I should just say, that I have a biased interest in zovo, being its founder and all.

From the internet: Skydrive outage

Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage – Register

BBC News

Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage Register But at least this time it had company as Hotmail and SkyDrive were also downed by the same Domain Name Service (DNS) issue. Luckily for Europe, outages started in the middle of last night when most of us were tucked up in bed – 4am GMT and lasting for … Microsoft services hit by outageBBC News Microsoft’s Hotmail and Windows Live knocked offlineInquirer Apple’s Store, Microsoft’s Hotmail and SkyDrive All Taking Thursday Evening OffAll Things Digital ZDNet (blog) -SBS -SmartHouse all 120 news articles »

Microsoft Skydrive and Hotmail services suffer from brief outage …

Microsoft’s online services such as Skydrive and Hotmail were hit with an outage on Thursday night for a couple of hours. It’s the second time inside a month that such an outage has occurred.

Publish Date: 09/09/2011 10:10

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-skydrive-and-hotmail-services-suffer-from-brief-outage

By Nancy_Valdes at 09/09/2011 11:58

You can import these contacts, they are mainly LIONs’ (Linked In Open Networkers).

Download TopLinked OpenNetworker Linkedin Invite List Sep 2011

Once downloaded;

1. Log into LinkedIn.com
2. Select Contacts > Add Connections from the menu.
3. Towards the bottom of the page you will see “Import your desktop email contacts” – select this.
4. Upload each CSV.
5. Make sure all contacts are selected, then click “Invite selected contacts”.

You will need to repeat this for each CSV file, and you may run out of invites if your account is new. You will have to come back every week or so and try again until you’ve imported/invited all of the contacts.

Find me on facebook or twitter!

Lots of you may have seen a bit of a viral buzz being created for zovobackup, with your friends tweeting and FB walling about it.

Why should you check it out? Pre-registered users will get an unlimited storage backup account for free when the service goes live.

Register now!

Why do you need zovo backup?

The files you store on your computer – photos, music, videos, emails and documents – are increasingly precious, but they’re so easy to lose. Hard drive failure, fire, theft or even just accidental user error can wipe out highly important content in seconds.

You could back up your data to CDs, DVDs, external drives or even backup tape, but all of this takes effort, you need to remember to do it, and they’re about as susceptible to failure, loss and damage as the PC itself.
zovo gets rid of this problem completely by providing a simple, secure and robust online backup solution.
Just install it, select which folders you want to backup and forget about it. There’s no need to schedule your backups or leave your PC on overnight – it backs up your files as you work. There’s no limit on how much you back up either, so it’s completely hassle free.

zovo pro takes this one step further by setting your files free and letting you access them wherever you are. See the same files on every computer you use – you can use them just like any other file on your computer, but if you change them, they will automatically change on all of your other PCs. View and even edit your documents online from any web browser anywhere. Even access your files on your go from your mobile.

• Equinix Commits to Use 50 Percent Renewable Energy in Paris Data Centers [Equinix press release]

Fundamentally, what Equinix (EQIX) have done is purchase 45,000 of EDF’s Certificats Equilibre (CEs).

Taken directly from the press release;

For every ‘Certificats Equilibre’ purchased, EDF injects one MWh of power from renewable sources into its network.

The key point here is “into its network” – this doesn’t mean EQIX’s network, it means EDF’s network/grid.

Therefore this does not mean that 50% of the power used by the EQIX datacenter is renewable, it means that the power provider used by EQIX, in this case EDF, has 45GWh of power on-stream from renewable sources.

Granted the Paris EQIX facility uses about 90GWh of power, and so 45GWh of that is coming from a provider who has 45GWh of power on-stream from renewable sources.  This is not what the press release claim is though, bad wording.

A more accurate headline “EDF commits 45GWh of power from renewable sources thanks to Equinix“.

Doesn’t quite have the same punch, but much more accurate.

So, my views on where the oil price has been, and will be going.  Well, in the last two years crude has bottomed out at $33, only to come roaring back to the high eighties.  It sat there for a while, in a tight range as it built a base at $70.

That’s called a consolidation pattern; it’s also a precursor to what I believe is coming next.

