarter planet, sustainability, transportation

Life's Casino

The last time I was in London, it was the weekend that all heck broke loose on the financial front, Sept 12-14, 2008, one in which I felt like the roulette wheel in life's casino.

I'll never forget sitting in the Admiral's Club at the Austin Bergstrom airport, trying to get some work done when I couldn't but overhear the guy next to me leaving a long-winded voicemail for his client, trying to reassure said client that he fully expected his company to be a viable and going concern the following Monday, and that his money was fine.

I'll give you one guess about the company.

Doh!

Yes, it was Lehman Brothers.

That Monday, I wrote this post joking that perhaps my money would be safer in an anonymous Swiss bank account or on the "Come" line of a Las Vegas craps table.

As it turns out, option E might have served me best (sitting in a non-interest bearing PayPal account...at least then it wouldn't have had the chance to go south).

Of course, all these financial shenanigans pale by comparison to what Winston Churchill had to contend with as World War II began to emerge in 1939-1940.

I had the occasion when I landed here over the weekend to visit the Cabinet War Rooms on Whitehall, where Churchill spent much of his time during the London Blitz and where he and his team managed the war effort.

If you've visited there, you know there's one small, near-hidden room which Churchill used to make private and direct trans-Atlantic calls to President Roosevelt to discuss the progress of the war.

By today's communications standards, a single telephone link between two continents seems mundane, but that connection helped two Allies maintain an open line of communication during a very critical time.

Much as Twitter, Facebook, TOR, and other online communications capabilities have facilitated the global dialogue between the world and the people of Iran during this past week of turmoil in Iran.

No matter your position on the outcome of the election there, it's become self-evident over the last couple of weeks that try though one might to put the genie back in the bottle, the world has reached a new echelon of transparent communications.

We're now in a world where, facilitated by mobile Internet technologies, it's impossible to entirely contain the individual cells of a governing organism, and that those technologies can make vital the opportunity for those cells to restructure and reorganize in a manner that helps raise their common interests to the fore.

Regardless of the outcome in Iran this go round, I suspect this opportunity by the people to revisit and question the incumbency will create a viable precedent, the impact of which will only be heightened by future digital communications technologies.

As Churchill himself once said, a fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

And in Iran, the current subject seems to be the subject of change.

As to me, while in London I'll be keeping my eye on the stock market (and the final round of the U.S. Open, and the opening days of Wimbledon), and on Twitter...but I will stay far, far away from the casinos.

Technorati Tags: digital revolution, iran, lehman brothers, smarter planet

Back in Black

Quick blog update before I jet from one meeting to another here in NYC...

First, a big thanks to all who participated in the most excellent second IBM Social Media Summit yesterday up in Yorktown, including the 200+ of you who tuned in online and via videoconference.

To partners, customers, speakers, and IBMers alike, I hope you all got as much out of it as I did...I just wish I had a LOT more time to catch up with so many familiar (and new) faces. We must get together again soon!

Second, rain has delayed the kickoff of the U.S. Open golf tournament out at Bethpage Black.

Our own Adam Christensen is on the ground and getting soaked, but neither rain nor sleet or reTweets will keep him from his rounds...remembering he was possibly the first U.S. Open Twitterer in history.

See how you can follow all the action via the mobile U.S. Open here.

And lastly, check out this news that IBM will be investing $100 million U.S. over the next five years into a major research effort which aims to advance mobile services and capabilities for businesses and consumers worldwide.

This effort will help the 83 percent of the world that does not have easy access to the Web via PCs to get access to all this great information emerging from our smarter planet.

For now, I'll be using my own mobile device (my beloved Blackberry Bold) to find my way across town to the new Ogilvy offices at the former candy factory (make mine licorice, please).

Technorati Tags: mobile computing, pga, social media, us open

Business In The Clouds

I arrived safely in NYC and marveled when I arrived and saw the new pedestrian mall in Times Square.

As an ex-New Yorker, I would have never thought the city would park a bunch of valuable traffic street space for pedestrians, but if last night was any indication, the new public space is a perfect fit for Times Square.

I'm sure the cab drivers think otherwise.

