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Two big tech glitches happened last night:

1. The TurboTax servers went down hours before tax returns were due.
2. The main servers for BlackBerry email went offline.

According to a spokesperson for TurboTax maker Intuit,

Yesterday was a huge volume day for our back-end electronic filing. As a result, we had a significant slowdown in our ability to process and transmit electronic returns to the IRS.

Luckily for those last-minute filers who got burned, the IRS is going to allow extra time for those people who couldn’t get their returns through the clogged pipes.

As for #2, the BlackBerry servers at Canadian Research in Motion went down overnight, cutting off email to most subscribers in the Western Hemisphere. This was a great quote in the New Zealand Herald:

“I felt like my left arm had been amputated,” said Joe Shoemaker, communications director for Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois.

As for me, I did my taxes in February and I’m not addicted to email on my phone, so I barely noticed.

The Boston NOW paper I mentioned before was launched this morning, and I’m in it twice.

There’s a blurb about the Museum’s podcast and a callout box on the page of Boston Marathon coverage featuring the latest Boston Behind the Scenes.

I wanted to see if this would convince people to go to my website, but the early returns aren’t good. Boston Behind the Scenes has  seen exactly one unaccounted-for hit from the Boston area today – and that was from the servers of the Community Newspaper Company in Taunton. I’m pretty sure they were just thoroughly investigating the new competition.

Google has just launched Google Voice Local Search, and experimental phone-based search system.

According to the website:

Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

• search for a local business by name or category.

You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.

• get connected to the business, free of charge.

• get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.

Just say “text message”.

I’ve tried it out a few times, and it seems to work alright. The system was down for a while, but that’s to be expected with a service that’s less than a week old.

To hear a test call, listen to the MP3 below. Here’s the text message I got from Google during the call:

Subject: Burger King

Burger King
128 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02108
617-556-8299

 

 GOOG411 [1:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yesterday, Apple announced that 100 million iPods have been sold since the release of the original 5GB iPod on November 10th, 2001.

That’s an average of 50,607 per day (or a bit better than one every two seconds).

For comparison, Sony sold about 150 million Walkman cassette players between 1979 and 1995 (when they started to die off in favor of the Discman CD Player). That’s 50% more Walkman players in 16 ½ years than the iPods sold the less than 5 ½ years they have been on the market.

In the original press release announcing the iPod in 2001, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying:

“With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go. With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”

It sure looks like he was right.

Congratulations, Apple!

A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my Vice President had shot someone. Ah, those were the good ol’ days.

– President Bush, at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner

Watch him (badly) tell jokes someone else so obviously wrote below:

This BBC story from Wednesday is pretty disturbing. The city of Middlesbrough has installed talking CCTV cameras to curb “antisocial behavior.”

Camera operators can talk to people on the street, scolding them for littering, fighting, or other offenses.

You know what that reminds me of?

The instructress had called them to attention again. ‘And now let’s see which of us can touch our toes!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two! . . .’

‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.’

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston’s body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and—one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency—bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

– Part 1, Chapter 3 of 1984 by George Orwell