PhotoPoint site back online! (UPDATED)
By
Mike Tomkins
(Monday, July 16, 2001 - 15:45 EDT)
Online photofinisher's website returns, but specifics of outage not yet known...
We just posted that we'd heard news that PhotoPoint's site should be back online "within the next few minutes", and sure enough, within seconds of our posting a news item saying so, the site was up and working! We don't yet know the specifics of the outage (why the site was down, whether it is back for good, etc.) but this will no doubt be welcome news to the many users who have been emailing us over the last few days...
We'd strongly suggest to all readers who use PhotoPoint's service that now the site is up, you ensure that you have backup copies of all photos you value on your own computer. As the outage has demonstrated, a lot of people have been putting absolute faith in the stability of online providers, and no company is infallible. You wouldn't hand over your film negatives to your photofinisher for safe keeping, and nor should you consider any online photofinisher to be safe long-term storage for your 'digital negatives'. Instead, an online photofinisher can perform well as part of your strategy for looking after images, along with appropriate backup measures at home as well.
For example, we suggest writing a CD with your images on it, and perhaps even making a second copy on a different brand of disc or even a different media altogether to keep in a safe deposit box or a friend's house. That way, even if one copy fails or is lost for example in a fire, hopefully another copy will remain intact...
Keep watching this space for more news on this story as it develops - the site may be back online, but we're sure to hear more over the next few days as the story progresses...
Thanks to IR readers Robert M. Woolley and Tom Metcalf for spotting that the site was up by themselves within minutes of us posting this item, and emailing to let us know. We don't know if they're just incredibly lucky with the timing or have been trying the site at 30 second intervals all day, but either way they must have been about the first people in the door as it opened! Thanks, Robert and Tom... :)
UPDATED 2001-07-16 17:55ET: We note with interest that our earlier reports that PhotoPoint's San Francisco office had been closed down do indeed appear to be correct. A look at the contact page on PhotoPoint's restored site shows that the 'Company Headquarters' address has been updated and now matches the address for Pantellic Software Inc.
Interestingly, all reference to JoePix Inc., the event photography website which PhotoPoint acquired in June 2000 has been removed from the address page. Florida-based JoePix was still mentioned in PhotoPoint's press releases as recently as last month, and it is possible that the removal of its address from the PhotoPoint site is an indication of news still to come. JoePix's site is currently offline, with a notice on its entry page stating: "JoePix is currently offline, please stay tuned for more details. Any questions?"
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