I'm on my way to some early breakfast meetings, but would be remiss if I didn't point you to today's IBM cloud computing announcement.

Be sure to watch the video about Seamus McManus, the father of information technology, and ergo, cloud computing.

(Nice threads there, Seamus. I'm totally hip to your communal computing culture.)

Also feel free to use this Google News query to keep an eye today on coverage and all things "ibm cloud."

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, ibm, seamus mcmanus

Do You Bing?

Happy Monday, everybody.

CNET picks up on the New York Post story about Microsoft's "new" search engine Bing sending Google co-founder Sergey Brin running back to the Google Labs to get back to work.

Bing's launch gained Microsoft a whopping 2 percentage points of search share week over week, according to ComScore stats, from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent.

The last time I tried to use Bing was amidst all the buzz before it officially went live.

When I visited there this morning, I arrived at a page that had a picture of what looked like a vertical tram in Switzerland. Apparently the pictures swap out every day.

Nice touch.

I entered the query "cloud computing," and after some paid ads and the Wikipedia entry, IBM's cloud computing lead page came up.

(In related news, the New York Times' Steve Lohr today has a feature on how IBM's helping customers fight cost and complexity via cloud computing).

In the left hand margin of the results page, I get a list of related searches relevant to "cloud computing," and just below that, my "Search History."

So far, Bing seems pretty "me, too," so not sure what (if true) it is that's turning Sergey's head. (But whatever it is, in my book, it's all good. Competition in any market is good -- for consumers and for market participants.)

I close out the browser session, then fire up another and start a new Bing search session, this time with "scuba diving" (I know I just got back from Grand Cayman, but a guy can dream...er, browse, can't he?)

Just as I suspected, I got a persistent cookie dropped that brought my previous searches along, without my ever having been asked to save them.

But, to Microsoft's credit, they make it very easy to "Turn off" the search history (a feature I prefer not to use...nothing good can ever come from all those stored search queries about boring technology stuff. Heaven forbid, someone might profile me and make me out to be a geek or something!)

The best part of the "scuba diving" returned queries are the "Related searches" that appeared: "Scuba diving lessons," "Scuba diving equipment," etc...That could be very helpful.

Perhaps this is what has Sergey back in the hunt, the propensity for Bing to actually start to try and map intent in the user query (i.e., if they're looking for this term, what must they really be looking for).

I don't know if I'll be one of the two percent market share increase anytime soon, as old habits are hard to break, but I'll definitely be trying to keep an open mind about Bing and other upstart search engines.

Life's too short to only Google.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, search engines, sergey brin

#cnnFail's #iranelection

This weekend, I woke up Saturday morning to find out what had happened with the Iranian presidential election.

I figured with the voting over and having had plenty of time to count the vote, the results would be in and the anchors and talking heads would have started to recap the outcome.

Silly me.

So I did the same thing this AM, turning on CNN bright and early and, after hearing about the protests of the election results via Twitter and some independent Web sites, hoping to see some live coverage.

Didn't happen.

What can I say, old habits are hard to break.

As much of an Internet denizen as I fancy myself, I remember watching coverage of Tiananmen Square and the first Gulf War live on CNN.

CNN reporters risked their lives to get those stories out live and in real-time, and over the years the CNN brand really came to mean something, to me personally and to the greater world.

It was an entity we could depend on to provide breaking information from breaking stories, the consequences (mostly) be damned.

But when I turned on the TV this weekend, it was a major #cnnFail.

Mind you, I came to this conclusion before I started to see all the stories coming out online suggesting as much.

First, there was hardly a mention of the Iranian election, and there certainly wasn't the kind of on-the-ground-live coverage I would have expected on such an important story.

And I must say, citizen journalism has come to life for me in a way that it never has before, not because of selectivity but rather by necessity.

I'd been following the Iranian election with some interest, particularly since reform candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi seemed to be gaining in the polls these past couple of weeks.

Perhaps this could lead to a new day in Iran, I thought, so my interest piqued and I started trying to follow the story even more closely, especially leading into to Friday's election.

