Jaikido Blog

Disabling SMS and re-opening m.jaiku.com

2009-06-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Jaikuers, we'll be disabling our U.S. SMS service on June 30th. The usage doesn't justify the cost, so we're discontinuing the third-party relationship that Jaiku has been using to deliver SMS in the U.S. (international SMS was already shut down earlier this spring).

Meanwhile, thanks to @lemonad and the folks on #jaikuengine, the mobile site at m.jaiku.com is up and running again. Point your browser there if you're accessing the site from your mobile device. Android users can activate the Jaiku IM bot to receive push notifications on the go.

JaikuEngine is now open source!

2009-03-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we flipped the switch and moved Jaiku to App Engine. Today, we are open sourcing the Jaiku code base under the Apache License 2.0. The code is available as JaikuEngine on Google Code Project Hosting as of now. Anyone can set up and run their own JaikuEngine instance on Google App Engine.

So, developers, start your JaikuEngines. As Google will no longer be actively developing jaiku.com , the future of Jaiku is in your hands. Point your browser to the project and join the jaikuengine-discuss group to learn more and get started.

As a 20% project, Mika has open sourced the Jaiku Mobile client (dual-licensed MIT and GPLv2). Users of the client may have noted already that the current build will no longer connect to the server now that Jaiku is hosted on App Engine. We'll let you know when the new build is ready for download!

Jaiku is becoming JaikuEngine

2009-03-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today is a special day: Jaiku is now being served from Google App Engine. That's the first step in Google making Jaiku freely available as a federated, open source microblogging platform. Although Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the platform will live on as JaikuEngine in the hands of the open source community.

JaikuEngine differs from Jaiku in a few key ways. Although core features like the website, SMS (in the US only) and IM bot still work, feed fetching and international SMS are no longer available.

The problem of maintaining freshness with a poll-based system is a challenge not just for Jaiku, but for all real-time communication services. We hope the open source community will implement a better solution.

International SMS also had scaling issues, but for financial rather than technical reasons. One potential solution is to use IM on capable mobile devices such as the G1. Developers can also build clients that take advantage of presence and other features of the new JaikuEngine API.

We'll be releasing the open source JaikuEngine code and sharing more information in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Jaiku is now served from App Engine

2009-03-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

Jaiku is back up and running on Google App Engine now. We're still working through some issues with SMS and the IM bot, and expect them to be up and running soon. Also, stay tuned for information on the open source release of the Jaiku code base and our Symbian mobile client, coming soon!

Upcoming service break

2009-03-11T09:33:00.001-07:00

We'll be taking Jaiku offline at 03:00 pm PST (22:00 GMT) on Wednesday, March 11th, to migrate jaiku.com to Google App Engine. We expect about 24 hours of downtime. We know how important it is for you that Jaiku stays up and running, so we'll be doing everything we can to make the downtime as short as possible. We'll post an update here when we're back.

Thanks for your patience!

Scheduled Downtime, 8:30am PST

2009-02-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

We’re doing a little regular database maintenance tomorrow morning and will be down for a few hours while we speed up the site. See you again after the break :)

We’re going open source

2009-01-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

Today on the Google Code blog, we announced some upcoming changes to Jaiku and other services. Here’s the part about Jaiku:

“As we mentioned last April, we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine. After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License. While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers.

With the open source Jaiku Engine project, organizations, groups and individuals will be able to roll-their-own microblogging services and deploy them on Google App Engine. The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we’re excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform.“

Upcoming service break for infrastructure upgrade

2008-10-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

We’re planning to take Jaiku offline for an infrastructure upgrade between 10:00 am - 12:00 pm Pacific Standard Time (6:00 pm and 8:00 pm GMT) on Friday, October 17. The reason for the break is we’ll be undergoing a hardware expansion in our data center.

This is good news, because the upgrade will improve reliability of our infrastructure and significantly increase the bandwidth we have at our disposal.

The downtime is expected to last between 30 minutes and 2 hours. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be doing our best to minimize the disruption.

Short SMS maintenance break

2008-09-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Update: the issue with our SMS provider (see details) has now been solved and the SMS service is functional again worldwide. Thanks for your patience!

