Google Out?

Haven't been able to connect to any Google services (search, Picassa, Docs) for a few hours. Gmail isn't connecting either, neither through the Interweb nor my email program.

I'm in Zhejiang. Is it the same in your neck of the Chinese woods?

Fine in Shandong. I been googling all morning.

I can't even get to it through Tor. Strange.

Old34, did you try clearing out your browser cache and visiting the sites again?

It's not a cache problem. I don't use that POS aka IE.

It's not connecting at all. I use Opera and I can see it trying to connect. Then I get a "Connection Closed by Remote Server" message.

In my separate email program (AppleMail), it just doesn't connect to gmail at all. My other email addresses connect just fine.

Gmail and search are working fine here in Beilun, Ningbo, Zhejiang. Pics mostly come up as the dreaded red x though. Does that almost every time for me.

Pics mostly come up as the dreaded red x though

We know the pics you mean!!

I'm at a cafe now on Wifi and Google is working fine. Must be a problem with the university network at my apartment, although everything else was working fine.

The school network does have its idosynchrocies. I-Tunes Store, for example, can't connect from there although I can connect to it if I use Tor on the ethernet connection. But in this case, even Tor wasn't getting to Google. As I said, strange.

struggled to use it this morning for  few hours but ok now. Something was definitely blocking it.

It's not a cache problem. I don't use that POS aka IE.

MSIE isn't the only browser with a cache. 

Nevermind.

I'm aware of that.

I use Opera and because it's fast and easily configurable, I have it set never to fetch content from the cache and fetch images from the cache only if they are less than 5 hours old. In other words, when I hit a page, I get a fresh redraw of the content (text) every time. Thus no need to ever flush the cache and I don't get day old webpages like I often see on machines using IE (ie. 99% of the machines Chinese use).

Actually, I use Opera's cache for other purposes such as copying out and saving streamed mp3s and video content (eg Youtube). I wrote about how to do that elsewhere in another thread.

I really, REALLY wish we had a separate room here where we could discuss technology issues like computers, phones, cameras, etc. I've made the suggestion numerous times in the past to no avail. Lots of the good stuff is buried under hundreds of pages of the Happy/Sad/Both trilogy. 

That "room" idea sounds like a good one, Old34. Maybe a "child board" like the location specific one? I would enjoy reading some tech talk.

That "room" idea sounds like a good one, Old34. Maybe a "child board" like the location specific one? I would enjoy reading some tech talk.

there was never enough people to fill a "tech board" before but it is under consideration right now... I wouldn't mind having a place for us geeks to fool around and compare notes.

I wouldn't mind having a place for us geeks to fool around and compare notes.

Call it "Gear and Gadgets for Geeks" or sth like that.

actually a good idea, as there seems to be enough of you 'geek' types that you can provide great advice to those of us who are professional users of this box but haven't got5 a clue about what we are doing beyond typing in a web page address and hope it works that you do provide some pretty useful advice to us as well. We may not provide much in the way of input but our output might improve.