Redundancy is Welcome, Indeed

As a writer, my wife grits her teeth when she sees or hears redundancies. Example: 8:00 p.m. in the evening. But in IT, redundancy is welcome, indeed. Redundancy is instant backup. Without it, a trading company can lose millions of dollars in just seconds or viewers will miss that exciting maneuver in a football game on TV.

I designed, installed and implemented Avon's website (not the graphics) for e-commerce. Later, at Gartner, I designed the redundancy network infrastructure for e-commerce websites so that the sites can function in the event that one site is down. Almost everyone who does online banking has experienced the frustration of trying to check balances, pay bills or schedule transfers at 8:30 p.m., only to get a message that the site is down. At 3:00 a.m., it's understandable, even though many on the West Coast may still be up. Chances are, that bank has a redundancy program that is simply inadequate. The customer won't lose money because the site is down, but the bank may lose customers if it develops a reputation for failure when the end-user needs it at a reasonable time.

Here's the bottom line: get your redundancy infrastructure so that's it's available when customers need it, whether it's 9:00 a.m. in the morning or 9:00 p.m. in the evening.

iFixes

It always amuses me to see people rush into the newest technology when it's common knowledge that there are bugs in first models. So what's with the bars on the iPhone 4? Users have been complaining of low signal strength and busy towers since the first iPhone came on the market. Last week, Apple shouted Eureka! They found the problem. It was a formula error. The company posted a statement on its website that explained "our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength." They added, "Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place." Huh?

Apple will send a fix, but as far as I'm concerned, the company's explanation is a non-answer. I can just imagine if I gave such an answer as to why a security patch didn't work. "I called the company and was told that the indicators weren't real to begin with." Or "They said that there's an error in the coding." And my supervisor would take that at face value? I don't think so. I think I'd be shown the exit sign.

In Apple's case, it hasn't been officially determined whether the fix has to do with the software or the hardware. Critics claim that the problem is because of the new iPhone's external antenna. When a person's skin comes into contact with it, you know what happens. Other smartphones, including previous iPhones, have internal antennas, which have a natural buffer between the antenna and the hand that holds the phone. A possible solution is a rubberized case, but that means that show offs can't flaunt their trophy phones as easily.

I am in no rush for an iPhone, even when other carriers will be able to sell it. My wife and I have BlackBerry phones and we're pretty happy with them. The browser is hard to read, though, but for the most part, it serves our purposes. My wife has worked on Apple computers at her newspaper and reports that while their physical structure is "seductive," they are underwhelming in their claims of what they can do, even for graphics. My advice: hold onto your current phone until the bugs are out -- and you have a choice of carriers.