The price of crude is up $5 this week alone. A breakout above $90 would send it up on a new bullish run to $130 a barrel.

Given that Gulf of Mexico regulations, Chinese demand, and Nigerian violence are already priced in currently, here are six new reasons for why I believe oil’s going to be moving back up.  These are just my thoughts, and do not constitute any sort of advise.  This may, or may not, form part of my own personal investment strategies

1. The fall of the Dollar

Oil is a fungible global commodity, the price of oil is the same all over the globe and it is always priced in dollars.  This means that a fall in the dollar relative to other currencies would result in the oil  price going up – relative to the dollar.  This means that to understand the price of oil, one must keep an eye on what the US is doing, what happens with regards to the US economic has real and visible effects on the price of oil.

The gold line is the oil ETF, the candlestick is the dollar ETF.  You can see that in November the OIL ETF overtook the dollar ETF in its rate of growth.

2. The US FED

The board of the Federal Reserve announced it would pump another $600 billion into the financial markets, by buying US Treasury bonds.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Federal Reserve on Wednesday set the stage for falling yields on bonds of just about every stripe, providing fuel for a weaker dollar and higher stock and commodities prices”.

This has already affected the price of commodities such as cotton, coffee, and copper, which are all at 52-week highs.  It is my belief that oil will be joining them in short order.

3. US politics – republicans take the House

This point is a little esoteric in nature, but with a bit of joined up thinking, you can see how I come to this conclusion.

The Republican party captured the U.S. House of Representatives and have made strong gains in the Senate.  In the future, US policy decisions will be harder to push through following a single parties (left/right) agenda. Caused by having democrats in the White House, and republicnas in the House of Representatives.  In simple terms, this will cause a similar situation to what we have in the UK, with the coalition government, its hard for Cameron to push a “Conservative agenda” with the Lib Dems sitting on his coat tails.  In the US the situation is more like having the country governed, or attempting to be governed, by the Conservatives and the Labour party at the same time – make sense?

What all of this means, is that businesses can forecast costs over the next few years as the danger of new, big, costly legislation goes away.  The republicans prefer a “lets get on with it” approach, much like the conservatives in the UK, and the democrats are more about “stick it to wall street and the capitalist pigs”… ok thats a really watered down way of looking at it, and isn’t completely true, but it helps draw the comparison I am trying to make.

Simply, the sentiment of the US is swinging from the idea of “sticking it to Wall Street and the capitalist pigs” back to “lets get on with it, back to work and help ourselves”.  The businesses who were sitting on cash due to concerns over the costs of cap-and-trade, for instance, can now build new factories and expand.

This increase in commercial activity and development, will further increase the demand for oil.

4. OPEC Changes Forecast

A few days ago, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) boosted its global-oil demand forecast, due to a sooner than expected economic turnaround.  The cartel of oil producers upped its consumption forecast by 800,000 barrels a day for 2014, saying it was “more optimistic regarding the speed of economic recovery”.

The day after, this new bullish outlook drove up the futures price of oil.  This again, an indicator of increased demand for oil.

5. Russia is very important

Most of you wouldn’t realise this, but Russia is now the world’s largest supplier of oil, yes, even ahead of Saudi Arabia.  Articles out a few says ago report that Russia’s crude production rose 4% this year to a post-Soviet high of 10.26 million barrels a day.  The gain was achieved with increased production from Sakhalin Island, and oil exports increased to 4.97 million barrels a day.  This news has actually caused alarm rather than celebration.  What happens when Russia runs out?

President Putin has stated it will take $280 billion in investment dollars to stop a 20% fall in production over the next 10 years.  The country must constantly find sizable new fields to keep production growing; the old Siberian fields are declining at a rate of 5% a year.

Doubts over the security of the supply in oil, while there are more and more increasing demands for oil will further push up the price.

6. Sharp decrease in the supply of crude

The American Petroleum Institute issued a report last Tuesday that said the US crude inventory declined by 4.1 million barrels for the last week in October.  That was larger than the 2 million barrel decline the market was expecting.  This will cause more doubts over the supply of oil, and demonstrate an increase in demand.

