Thursday, April 06, 2006

Hinet has Blogspot Problem

Hinet apparently is having problems with the BLOGSPOT.COM address. Several of us here in Taiwan have emailed me to report that they can't see their blogs. I just got off with the technician at HINET and he told me he cannot access blogspot sites either. However, the blogger URL is different -- blogger.com, so you can still get to your dashboard and post, edit, change settings, etc. You just can't see your blog, is all.

UPDATE: Hinet actually called me back but I wasn't home. They said they would call me tomorrow. But it seems the problem is now resolved. Hooray! I had to eat a lot of chocolate to get through today.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Breathe, Michael, breathe, it'll be back soon :)

Anonymous said...

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! Dark chocolate....must have dark chocolate.

Michael

Anonymous said...

Seems to be OK now. Phew!

p.s. proxies such as daveproxy.co.uk are good for these situations. Just type in the URL and click go. It's slow and you can't follow links within the site but it's better than nothing.

Unknown said...

Hinet sucks! It is slow and unreliable. The phone service they have is quick and friendly and English-capable however.

I heard that there is only one set of wires linking Taiwan to other parts of the world, and that these wires are slow because they are cheaper (in quality) and fewer in number than other overseas wires.

I really hate the fact that Hinet is the only major provider here. There is one other, I think, but it is only available in maybe Taipei or something. For a vastly populated society like this and for a country which produces electronic equipment for the rest of the world, the reasons for not having better services, better technology, and more providers (like they do for cellphone services here, which are great products) are spurious indeed. Is there government regulation which keeps HiNet going as a monopoly? Because all the main providers, like ADSL, go through Hinet.

This is one of the things I hate about Taiwan. When I was in Montreal, the services may have been expensive, but high speed internet was just that: speedy! As a result, and because there was a lot of competition (a lot more than for Taiwan, where 25 million people live, as opposed to 1.5 million in Montreal), when I took my laptop to cafes, to restaurant, even at home sometimes, I could tag onto any number of public wireless providers that were downtown free of charge!

When, Taiwan, when? Why are electronic developments for locals here so backward? What I wouldn't do to once again see internet services that give me web pages in 1/50 of a second! I know it seems absurd and some people think internet doesn't need to be that fast, but for wireless services to really work, that kind of thing is key.

Anonymous said...

hi, i read your blog from time to time (i'm in the U.S.) and thought you might be able to spread the word on this petition:

http://www.gopetition.com/region/237/8314.html

the UN wants to only use simplified chinese by 2008, instead of using both. the petition has more info, but please sign it and keep traditional characters alive!

amida said...

Peter: Another trick is to use a translator like Google's. Translate from German or whatever to English, and as the site you want to view is English anyway, it comes out the same, just with a "Translated by Google" or something at the top. This method leaves links followable.