Weblogs Inc sites down?

February 23, 2005 12:33 PM

Is there something going on with all the Weblogs Inc sites that we should know about?

I haven't been able to access ANY of them (the weblogsinc main page, Blog Maverick, Jason Calacanis' site, Engadget, etc) for days!

posted by braun_richard to computers & internet (17 comments total)

engadget and the weblogs inc site are both up now, for me.
posted by andrew cooke at 12:38 PM on February 23, 2005

Hmmm...I still can't access them. I'm also having trouble getting to the usatoday.com site (haven't been able to for a while now).
posted by braun_richard at 12:42 PM on February 23, 2005

I haven't noticed engadet being unavailable at all. Is this from work or from home? Is it possible that your office has blocked them for some reason? Or blocked a set of IP addresses for some reason?

My only other thought is that perhaps Weblogs Inc made some changes to how their domains are handled (maybe they changed DNS servers), meaning the new info has to propogate across the net. Some ISPs update that information at a frustratingly slow pace.

(But if other sites are also behainvg this way, maybe it's not Weblogs Inc, but some common service provider. I dunno -- this is all just speculation.)
posted by o2b at 12:49 PM on February 23, 2005

Everything is certainly okay for me.

What ISP are you using? Anything out of the ordinary with the configuration?
posted by sled at 12:49 PM on February 23, 2005

sounds like you've got an infected computer (usatoday is ok too).
posted by andrew cooke at 12:50 PM on February 23, 2005

Another weird thing: when I type in the URLS www.engadget.com or www.weblogsinc.com, I don't get any results, I just get the msn "we can't find" screen, and the suggestions for sites do NOT include engadget or weblogsinc! Very strange.
posted by braun_richard at 12:51 PM on February 23, 2005

Verizon. I can get to every other site but not the weblogsinc sites or usatoday.com.
posted by braun_richard at 12:53 PM on February 23, 2005

Perhaps Gawker has developed some rogue spyware that disables all Weblog Inc. blogs on infected computers.
posted by nitsuj at 1:26 PM on February 23, 2005

Verizon says it might be one firewall program interfering with another, though I haven't downloaded any programs or changed any settings/config in months (and I COULD get to the above sites just a couple of weeks ago.
posted by braun_richard at 1:34 PM on February 23, 2005

are you on windows? have you run the standard anti-virus/trojan stuff?
posted by andrew cooke at 1:43 PM on February 23, 2005

I'll do that now Andrew, but why would that restrict access to weblogsinc sites (and USA Today)?!

I feel stupid even asking the question, because it's not THAT much of a big deal. I don't really need to go to those sites, but I'm worried it could become a bigger problem.
posted by braun_richard at 1:46 PM on February 23, 2005

there are trojans that redirect certain requests, i believe. so you do a search on google and they redirect somewhere else that inserts links to customers, for example. this is not from experience, but i'm pretty sure i've seen people with symptoms like yours complaining about infections in the past (though i'm worried no-one else suggested it).
posted by andrew cooke at 1:59 PM on February 23, 2005

I think o2b had the answer. Your DNS server could be slow to update or it could be a problem with your hosts file.
posted by ?! at 6:18 PM on February 23, 2005

it's easy to test the dns resolution. use "nslookup" for the sites you can't access and see if you're getting the answer expected (post here or email me if it's not obvious). but if verizon's dns is bad you'd expect them to fix it pretty quick. if it's a problem local to your machine, you're still left wondering what is messing things up/altering the hosts file.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:51 AM on February 24, 2005

I did an nslookup for usatoday.com, got the IP address, and I tried that. Still didn't work.

I just remembered: I was having a problem like this with another site last month, and I just tried that site again and it works fine now. Hmmm.

Like I said, it's only happening with usatoday.com and all the weblogsinc.com sites. Maybe it is a DNS thing.
posted by braun_richard at 10:35 AM on February 24, 2005

if you're seeing the right dns address from nslookup then it's not a problem with the dns server (as far as i can see).
posted by andrew cooke at 10:54 AM on February 24, 2005

I had something similar crop up, and despite the fact that I'd had McAfee installed forever, when I uninstalled it and removed the firewall portion from the networking set up, suddenly I could get to sites again.

No, it doesn't make sense. No, I can't figure out why it worked, and yet, it did. Were I you, I would try to go back to a vanilla network set up, then add things back until you find the problem.
posted by dejah420 at 6:14 PM on February 24, 2005