The System is Down

Today, Hangouts went down. Good timing along with our regularly scheduled Educational Grand Rounds we with S’eclairer.
Problematic when that’s the main recording mechanism.

It harkened back to that old classic…

It’s times like this you have to remember how dependent you are on all of this technology. We record online, sync our calendars, communicate in our daily business, and even let these services keep our passwords.

You always have to think about alternatives to these services if they go down. When Google has a hiccup, are you sitting on your hands? Can you get someof your work done in the meantime? Or work around the digital blockade?

Today, after butting our head against Hangout not working, and finally being able to determine it wasn’t a problem on our end, it came time to assess. We try to get one or two recordings a week to make sure we have something to distribute weekly on the blog and podcast feeds to keep a steady stream of new content.

Luckily, I had my laptop on hand. It’s a 2009 Macbook Pro, which has had issues with HD feeds in capturing in Quicktime X, but had a decent clip capturing in Photo Booth as a quick fix last resort. Still better than recent results on Hangout.

You have to have backups!

What fun alternatives have you found yourself with in a pinch?