David Harper’s Different Things

Winksite’s scheduled server upgrades went off without a hitch today - no data was lost, nothing broke, and as it was completed in just over an hour I think the downtime passed relatively unnoticed. At this point all services have been successfully tested and we have received zero customer support requests.

Advance planning certainly pays off. Well done Jason!

…and for those of you that care about this kinda thing. Whereas our recent traffic increases resulted in our database servers being maxed out at peak times (98% usage) our new set-up is supporting that same level of traffic at about 2%. Nice.

(Note: More next week on what that data traffic looks like.)

Winksite is currently serving 20K publishers, a quarter million monthly users across 150 countries, and continues to grow daily. While our data center has performed well with next to zero downtime, recent increases of traffic have made some aspects of our service a bit sluggish to visitors at certain points of the day.

To head off any nasty, unplanned interruptions to service we have planned a necessary upgrade to our servers. Part of this upgrade involves moving our database to a larger, faster server that will accommodate future growth. Unfortunately, this requires us to take Winksite offline for several hours on Thursday, Nov 30th.

We apologize in advance for this interruption of service and promise we will do everything possible to keep the downtime to a minimum. We’re really excited about the performance increases these upgrades will bring (yep, we’re geeks) and look forward to providing all of you with continued mobile access to the content and connections you have grown accustomed to.

Today I presented at Under The Radar Mobility. What follows is a transcript of the presentation I made.

Bullet points on the screen.

• Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile Internet sites and build simple mobile connections via mobile phones.
• If it doesn’t work on at least a billion phones we don’t touch it.
• It’s dirt cheap and works well.
• We deliver today what people use.
• Take it for a spin.

Verbal presentation.

Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile Internet sites and build simple mobile connections via mobile phones.

It works like this…

Take a few minutes to register (it’s free), set up a profile, and create your site by entering content directly on our set-up screens or by connecting a RSS feed.

You can then choose to activate mobile-tuned community features like chat, forums and surveys.

We provide you with a URL for that mobile site (i.e. http://winksite.com/[username]/[userdefined directory name].

When visiting that URL from a PC you’re taken to your site’s “Mobile Site Profile” page at Winksite that includes basic information about your site, a simulated version of your mobile site where desktop users can engage the mobile users, and a toolbar that allows your audience to easily share, subscribe, send URL to phone, scan the QR code, and subscribe to your mobile site.

From a mobile phone the URL takes you directly to your mobile site where Winksite delivers a consistent, anticipatable experience with all the navigation/menus, pagination, and actionable items built in for you.

No downloading or installing an app. All the action takes place on the browser that ships standard on your phone.

Winksites work on the best and worst phones of carriers.

Winksite currently serves:

• 20K publishers
• 250K monthly mobile uniques (people)
• 25 plus million mobile screen views (May 2006)

We traverse 150 countries with no carrier deals.

Bloggers like BoingBoing, blog networks like Metroblogging, and entertainment companies like Warner Bros. Records use us to build mobile sites, syndicate content & events, and recruit communities.

Individuals from Mumbai and Manilla, London, Toronto, and San Francisco use us to connect with friends, make new ones, or simply organize their feeds and favorites for easy access on their mobile phones. For others, it’s all about claiming their own piece of the mobile Internet.

Note: On the screen we had our “People” page running that shows a Real-time View of People Entering Winksite Mobile Communities.