Rojo: Gmail Bedlam; Olympics Takedown; Wii MadWorld

	The Week in Rojo
Rojo: Gmail Bedlam; Olympics Takedown; Wii MadWorld Google’s Gmail was down for at least an hour early this week, causing public bedlam equivalent to the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, at least among dozens of people who like to complain to friends instantly. Also, this gentleman below was down, on Google Street View, causing him to be embarrassed when he saw the picture. Switched reports that the poor bloke in Australia had been drinking heavily the night before after learning that a friend had passed away. He got out of a cab and lay down to rest, and the Googlemobile drove by, and the rest is the end of privacy history. Too bad the guy didn’t have Gmail! Because the mail outage was a wake-up call, says Mashable: “It’ll be interesting to see what effect a couple hours of downtime will have on us all.” Hey, seriously: is everybody ok?!! VentureBeat was paralyzed by the outage: “This puts my workday on complete hold.” (Good time to take a nap?). VB wonders how smart it is for companies to rely increasingly on Google apps. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch wrote: “I can’t help but suspect that my decision to abandon MobileMe/.Mac in favor of the super-stable Google apps may have been a factor." Yep, that must have been what happened. Might all this outageousness be why Apple has surpassed Google in market value? No, but that financial factoid became true this week, Digital Daily reported, noting that Valleywag predicted it would happen. Meanwhile, Amazon has launched “Amazon Green,” a shopping area for the environmentally conscious. Nice idea, says Simpable, but “it is hard for me to take them very serious here. They still routinely use huge boxes and plastic filler packs for small orders.” (Note: Andrew Stanton, who wrote the Pixar movie Wall-E about Earth being covered with trash from products sold by the powerful multi-national Buy N Large corporation, told NPR that he was inspired by all the packages he orders online.) Between the Lines says “the Internet did not break, melt or probably even much notice the Olympics, in its first weekend.” Views of Olympics video were just 2 percent of YouTube’s video traffic. Don’t blame It’s Game Time. They tried to illegally show the opening ceremony and stream other Olympixels, but the International Olympic Committee made them stop (sez Silicon Alley Insider) and now the site is showing a Spanish talk show. TorrentFreak says millions downloaded the opening ceremonies anyway. We’ve had a very good experience watching official Olympian video on a Vista’s Media Center with a plug-in from TV Tonic. Others, like the Unauthorized Microsoft Weblog, have found it a chore to install Microsoft’s Silverlight player to watch through a browser. Valleywag reports that the IOC also issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a video that features protestors projecting free Tibet propaganda on the walls of the Chinese consulate in New York City. That warning is “a clear abuse of copyright law,” Wag says. Finally, in violent Nintendo game news: “Parents horrified as most violent video game ever to launch on ‘family friendly’ Wii,” the UK’s Daily Mail calmly announced on Tuesday. Joystiq calls the Mail article positively brilliant in its absolute ineptitude. Quite! Over at the Telegraph, blogger Tom Hoggins says, “from what I’ve personally seen of MadWorld, it is a hyper-violent brawler,” but it’s not meant for kids. “It’s about damn time the media watchdog groups got around to blasting...Wii-slaughterfest MadWorld," adds Kotaku. “I was worried they were losing their touch.” Get the best of the blog world every week in your inbox with our email newsletter. It’s free! Sign up here. Note: You are receiving this message because you signed up to receive The Week in Rojo via email. To unsubscribe, reply to this message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line and you will no longer receive this email. If you have any problems, questions, or need help unsubscribing, please email us at feedback@rojo.com. Rojo Networks, Inc. 548 4th St., San Francisco, CA 94107 Rojo Networks, Inc. | Feedback | Help | Rojo Forums | Rojo Blog | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy © 2006 Rojo Networks, Inc.