Folks, our SMS provider has let us know they will be performing maintenance on their system on Tuesday, June 10th, between 00:00 - 06:00 AM Central European time. This is going to affect the Jaiku SMS services worldwide. We’re expecting two short outages within this time period. Our provider’s assured us they’ll do their best to minimize the disturbance.

We’re back, and invitations are now unlimited

2008-08-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, we’ve been offline for the last few days, working to address an issue with a server. We’re back, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.

We’ve now moved Jaiku to a Google data center. This is something that we’d planned to do anyway, as part of our future transition to Google App Engine. Now that we’ve moved, we’ll need to ask you to review and accept a new terms of service and privacy policy. Head here to do that.

As a special thank you for your patience, we’d like to throw a little nest-warming party and open unlimited invitations for Jaiku.

We appreciate your support!

From the Dev Corner: An Under-The-Hood Preview of Our New Engine

2008-08-18T20:56:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since we’ve given an update on the progress of the porting of Jaiku to Google App Engine, and many of you have been keen to know how work is progressing.

It’s as if we were retrofitting a locomotive with a powerful new engine. Everything under the classic body gets upgraded.

Just like on the inside the locomotive is composed of a drive train, transmission, and so on, Jaiku is composed of services for features like fetching Web feeds, receiving and sending SMS, the IM bot, and Jaiku Mobile. We’re reimplementing them all so that they work well with the App Engine. In some cases we’re expanding the App Engine platform itself. We’re taking the opportunity to learn from porting Jaiku to benefit both our users and make App Engine better.

The port to App Engine will also benefit third-party developers who are writing cool applications for Jaiku. In the process of rewriting Jaiku’s Web site on Django, we’re improving the way the site is written so 3rd party developers will have greater control over the system and can write applications that provide richer features to their users.

Those who’ve payed attention know how excited we are about open Web standards like OAuth, Microformats, and OpenID. The port to AppEngine is an opportunity to add more support for them to the Jaiku platform and contribute back to the community by implementing support for the standards we love. For example, the new Jaiku API will support OAuth.

The biggest benefit for the Jaiku community is that we’ll be able to grow and support many more users. Where before we used MySQL, now we’re using the more scalable App Engine data store and an improved data model. We’ll be moving existing users’ data to the new architecture to make sure Jaiku scales up for you and all your friends.

So, where are we now? We’re putting the finishing touches on the entire system. As any developer knows, sometimes there are surprises, so we’ll periodically let you know how things are progressing.

We appreciate your patience and can’t wait to open up Jaiku to everyone!

Web server outage

2008-08-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Update: All services are now up and running again. According to our data center provider, the power failure that affected Jaiku this Sunday was caused by the meltdown of a mains switch and disrupted the servers of over 8,000 customers.

A power failure at about 9am PST (7pm EET) today at the data center provider where Jaiku’s servers are located caused an outage on jaiku.com. We are back up and running, but it will take some more time before all services are fully operational. We apologize for the service break and are working to get all functions back to normal as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

Making progress

2008-05-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

Recently a bunch of you have been ruminating about the fate of Jaiku. We know. It is frustrating. We believe the migration to Google App Engine will result in improved stability, so we made the hard call to invest all of our effort in finishing up the port rather than do what was needed to keep up our old servers up to date (it is hard to keep up a service of this scale with 1GB RAM…).

Also, contrary to some voices out there, we DO have plans for future development and we will involve our developer community as much as we can. Just to reiterate, we are working very hard to ensure you have a useful and usable service. We feel the short term pain, too. Thanks for sticking with us!

Wroom - we’re moving to Google App Engine

2008-04-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

We’ve been working quietly for a while to port Jaiku to Google infrastructure. Today we’re taking off our welding goggles to announce Jaiku will be one of the first apps to run on the new Google App Engine.

The Google App Engine enables applications to leverage powerful Google technologies and scale up to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.

Jaiku will be fully deployed on the Google App Engine in the near future. Andy & co. are working hard to ensure the port is a success and we will make a further announcement once the port has been completed.