So what does all this mean?

We are two to three years removed from the economic crisis.  There are an increasing number of demand indicators for oil, consumption is starting to increase again.  Given the stages of bear markets, we are well past the denial stage.  Anger has turned to apathy.  Bargaining went down with the US property foreclosure mess.  Most investors are somewhere between depression about the economic downturn and acceptance of it.  People with cash (which as we all know is king) are sitting on it, earning high interest (relatively speaking), and are waiting for the right opportunity to put it back to work.  The $600 billion injection from the Fed will drive down these interest rates and force them to seek gains elsewhere.  The new Congress will keep the US economy ticking over, and not put costly road blocks in the way of economic development.  A lot of this uninvested money will go to oil.

This market is going up oil, gold (i’ve been talking up gold for a long time!), food, and emerging markets.

As always, please post comments, like on facebook, talk to me on twitter, or connect on linkedin.

This is hilarious – well worth a watch!

I am waiting on some UK specific figures, but for now.

That is all!

I often get asked by people, “why are you a blackstar, you don’t seem to be very active, isn’t it a waste?”. Phrased slightly differently, but usually the same gist. Blackstar’s are the highest level of membership on ecademy, and you pay what to some seems like quite a high membership fee for said membership.

Well for me, heres why.

02:46am – post market place advert offering deskspace in mayfair.

03:06am – search google for “mayfair deskspace“. SECOND result on the FIRST page.

From no where, to the first page of google in 20mins. Now what would that be worth to your business – enough said, now stop asking me stupid questions!

Having built hosting infrastructures for smes and bluechips alike, running Berkeley IT, and a number of “online related” or more to the point “infrastructure related” companies/projects, this is something I am constantly at a loss trying to educate others on. Thanks to the media (as usual, misinformation and the general media, who would have thought!), Jo Public tends to think that his 99.9% SLA uptime guaranteed by his US based reseller shared hosting provider is where its at.

“My online plate shop is critical to my business, it will never go down with XYZ company, they offer 99.9% SLA”… this is the type of drivle that Mr Jo Public can be overheard spouting, and at which point I tend to want to walk over and bash him over the head with a large banana, repeatedly, preferably one that has been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Lets clear up a few things.

1. Nothing can truly be 100% uptime guaranteed, as something can always go wrong
2. A 100% uptime guarantee will cater for “force majoures” though, so dinosaurs coming back to live and rampaging through the datacenter, thats excluded from your guarantee
3. 99.999% uptime is achievable, and usual involves multi level redundancy, including physical datacenter diversity – ie: your plate shop being mirrored in a different physical datacenter
4. Usually you would need multi level redundancy for this, all the way up the chain, power, network, distribution, data, component – not something thats cheap to deliver – although for infrastructure people it is easy
5. 99.9% uptime SLA is usually what most providers would look to offer as standard
6. EXPECT TO PAY A PREMIUM FOR 99.999% - if you aren’t paying a premium, and your hoster claims the nines, then its about as likely to be “five nines” as I am to suddenly wake up and find that I have the powers of spider man
7. the SLA will usually outline your reimbursement if there is unscheduled downtime, if it doesn’t, move your business elsewhere, as the SLA and uptime claims just aren’t worth anything
8. that word in point 7 is important, “unscheduled“, most, if not all providers will exclude “scheduled maintenance” from their uptime guarantee, make sure that your SLA outlines how much notice will be given before this work, and how long work can realistically last for

Now to quantify a few things;

• 99.999% uptime SLA quantifies to 0.4 minutes of down time a month or 5 minutes of downtime per year
• 99.99% uptime, 4 minutes per month, 52 minutes per year
• 99.9% uptime, 43 minutes per month, 8 hours and 46 minutes per year
• anything less, theres no point

Pingdom have actually put a really nice little PDF guide together for this, check it out.

If you’ve always wanted to understand how the financial markets work, what things mean, and how they relate to each other – in a very simple and easy to understand way – you *NEED* to watch this.

I’ll be uploading and posting the other parts over the next few days.

You can download it directly from Google videos, here.

If you find this post useful, why not post a comment, or follow me on twitter?