Farmville Glitches Upset My Animals 

As I was playing Farmville this morning, I experienced Farmville glitches and crashes. The infamous Cow appeared on my Facebook screen with a message: “Oh no! It looks like all the bits got lost on the way to your computer. Please refresh your page.”

While Zynga worked on its Farmville problems affecting its 26 million online players, I read email.

Then, yesterday, while buying a few things at Walgreen’s, I stood patiently waiting for my credit card company to approve a purchase. “Processing…processing…processing.”

After a minute, I turned to the check-out person and commented “Well, American Express must be busy today.” She quickly looked at her terminal, realized she hadn’t pressed one last button, fixed it and zippo AMEX approved my charge. This case was clearly pilot error, unlike the Farmville glitches and crashes. Yet, it reminded me that fast Internet connections don’t solve computer processing problems.

Computer Server Crashes Growing?

These incidents made me wonder: “Are will running out of processing power?” Google recently announced its Chrome OS cloud computing platform; the CTIA (the wireless association) and FCC keep screaming about wireless spectrum scarcity.

Cisco, HP and other server and router makers churn out new hardware like Santa Claus hustling for a quick Christmas Eve sleigh ride.

Netflix is streaming videos like a broadband drug addict. Meanwhile, Comcast and other cable companies require bigger Internet pipes to deliver high definition television, VoIP telephone service and Internet connectivity.

Consumer’s Union recently announced that AT&T is the least respected wireless carrier due, in large part, to iPhone users sucking bandwidth. Wireless spectrum is clogged.

As computers, mobile phones and other Internet-dependent devices increase, expect more snafus like Farmville glitches and server crashes.

Everyone’s concentrating so much on “big pipes,” lack of wireless spectrum and Internet traffic. But what happens when lots of Web traffic hits the servers in datacenters? More Farmville server crashes?

I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little (“the skies falling, the skies falling,”) but I have a sneaking suspicion that half of all presents under the Christmas tree this year will be iPads, iPods, Android phones, electronic games and other gizmos–devices that consume lots of bandwidth and make computer servers suck air like a dying cardiac patient.

Well, that’s about it. I’ve gotta check out my Farmville plot. I think the wheat has withered. Dang, that cow’s still there.

P.S. Message on the Farmville.com site: “Hey Farmers! FarmVille is currently experiencing some loading issues. While we work on resolving these technical issues, we have disabled withering and puppy hunger! Thank you for your patience with us during this time.” (To think that farmers’ crops will wither and puppies will go hungry because of Farmville glitches …oh, well.)

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