jaiku invites

So after five days and six hours of down time Jaiku is back! At about 11pm BST (GMT+1) or 3PM PDT (PST+1) we had re-ignition! Woooo!

So what has changed? Well it is not on the Google App Engine yet! While the error page was on the Google App Engine the DNS has been updated yet again and Jaiku has moved to some ordinary servers inside the Google network and data centers. If you are still having issues getting to Jaiku now, you will need to flush your local DNS cache and S60 blogger handily provided a link on how to do that. If that doesn’t work then you will have to wait till your ISP does it, normally every 24 hours or try using OpenDNS. As you can see from the below headers it is being served by a nginx sever which is a modified version of apache that is for general use at Google.

Response Headers - http://jaiku.com/

Server: nginx/0.7.11
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:32:08 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Host
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6
Cache-Control: no-cache, private
Content-Encoding: gzip

200 OK

The second thing is we now have UNLIMITED INVITES. Yes that’s right much as I suspected, Jaiku has followed the Gmail model and gone for staying closed but with unlimited invites. So if you have some time to spare please share a few a we have quite a back log to get through here at JaikuInvites and to those that are already sending invites out a big thank you!

Other notice able changes are everything is quite speedy and all the badges seam to working great again even some of the flash based ones that were giving trouble before like the map on the home page.

As always stay here with JaikuInvites for all your latest Jaiku News!

The long awaited move for Jaiku has finally begun. Last night they took down the home page and took all services off-line and replaced them with this message …

Folks, we’re offline for the weekend for server maintenance. Now’s a good time to talk to someone you love.

Now I can confirm that they have moved to the Google App Engine and will be hosted there when they come back up. As they say picture paints a thousand words, so for proof take a look at this.

For those of you not familiar with trace routes the last few lines there show that the domain Jaiku.com is now on the Google network. The IP address that it finishes at is also one belonging to several blocks used by GAE. Up until this, Jaiku.com had remained on the same Finnish server it was on when google bought it, trying to survive on just 1GB of RAM.

So what can we expect to see now that Jaiku has moved? Well the number one thing we can expect is near 100% reliable service, no more down time for the API or the IM bot and the last of the 502 Bird. The next thing is open registrations for all, whether that will come in the form of a Google account or Jaiku account remains to be seen yet but I would safely say that we will see Jaiku and Google accounts merged into one in the near future. And finally we will hopefully see the launch of some new features and maybe even the public release of the current updated beta S60 client, I’ve also heard that a lesser featured iPhone client may on the horizon too.

As always we’ll have more news as soon as we get it here on JaikuInvites so be sure to drop by.

Update: I have just been in contact with the Jaiku team and while they can’t comment on anything right now they are “working hard to bring Jaiku back online soon.” I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what’s in store.

Update 2: More proof that Jaiku is moving/has moved, the response headers for Jaiku.com are now returning that they are being served by the “Google Frontend” server. See the full output below:

Response Headers - http://www.jaiku.com/blog/

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: public
Expires: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:46:09 GMT
Content-Encoding: gzip
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:59:09 GMT
Server: Google Frontend
Content-Length: 632

200 OK

The Google Frontend server, is the server type that is used by all Google App Engine Apps.

Update 3: Jaiku have confirmed the move! They have updated the status message on their homepage to read:

Setting up our nest in a new datacenter, after finding an issue with a server on Friday. Sorry for the inconvenience. We’re working to get back online soon.

Update 4: Google have issued a second statement to the Eweek Google Watch blog.

“We’ve been working on the Jaiku service over the weekend after finding an issue with one of our servers on Friday. As part of the solution, we’re moving the service to a Google data center. Users can expect Jaiku to be back up soon.”

Nothing new there, but it’s still only 3:00pm in San Francisco where the whole Jaiku team is based this week. Even Teemu Kurppa (@teemu) the normally London based developer is in San Francisco this week, we expect to help with port. One of his last updates on Jaiku before the downtime being (from the Google cache):

“Firealarm sent us out to windy street and I forgot my hoodie. But I saw Guido! “
By teemu Friday, 22 August 2008 in Google, San Francisco, CA, USA. Add Comment

“Server-side fixing”
By teemu Thursday, 21 August 2008 in San Francisco, CA, USA

There have been some reports going around that Jaiku is now just a 20% time project at Google. Arctic Startup reports that @teemu has said  “currently Jaiku is being developed on the 20% free time Googlers have for their own projects.” He also goes on to talk about the port to Google App Engine and says that “this port will be done on “normal” working hours.”

After a little further digging into it I discovered this thread on Jaiku in Finnish which is talking about the talk that @teemu gave in a Helsinki University. The basic gist of it is some of the students talking about what @teemu had said. He then comes on to clear a few things up (sorry about the rough translation see the original here. Please correct me if it’s wrong.)

Let me correct some possible misunderstandings, Jaiku will continue its existence and Jaiku is being ported to the Google App Engine . Its porting will make the expansion of the user numbers possible in the future, so that joining without an invite will be possible. The Port is in part worked on full-time but we are also working in part on something new.

Andy @termie works full-time at the moment on the Jaiku port, I have smaller focus at the moment.

To me all this goes to lay further strength to the argument that Google mainly bought Jaiku for the developers and that we may see some sort of Jaiku-Android integration in the future. I wonder if we will see any of Jonathan Mulholland (@jonmul ) predictions coming true?

Woo hoo! So this this time is for real unlike my slightly prophetic April fools post, we now have confirmation that Jaiku will be reopening registrations. Jaiku is to moving to the newly launched Google App Engine and with that move we will see a much faster Jaiku and the long awaited reopening of registrations.

@jryi - “initially don’t expect new features - if all you notice is an increase in speed and reliability and re-opening of registrations, we’ve been successful :)”

From what I can see (via Mashable) you will need a Google account to use a Google App Engine application so hopefully this will also see the integration of Jaiku accounts with your Google accounts, although they seam to be have some initial teething problems with authentication. This is great news for Jaiku users and once they move is complete we hope to see lots of new features and integration with existing google services.

The official announcement was made over on the Jaikido blog and the announcement of the Google App Engine was broadcast live by @Scobleizer via Qik and live blogged by @techcrunch on the TechCrunch blog.

Google is expected to announce later today that Jaiku is to be the default phone book on all Android devices and that Jaiku will open to the public with the launch of the first Android handsets. The Jaiku API is also going to integrated into the latest release of the Android SDK, also today, to allow other applications to use the Jaiku platform.

I was speaking with jyri yesterday who said he could neither confirm nor deny it but he did confirm that they have been working very hard on some major developments and a big announcement will be made by Google and Jaiku today. Industry insiders have long expected this move since Google purchased Jaiku and many will be delighted to see it come.

This news comes on the same day that Ewan over on SMS Text News announces that Google have bought out the Vodafone group and could be making moves for Verizon.

Google strategy on mobile and the mobile web is really coming into effect and it won’t be long before they enjoy the same level of dominance as they do in other areas. One must wonder how long it will be before we see more Google applications becoming the default, I’m looking very much at Gmail here.

UPDATE: This was an Aprils fools day post, posted on the 1st of April 2008. Google did not announce that Jaiku would be the default phonebook on Android, however they did announce that it is to re-open. Google did not buy the Vodafone group. Also this blog is not run by Jaiku and it is run by me (@CiaranR) as so many of you have quoted this a blog run by Jaiku, Jaiku’s blog is here.