Considering the importance our U.S. elected officials, both Democratic and Republican alike, have put on the evolution of Iran's nuclear status, it seemed logical that I could expect the story to be followed closely by the U.S. broadcast media.

But it just didn't happen.

Instead, most of the information I've been able to gather has been via roundups and relays from citizen journalists and the likes of reader-funded reporters such as Michael J. Totten, or coverage/commentary from less mainstream writers like Andrew Sullivan (of The Atlantic).

And, of course, photos via Twitpic and Picasa and video via YouTube and, most notably, via Twitter (including the Mousavi1388 Twitter feed which informed us that "ALL internet & mobile networks are cut.")

I have to wonder if the use of the #iranelection hash tag will be looked back upon this weekend as a tipping point, one when the citizen-driven social media turned a corner and itself became the mainstream, looking to the global crowd for the story, not because of any ill-will towards the broadcast networks, but because nature abhors a vacuum, particularly during a seeming revolt, and that the void had to be filled somehow.

Moving forward, I won't give up on CNN, as I believe the major media can still play a critical role, particularly in a democracy such as ours.

But you can rest assured it will no longer be the first place I turn for breaking news.

Not anymore, not after this.

Technorati Tags: citizen journalism, iranian election, social media

The Great Oklahoma Facebook Rush

Having come back from a few days out of the office I missed some of the key tech headlines.

Never seems to fail. I used to try to keep up on vacation, but as so many of you readers reminded me, why take off if you're not going to at least make an effort to leave it all behind.

So what I missed in my mental absence was the discussion around Facebook Usernames, and the coming Oklahoma land rush for folks to gobble up their vanity Facebook URL.

First off, I've already got an identity on Facebook. It's called "Todd Watson."

There's 161 of us, and in spite of not having had a vanity Facebook URL up until now, everybody has found me just fine.

In fact, people whom I had hoped to have never heard from again have found me.

Now Facebook wants me to reserve a vanity URL so even more people from my past with whom I now have no common cause can track me down and remind me what a doofus I was in fourth grade?

Uh, yeah.

But it gets better.

The new Facebook vanity URLs will be available starting at 12:01 A.M. Eastern time on Saturday, June 13th.

What is this, Ticketmaster in 1984 and I'm waiting for Van Halen tickets to go on sale so I have to show up and wait in line all night just to get a lottery number to wait and see if I actually get my tickets??

Hmm, let's see...my plans for this Friday night...yeah, finish work...head to the local brew pub and have a few pints of Guinness....come home and catch "Real Time With Bill Maher"....and, oh yeah, hang out until 11 PM CST so I can claim my Facebook vanity URL!

That is some serious living on the edge.

Count me ancient, but I kind of liked the randomly assigned number that has been my primary identifier on Facebook to date.

It's the closest thing to a prison ID as I'm ever to likely come.

Maybe I should get a picture of me in a zebra jumpsuit with my Facebook number firmly emblazoned across the name plate: "Facebook Correctional Facility"

Twenty years hard time for impersonating an IBM digital marketing dude.

Oh, for the record, my Facebook ID number is 665301006.

Try remembering that one next time you're in line at the deli or Baskin Robbins.

I don't know if there's any significance to the number.

I'm not sure if I'll ever actually be able to remember it.

But the fact of the matter is, it's mine and I don't have to compete with anybody else for it, including the other 160 Todd Watsons on Facebook.

The fact that neither you nor I can ever remember such a number simply continues to foster the notion, at least for me, that I can retain some semblance of random anonymity in this overly-connected world.

So, if, in the future, anybody asks me whether or not I'm on Facebook, I'm going to explain politely that yes, in fact, I am.

But that if you wish to be my friend, know that there are 160 other Todd Watsons on Facebook and growing, and to please...take a number.

Technorati Tags: facebook, identity management, turbotodd

Getting More Social With Partners

Earlier today IBM announced a new social networking community intended to help IBM partners to more easily connect and collaborate with one another from anywhere around the globe.

This new community enables companies to gain real-time access to IBM subject matter experts to support sales leads and client implementations, and allows partners to create personalized profiling tools to develop their own online communities that can make their skills visible to other partners.

