traffic

Twitter users tweeted this afternoon about a "rather large Internet outage" that was affecting access to the site, but an Internet traffic expert said he didn't see any major problems today.

The Internet Traffic Report showed problems for a period of time today for some routers serving North America. Specifically, three routers in Canada were registering zero response time and 100 percent packet loss, as were one in Mexico, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. Routers in Nevada and Iowa appeared to be having less severe problems.

Representatives of the Internet Traffic Report did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, or immediately respond to a phone message left for someone in Arizona listed as the administrator via the Whois domain lookup later today.

Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, told CNET that he was not aware of any major Internet performance problems today.

"I know that there was an outage on Level 3's network in Phoenix between noon and 1 p.m. [PT]," he said. "There was certainly no general widespread outage at that time."

Level 3 provided this statement tonight: "At approximately noon PT, Level 3 experienced an isolated network issue that resulted in temporary voice and IP traffic disruptions for customers in the Phoenix area for approximately one hour. The company acted quickly to resolve the issue and service is now restored for those customers."

Meanwhile, at about 3:30 p.m. PT, Twitter's Support account said it was investigating "site availability issues some folks are experiencing." … Read more

Families and retirees come to New Mexico to chill in the sun; aliens come to crash-land their ships; scientologists come to build secret compounds and prepare to visit the aliens; the government comes to hide the crashed alien ships and blow stuff up; and studios come to make movies about all of the above. Now, a private company is coming to build a 20-square-mile ghost town of the future.

D.C.-based Pegasus Global Holdings is planning to build the model city to test new and up-and-coming technologies such as smart grids, renewable energy, intelligent traffic systems and next generation Wi-Fi. The company says the huge facility, dubbed "The Center," would likely be located somewhere near the Albuquerque or Las Cruces metro areas, giving the company access to multiple Interstate corridors, nearby national labs, universities, and military installations.… Read more

With the wind and water damage that Hurricane Irene left behind, the roads today in your area might be blocked or flooded. Whether you are trying to get back to the office, go out to the grocery store, or return home, you can save a lot of time by taking a look at traffic conditions before you run into a road block or traffic jam. There are a number of free iOS apps that can help you avoid trouble spots and traffic on the roads.… Read more

I grew up in San Francisco. Car parking was a skill we bragged about at the dinner table. I have early memories of my mother (a native of Manhattan) showing off her car parking skills. She could wedge our Galaxie 500 into a spot barely inches longer than the car itself--and sometimes shorter if one of the cars on either end didn't have its brakes set. She also had, and still has, an uncanny knack for picking out the one person walking on a sidewalk who is headed to a parked car.

I know from parking.

And I knew, or thought I knew, that the Web bubble-icious company Parking Auction, covered in Wired last week, was a non-starter. The idea of this start-up: When you're about to leave a parking place, you can sell information about your imminent departure using a mobile Web site. If someone wants that information, they can bid on it. If they win the bid, they get directions to the spot that is about to be vacated and the transaction closes.

I thought it wouldn't work because there was a high-enough likelihood that before an arranged rendezvous between arriving and departing cars occurred, someone not in the system would swoop in and grab the spot, spoiling the transaction and inciting an especially nasty kind of road rage. "That's my spot! I paid for it!"

You can't sell what you don't own. Free and metered parking spaces are public goods. Parking Auction is an information broker, and it doesn't, and can't, control the real estate that the information it brokers is about.

… Read more

Traffic Jam is an addictive puzzle game that tasks you with driving a small yellow car out of an overcrowded parking lot. It may not sound very complicated, but with increasingly difficult configurations of parked cars clogging the exit, you can be sure it'll have your head spinning in no time.

Each level starts off with several cars strewn about an invisible grid that allows movement only along straight lines. No turns can be made, and of course, cars cannot be lifted. This means that you have to carefully decide which cars to move, and in which sequence, in … Read more

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Android 3.2 coming to tablets

Google Maps stops traffic estimates

iUsers enables mutliple users on iPad

Microsoft working secretly on social

No more easy passwords for Hotmail

Crowdsourcing meets broadcast during the July 15th weekend closure of the Los Angeles' 405 freeway, an event that has been dubbed the "Carmageddon" and is expected to cause traffic issues for as many as 500,000 drivers. Social traffic and navigation app Waze has announced a partnership with KABC-TV in Los Angeles to provide live maps, feedback of incidents, and traffic flow for the station's broadcasts.… Read more

Why spend a couple grand on an in-dash navigation system when you can get a portable, better-equipped GPS for a fraction of the price?

To wit, TigerDirect has the refurbished Garmin Nuvi 1490T 5-inch GPS with lifetime traffic for $99.99, plus $2.29 for shipping.

Don't let the refurbished part bother you. Garmin backs the Nuvi with a full one-year warranty, which is the same as new units. And you get a free map update when you register the device, so you don't have to worry about outdated maps. This is, in my humble opinion, good as … Read more

TomTom's app for iPhone has been around for some time now and has been keeping pace with the feature set offered by TomTom's standalone navigation devices. TomTom's newest feature--HD Traffic, which debuted on the latest generation of TomTom devices--is now making its way to the TomTom app for iOS devices. We learned about TomTom's HD Traffic service back at CES 2011, but here's a quick refresher.

TomTom's traffic data service, HD Traffic, is already available in 18 countries for TomTom's portable navigation devices, or PNDs. The service uses data collected from third-party fleets, … Read more