Technorati party over, datacenter mentor, desktop Linux picks (and fake seizures)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at the "sinking" ship Technorati, TIA datacenter standards, and desktop Linux. Not to mention EMS war stories...

Something rotten in the state of blog searching claims Jason Kottke: That's it. I've had it. No more Technorati. It's been down at least a quarter of the time ... results are often unavailable ... and most of the rest of the time it's slow as molasses. What good is keeping track of 14 million blogs if you're missing 200 well-known ones? Jason Calacanis pitched: I've been complaining about how worthless the results from Technorati are for the past six months (at least). Amazing how quickly the mighty have fallen. I think the company has a focus issue. Technoratus David Sifry responds, mea-culpa-stylee: we've made some progress, but there's important things that are still broken, and are being fixed this month. Even after we pull out the spam and fake blogs from the indexes, we are dealing with about 1.2 Million posts each day. We just weren't expecting that kind of sudden growth. Brad Hill summarizes the backlash: these days it’s chic to say that Technorati sucks.

TIA-942. No, not Robert Duvall's character in a weird Lucas movie, but a definitive document encompassing best practices and design considerations for every single aspect of the modern data center from "the people who brought you the CAT standards for unshielded twisted pair cabling". Before degenerating into a discussion about CAT, Slashdot residents had some interesting things to say: this document was a godsend in getting what needed to be done made possible. This standard isn't for the SMB or small colo facilities. This is more for the big corporate datacenters. // With some sort of standard in place, vendors will be forced to compete on more even ground, prices will be more reasonable, and users won't be afraid to leave their current colo provider because the next one could potentially be even worse // even if you use not one single recommendation, you have something reasonable and well documented to compare against, which makes your job easier // I'm curious to see what this document contains. Just not curious enough to pay the [$250] to find out // This is a "checklist" for CIO's. Last thing I need is my [boss] having a list to check off and thinking they are requirements instead of suggestions. But we'll give the final word to "mock2": last vestiges of gonzo hacky-geekdom taken over by The Boring Men.

Sharon, our resident ham, last week plunged into the desktop Linux whirlwind. Followed up with more comments, and then reported back after trying five different distributions. Some choice excerpts: Say what you will about Microsoft, there sure is something nice about plug-and-play peripherals. Maddeningly, I couldn't configure my HP Photosmart printer // I wasn't able to get online from either my work or home computer // plug and play IS a useful feature for most people working on a home desktop // I already started to miss all the utilities available in Konqueror and the KDE.desktop when I went back to Windows // Which Linux? Sometimes, people find that having too many choices is just as bad as not having enough // After playing with [five] Linux distros, only one easily found both my Internet connection and printer: Ubuntu, the version recommended by several readers // I'd had high hopes for [SuSE], but when it got to a certain point, the boot-up simply froze and my screen went blank. Sharon, have you tried MEPIS yet?

Buffer overflow:

• Tech pros ask: how can we help with Katrina recovery?
• Katrina phishing scams begin
• Hoping the worst-case scenario doesn't come to pass
• Remember when there was such a thing as system downtime
• Microsoft digging deeper into VoIP
• Visa PCI standards
• A brief primer on being prepared
• Personal emergency preparedness
• Is any product really stable?
• What really matters: The IT innovation budget
• Perl + Eclipse = lots of interest
• People spread

And finally... the Oscar for the best performance in a dramatic fake seizure goes to...

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.