To get to this point, IBM held an online idea exchange with 1,100 global partners to brainstorm new ways to grow profitability and to develop skills, and one of the leading ideas from the session called for a Web 2.0 approach to help IBM's partners improve collaboration with each other and to establish new relationships across global markets.

IDC has observed that a typical client implementation usually involves more than one IT vendor to develop and implement an IT solution, and in fact, 40 percent of partners who team with each other and build strategic relationships see greater than a 21 percent increase in sales.

So, the new IBM PartnerWorld Communities site will bring together more than 100,000 partners worldwide on emerging business opportunities, such as cloud computing, analytics, green IT, and even economic stimulus projects.

The Communities site is...surprise surprise...built using IBM Lotus Connections social software, which enables members to collaborate through a secure network that connects individuals around a focused task or goal using blogs, forums, private team spaces, social bookmarking and RSS feeds, and other key social software capabilities.

FYI, this is the same technology we IBMers use inside (as well as outside) the Big Blue firewall to collaborate and share information and collaborate with one another and key constituents.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, lotus, online communities, partnerworld, lotus connections, social software

Tiger, Roger, and Turbo

First, congratulations are in order to Roger Federer, for winning his first ever French Open.

And to Tiger Woods, for once again demonstrating that he is one of the greatest golfers who ever lived and who pounced on the field at The Memorial in Indianapolis this past weekend and let everybody know he is ready to rock 'n' roll at the U.S. Open in Bethpage Black in two weeks.

Me, I proved late last week why I work at IBM and am NOT a professional golfer.

My dad and I were playing in his annual Member/Guest tournament at the Denton Country Club up in North Texas, and alas, we put in our worst showing in the three years we've played in the tournament.

Despite a great start, on a course that was in impeccable shape (the greens there are some of the best in the state), we just couldn't pull it together.

But, we had a great time trying, and most importantly, the father/son time was...well...priceless.

I'm even thinking my dad and I could maybe even do one of those MasterCard commercials, just in time for Father's Day:

Four days of golf in a row with some of the best players on one of the best courses in north Texas: $750

A new Titleist cap with magnetized ball marker: $20.00

A hot dog and cold beer at the turn: $12.00

That impossible approach shot you made over the forest, that curving putt for birdie on 18, and all that quality time you spent with your dad:

Priceless.

Sign me up.

But whatever you do, remind me not to Tweet every last detail of my travel plans.

USA Today has a story today suggesting that Twitterers need to be more careful about announcing to the world they're going to be out of the country for a week, lest they invite burglars over to steal their stuff (which is what happened to Israel Hyman and his wife during a recent trip to Kansas City).

This raises the specter of how social media are requiring us all to learn new rules of the road, both personally and professionally.

A number of folks from inside and outside IBM will be gathering both in Yorktown Heights and in cyberspace (via teleconference and emeeting) next week to discuss some of these new rules of the road in IBM's second Social Media Summit.

Currently, the lineup includes social media experts from the likes of Comcast, Pepsico, Intel, Ogilvy & Mather, Text100, CoTweet and Google, .

If interested, click here to learn more about the event and to register.

Technorati Tags: netiquette, twitter, vacation

UNIX, Anyone?

ComputerWorld reminds us that UNIX turns 40 this summer.

Happy Birthday, UNIX!

It was August 1969 that AT&T Bell Labs programmer Ken Thompson sat down and drafted the first version of UNIX, changing the face of information technology forever.

At the time, I was just a wee lad sitting on my pop's knee, still marveling at the fact that we had landed a man on the moon.

Little did I know how integral that operating system would become to the world, and how it would ultimately shape my own destiny.

I started my career with IBM working on a customer magazine called /AIXtra, which was dedicated to providing useful information and insight about IBM's early flavor of UNIX, AIX.

These days, I use an Apple MacBook Pro running Mac OS X, whose heritage includes FreeBSD and the Nextstep object-oriented OS developed by NeXT and, later, OPENSTEP.

My iPod Touch runs an OS X derivative, again, based on UNIX.

