Maybe this happens all the time, and I just don’t know about it, but I just searched on google and got….nothing. It only lasted about a minute, before everything was back to normal, but before it did, I happened to get some screenshots of Google finding absolutely nothing.

This happened around 4:13pm on Tuesday, when searching on the Australian Google server. I first typed in “startup news”, attempting to find some news on new tech startups. Google returned nothing. I took a quick double-take, and thought for a moment (a very brief moment) that “startup news” didn’t have any results…(103,000,000 at last count).

After playing around with some words, and realising what was going on, I decided to take a screen-grab to document this apparent anomaly. This is what I came up with:

Then, seizing the moment that was upon me, I decided to do what any self-respecting tech-head would, and I therefore give you, my Pièce de résistance:

This lasted about a minute, and my colleague searched moments later and the search completed successfully. So it was by no means a catastrophe on Google’s part, and at most was the switching over of a database backup or something similar.
It really surprised me however, as Google has become such an ever-present foundation of web surfing, that having it go down was quite a weird experience. If anyone from Google can explain this, or if any user’s have ever experienced this, drop me a comment or send me an email.

This is pretty hilarious, and dramatic at the same time. As digg is releasing it’s new categories and features in 3 weeks time, they will no longer have a (completely) seperate demographic from Netscape. Previously, Digg would have had it’s own Tech niche to stick to and do it well, however it is quite timely for them to be entering the current affairs style areas, which is an unknown area for them. With this introduction, and Netscape being re-jigged as a “Digg Killer”, the two are shaping up to collide straight on.

Personally, I think Digg is the current authority on Tech news, and this is almost certain to remain the same, but I have a feeling that the race will be a lot closer with other news areas, especially with users who currently do not use Digg religiously.

If you have ever used Digg, you have surely come across the comments and whining that annoy the crap out of everyone except those that write them. Bitching about Duplicate stories, calling someone a “Fanboy” or cutting-down Windows/Linux/Mac/Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, can get quite grating. The mechanism exists for burying these comments, but they still exist on the comments page, and when a reply is related to one of them, still get opened and read.

A big factor in this competition (Although they both seem to claim they aren’t competing) will be how Netscape can handle these annoyances that exist on Digg, or whether they will be as big a factor. Netscape has had a chance to overcome some of Digg’s downfalls, and whether they learnt anything from these could prove to make the new site a success a success.
Digg

Beta of new Netscape Site

Read/WriteWeb: Netscape wears Digg’s clothing - but underneath it’s still a portal

OK, I have finally managed to get the site back up and running. I hope to share with you some of my projects in the fields of Javascript, AJAX, PHP and other web development technologies. For now, check out the bookmarks page, to check out what I have been visiting recently.