We've been getting a number of tips about the Google App Engine API being down hard, causing a good number of third-party services who depend on it to fail or be downright inaccessible. A quick check on API-status, which tracks that sort of thing, confirmed the service disruption.

We've been getting a number of tips about the Google App Engine API being down hard, causing a good number of third-party services who depend on it to fail or be downright inaccessible. A quick check on API-status, which tracks that sort of thing, confirmed the service disruption.

Though we have previously warned startups to tread carefully when building their businesses on third party APIs, there are still plenty of successful businesses that rely on them for their day-to-day operation.

Just yesterday I wrote about a new service called API-Status.com that monitors the availability of 26 popular APIs, and today it’s already proven useful for me. The Twitter API is down, causing thousands of third-party apps and services to malfunction.

Website monitoring startup WatchMouse is launching a new service dubbed API-status.com today, a website that displays realtime availability and performance of popular, public APIs.

The lists of monitored APIs consists of 26 of the most heavily trafficked Web services, including Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, SalesForce, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and others.

As backend APIs (application programming interfaces) power more of our interactions online – as the foundation for applications, widgets and other platforms – it becomes increasingly important to monitor the status of their uptime.

Website monitoring startup WatchMouse is launching a new service dubbed API-status.com today, a website that displays realtime availability and performance of popular, public APIs.

Test: Google DNS is snel maar onbetrouwbaar

Vorige week verbaasde Google vriend en vijand door een eigen DNS-cache te presenteren. Hoe doet Google Public DNS het vergeleken met de rest?

De Utrechtse website monitoring dienst WatchMouse nam de proef op de som en vergeleek vier publieke DNS-diensten: DNSAdvantage, DNSResolvers, Google Public DNS en OpenDNS. Iedere dienst kreeg verspreid over zes dagen 18.000 queries voor de kiezen vanuit 42 locaties over de hele wereld.

WatchMouse: "Nederlandse webwinkels goed bereikbaar".

WatchMouse publiceert vandaag voor het zesde jaar op rij de onderzoeksresultaten naar de bereikbaarheid van Nederlandse webwinkels. Uit het onderzoek blijkt, dat steeds meer Nederlandse webwinkels beschikken over goed bereikbare websites. Van de 89 webwinkels die in het onderzoek zijn opgenomen halen maar liefst 41 sites een score van 99,9% en hoger, en 27 daarvan de maximale score van 100%. Negen van de sites in het onderzoek presteren echter slecht, waaronder bekende namen als Vodafone (92,85%), Mediamarkt (94,36%), Bart Smit (96,23%) en Dell.nl (98,48%).

Taskforce maakt winnaars IPv6-awards bekend

Taskforce IPv6 heeft de winnaars van de IPv6-awards bekendgemaakt. Monitordienst WatchMouse, de Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO), Hogeschool Utrecht en Universiteit van Amsterdam, Arnout Veenman, Jasper Wonnink en internetserviceprovider BIT wonnen elk een IPv6-award. Er zijn zes verschillende categorieën.

Grote sites als Albert.nl en Dell.nl lang onbereikbaar

De digitale winkels van Albert Heijn en Dell scoren waren vorige maand meer dan een volledige werkdag niet bereikbaar. Zij behoren tot een groep met in totaal tien procent van de grootste webwinkels die uren en soms dagen off line zijn.

WatchMouse API: The WatchMouse service checks the behavior and availability of websites. WatchMouse "allows site owners to optimize the internet experience of their customers. A worldwide network checks websites from 40 different locations in 25 countries around the globe."

France may have left Euro 2008 with its tail between its legs after a humiliating defeat by Italy, but the country still topped the league when it came to having the best sporting web site. For what little consolation that brings.

WatchMouse, a website performance monitoring outfit, carried out its own nailbiting tournament to find the Euro 2008 nation with the best sport website by fashioning an index which takes into account three parameters; errors, speed (load time) and availability.

WatchMouse is pleased to announce a partnership with Australia's Badboy Software. The partnership combines the immensely popular Badboy scripting tool with WatchMouse's market leading website performance monitoring, enabling customers to record complex transaction scripts and run them using a global infrastructure.

On Thursday, Web site-monitoring firm WatchMouse released the results of a study about the performance of 104 social-media sites--social networks, blogging communities, bookmarking sites, and the like--and boldly deemed them to be overall "slow and inaccessible."

Facebook, el más lento

Los sitios de redes sociales más populares fallan al dar servicio a los usuarios, según un estudio de WatchMouse. La investigación asegura que los sitios web 2.0 a menudo son lentos de abrir o fallan al cargarse adecuadamente. WatchMouse controló el tiempo de carga de los sitios de redes sociales, detallados en Wikipedia. Los resultados han demostrado que el peor sitio en cuanto a disponibilidad es Facebook.

Contrary to a recent study that showed that Facebook is among the most reliable social networks, new study conducted by WatchMouse shows abysmal results for Facebook. 104 sites were monitored by WatchMouse, and Facebook was by far the worst performance-wise: it had slow loading times and frequent errors. Check out the graph (too big to show here) to see how bad it looks.

Serveurs web: Apache/Linux loin devant IIS/Windows pour la disponibilité

Les sites internet hébergés sur des serveurs Linux équipés d'Apache, sont plus rapides d'accès que ceux hébergés sur le couple Windows - Microsoft IIS. C'est ce que conclut une étude de la société néerlandaise WatchMouse.

Linux-based websites perform better than those hosted on Windows servers, according to research.

WatchMouse, a Dutch firm that monitors server performance, based its research on a survey of over 1,500 European websites. The company says that, although the websites it surveyed were more frequently based on Microsoft's IIS web server platform running Windows than on Apache running Linux, the latter option performed better in terms of both uptime and load time.

Unacceptable downtime levels in UK online banks

Some 65 per cent of top online banks in the UK have more than one hour downtime a month. Out of the 26 banking sites involved in the study only three achieved perfect availability – measuring an uptime of 99.9 percent or higher.

Dax-Firmen mit mangelhaften Websites

Die Websites von mehr als der Hälfte der DAX 30 Unternehmen sind schlecht verfügbar. Laut einer Untersuchung des Website-Überwachungsdienstes WatchMouse stehen viele Websites für mehr als eine Stunde pro Monat nur schlecht oder überhaupt nicht zur Verfügung.

Dashboard widget WatchMouse Site Monitor checks up on the website of your choice every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes to keep track of its uptime. But wait, there's more...