My Acer Inspire One netbook runs Windows XP, but sitting in the dual boot sector, an Ubuntu Netbook Remix, based on UNIX.

Everywhere I turn, there's a UNIX.

There's no escaping it. UNIX is ubiquitous.

Including at this year's Roland-Garros 2009 (better known to we non-Francophones as the "French Open")

This year's tournament is a poster child for smarter tennis, with new intelligence generated through technologies such as intelligent sensors on the court that calculate the speed of a player's serve, and real-time data analytics that gives fans the opportunity to customize the tracking of their favorite (and not-so-favorite) players.

This year's site includes the "Visual Match," which helps fans analyze matches and player technique, and the "SlamTracker," which lets them see selected players and track scores and matches.

The engine behind the site was a poster child for server consolidation, with IBM consolidating 60 servers that once powered the site down to 6 IBM Power 550 Express servers running POWER6 processors.

The servers are located at three geographically dispersed service delivery sites, but they operate as one single virtual site using IBM's PowerVM virtualization technology.

This allows the Roland Garros system resources to be automatically adjusted to meet fluctuating demands and handle up to 100 times the regular traffic at rolandgarros.com.

Last year, the site recorded 35 milllion visits from 6.3M unique visitors, and requests of over 260M Web pages during the tournament.

That's a whole lot of serving. : )

Technorati Tags: grand slam tennis, unix, roland garros, server consolidation, virtualization

Tank Man

In anticipation of tomorrow's 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre in Beijing, it appears that a whole slew of Websites in China are suspiciously and suddenly undergoing "technical maintenance."

And something tells me it's not all those famous Chinese hackers I keep hearing about.

There have been numerous reports that Twitter and other digital engines of global communication have been blocked by the Great Firewall of China.

The Twitter report specifically I've had confirmed by an associate on the ground in Beijing.

Danwei reports that Fanfou.com, China's knock-off of Twitter, portrayed this message:

"The Fanfou server is undergoing technical maintenance. Service is expected to resume before dawn on the 6th."

Another site dedicated to user-generated content, VeryCD.com, will also be under "technical repair" from June 3rd to June 6th.

These are, of course, approximately the dates of the window of key events that were widely reported to have occurred in Beijing in June 1989.

But I'm not sure what everyone is so concerned about, online and off.

Apparently, nothing of real significance really did happen in June 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

At least, not according to another source on the ground with whom I spoke during my first visit to Beijing a year ago.

A colleague and I paid a nice young Chinese woman of about 21 years of age to give us a personal tour of the Forbidden City.

She was an expert tour guide, having studied the subject at university, and speaking very good English.

Once we were finished touring the Forbidden City, she walked us over to Tiananmen Square nearby and my associate made reference to the Tiananmen events of June 1989 in the form of a question.

The young lady turned her head and looked curiously at us both, as if she had no idea in the world what my associate was talking about.

I suspect, most very likely, that was because she didn't know what she was talking about, judging by the look on her face. And even if she did, she was probably in no position to comment.

I am in a position to comment, and so I will.

But only on the technological implications, of course.

Because the Chinese are so suddenly having such trouble with their Internet services, perhaps we should officially redesignate the Tiananmen Square Massacre with a more appropriate retitling, "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day."

That's how WordKu and other Chinese sites have already begun to refer to this period of June 3rd to June 6th (mockingly, of course.)

Then again, such technological challenges are not unprecedented around this time of year in China.

Many still remember Dan Rather trying to get word out with his TV camera before CBS News' live feed from Tiananmen Square was suspiciously cut off that June not so long ago, just before the nightsticks came out.

And then, of course, there's that one image, one that was distributed almost everywhere around the globe with lightspeed...everywhere, of course, but China.

That one single, brave, solitary man, in the now famous photograph, defiantly standing in front of those tanks, seemingly begging them to stop before the madness began.

Before he, too, was led away, never to be seen or heard from again.

Tank man.

Here's hoping they get those Internet services back up and working in China soon.

Oh...and Happy Chinese Internet Maintenance Day.

Technorati Tags: chinese internet maintenance day, censorship, tiananmen square massacre