For about the past 12 hours (so far) Gmail has been unavailable for me. I suspect the server that houses my mail is down ...badly, horribly down. If you click the thumbnail image to the left, you'll see a screen shot of the error. The symptoms are that I attempt to sign on, and after several minutes (I timed it at about 3.5 minutes) an error screen finally displays. I've tested this at work during the day and at home this evening. I've tested using Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, using various versions of IE and Firefox. And I've tried accessing Gmail from my BlackBerry. I can log on to iGoogle, but not to Gmail. My wife's account is fine.

The error that displays is: Temporary Error (500), Numeric Code 93. From what I've found searching the net, this is an issue that has hit others at various times, and appears to affect just those unlucky enough to have their mail on an affected server.

So... for now I have no personal email. Others hit with this issue in the past have written of Gmail being inaccessible for anywhere from a few hours to several days. Well it's been 12 hours for me so far; hopefully things will be working by tomorrow. And I will definitely configure Evolution on my home machine (Ubuntu OS) once I can get to my Gmail settings to enable POP.

This also makes me painfully aware of the issues that may present themselves to those who dive headfirst into cloud computing. Gmail is free, so I can't really complain too much; it's been great for me for years -- until today. But I would very seriously consider how to mitigate the risks before I would run a business based on applications in the cloud!