Google Cloud’s Down Time, Blog’s Inventor, SlideShare’s Changes, and Shellshock Hackers Hit Yahoo

Google Cloud’s Down Time, Blog’s Inventor, SlideShare’s Changes, and Shellshock Hackers Hit Yahoo

October isn’t yet halfway over and already has been a big news month for web hosting. From down time, to hackers, to changes in how various websites work, there is enough news to keep you in reading material for days. While we can’t cover all the news items, WHSR will focus on a few of the ones we feel are important to website owners.

Google Cloud’s Down Time
Many small business owners utilize Google for a variety of tasks.

Let’s face it, love Google or hate them, they offer services that small business owners such as bloggers need to be effective.

Whether you use Google Drive, Google Hangouts or utilize their analytics to figure out how well your site is performing, you may have experienced interruptions on Wednesday, October 8th.



Analytics was fixed within minutes, but users also experienced downtime with Google Cloud Storage. The problems were reported starting around 11:30 EST and went on for about 90 minutes. Google posted in their forums:

“We apologize for any issues this may have caused to you or your users and thank you fo ryour patience and continued support.”
They went on to reassure users that it is a priority to make sure their systems are reliable.

Inventor Of Blogging Celebrates 20 Years
On Saturday, October 11th, The Guardian reported on the inventor of the blog, Dave Winer. This month, in 1994, Winer published his first blog post via software he created. It was called Davenet.

For more than 20 years, Winer has been on the cutting edge of Internet innovations. He had a hand in helping create how RSS runs.

Today, Winer is still blogging via his blog Scripting News. Spend five minutes reading through his blog and you’ll be as hooked as I was. He is obviously one of the clearest thinking bloggers on the Internet and a true pioneer of blogging.

slideshare appSlideShare Releases IOS App
Businesses who use SlideShare for presentations or to promote their websites will be thrilled to learn that the company has released an iOS app. What this means is that users can now access their slides from anywhere via Apple devices.

The release is for iOS 8 and above and the app is optimized for the iPhone 5 and above.

There are several ways you can utilize this app. Create a presentation ahead of time and share it on the fly with a potential investor. Read through other people’s presentations to gather ideas and inspiration. Or, even use it to review a slide you previously created before going into a big meeting.

Yahoo! Attacked By Romanian Hackers Via ShellShock?
Jonathan Hall of Future South Technologies, an online security company, released a pretty strong blog post about the infiltration on Yahoo! and insists it was from Shellshock vulnerability.

While the attack was going on, Hall did his best to inform Yahoo! as well as Lycos and WinZip and he contacted the FBI about the exploitation of these sites.

Hall’s issue with Yahoo! is that Alex Stamos, CISO of Yahoo!, posted a statement that they were not iimpacted by Shellshock but they “isolated a handful of servers” that were at risk. Hall uses facts to back up his statement that Yahoo! was indeed breached via the Shellshock vulnerability.

What do you think? Is Stamos being honest with the public? Does Hall have a good point?

Share your views in the comments area below. As always, if you have news that would be of interest to other website owners, feel free to share that as well.