Millions of Wordpress blogs were unavailable for almost two hours on Thursday after a datacentre problem caused routing issues and prevented blogs from being served to viewers.

The downtime was the worst experienced by Wordpress.org for four years and more than 10 million blogs were affected. The outage cost bloggers some 5.5 million page views and Wordpress-hosted blogs were unavailable for 110 minutes as a result.

The outage was blamed on the unscheduled changing of a core router at one of Wordpress’ datacentre providers and also took down safeguards meaning any blogs hosted by Wordpress were inaccessible during the downtime, although no data was lost.

“It also broke all the mechanisms for failover between our locations in San Antonio and Chicago. All of your data was safe and secure, we just couldn’t serve it,” said WordPress. “I know this sucked for you guys as much as it did for us. The entire team was on pins and needles trying to get your blogs back as soon as possible.”

The outage affected all regular blogs hosted by WordPress.com, as well as those sites hosted through the enterprise-class VIP service the company offers, including tech blogs like TechCrunch and GigaOM. Blogs which host Wordpress open source release on their own servers were not affected.

A-TAC Armoured Golf Cart

For golf buggy users who have been on the wrong end of a wayward drive, they may want to get one of these. This latest golf cart comes courtesy of the Indian design firm Metaltech Motor Bodies.

Called the A-TAC, or Anti-Terrorist Assault Cart the vehicle has been designed following the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

Basically, it appears that the firm has taken a standard golf cart and stuck some armour plating on it to create a vehicle that looks like something from a Batman movie.

The cart has a top speed of 15 miles per hour and is battery-powered with a six-hour charging life. It comes with a price tag of $43,000 and there is room for two adults in the vehicle. Sadly, there is no room for golf clubs or a drinks cooler.

The A-TAC has been designed to operate in confined spaces such as hotel corridors, but perhaps there could be a market for the vehicle on the golf course from which it is apparently derived!?

Although, if it were truly bullet-proof they’d surely do something to protect those exposed front wheels?

Sony Ericcson has received a slap on the wrist from the Advertising Standards Authority over ‘misleading’ claims surrounding the company’s Satio smartphone. The BBC’s Newsbeat reports that the claims centre on the company falsely representing the handset’s ability to access Facebook.

In a TV commercial for the Satio, the handset was shown to be running a Facebook application but a user of the phone later complained to the ASA after it was found the feature wasn’t included with the phone and couldn’t be installed due to software issues with earlier models.

The ASA said: “Because the ad implied the application was either pre-loaded on the phone or would be available to download, and because this was not the case at the time the ad was broadcast, we concluded the ad was misleading.”

Sony Ericsson claim that the problem has been rectified and the application can now be downloaded to the phone.

The Satio has been something of a thorn-in-the-side for Sony Ericcson since it was launched in October 2009. Both Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U were forced to withdraw the phone from sale temporarily following a high number of customer returns, following a buggy operating system.

Sony Ericcson has struggled in the mobile market for some time, with 2009 seeing a 40% drop in handset uptake compared to the previous year.

This Is Money reports Virgin Media will become the first UK landline provider to offer free calls from Virgin home phones to Virgin mobiles to new and existing customers.

The service is due to be rolled out on April 1st and will be available on a variety of unlimited telephone service call packages, with prices ranging from £11.99 per month for free weekend calls to £19.94 per month for unlimited calls. Calls will be free for the first 60 minutes, after which callers will be required to hang up and redial in order to continue without being charged.

Graeme Oxby, executive director of mobile and telephony at Virgin Media told This Is Money:

“Our successful quadplay strategy has demonstrated customers are looking for exceptional value by bundling more services together, and this move to include free calls to mobiles with our home phone service underlines our commitment to ensure Virgin Media customers get the best deals possible.”

Tesco has launched its first iPhone application. The app, called the Tesco Store and Product Finder, helps users to find the location of their nearest UK Tesco store (including Express and Extra stores). But, says Nick Lansley of Tesco the app also allows users to find any grocery product in that store by describing its aisle and shelf.

Available on iTunes, the app is free and available worldwide although it only works for UK stores at the moment, and only with grocery products. Currently, non-food items are not supported by the app.

Does beer count as a grocery product? Not that the author of this piece for ShoutingInDigital requires an app to tell him where the beer aisle is! But, if this app sounds useful to you here’s how to get it!

GAME have announced the new Nintendo DSi XL is available for pre-order. The console is due to hit UK shelves from 5th March 2010.

The console, which will be available in two colours – wine red and dark brown – will feature two 4.2-inch viewing screens – making them larger than those on the original DSi. The advantages of having larger screens include larger game graphics, while making it easier to watch and use.

The new console will feature all the features and functionality of the original DSi, and will come pre-loaded with some of Nintendo’s top DS software, including ‘A Little Bit of… Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: Arts Edition’, Dictionary 6 in 1 with Camera Function and the Nintendo DSi Browser, which enables easy access to the Internet from anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection.

Millions of families around the UK who use Freeview set-top boxes to receive digital TV face being blacked-out unless they stump up £170 on new equipment. Even those whose HD-ready TVs already have built-in Freeview receivers are likely to be affected.

A report in the Daily Mail online claims the cost to upgrade equipment in order to receive new channels from the BBC and other broadcasters could run to more than £170. The BBC, along with other broadcasters are set to launch a number of new, free HD channels ahead of the World Cup this summer.

However, millions of TV viewers’ equipment won’t be able to receive these new channels and have been told they will need to upgrade their equipment. Already some 20 million digital TV set-top boxes and 8 million TV sets equipped with Freeview decoders have been bought in the past five years and viewers face the prospect of having to fork out again as many will not be compatible with the new HD-transmissions.

HD transmissions allow for greater clarity and picture detail, particularly in fast-moving broadcasts, such as sports.

Critics have already rounded on both the Freeview organisation and the BBC for failing to supply adequate warnings to customers, or alerting to them to the issues.

Barry Fox, a technology industry expert told the Daily Mail:

“If you bought a TV in the run-up to Christmas it will be described as HD-ready and it will probably have Freeview built-in. Similarly, if you have bought a digital set-top box it will be compatible with current Freeview services.

“But to watch Freeview HD, you will need either a completely new TV, which has a built-in HD receiver, or a new box that will receive the HD signals.”

HD channels are currently only available to Sky or Virgin Media customers and will remain unaffected, but for everyone else they face the prospect of having to buy new equipment or not being able to view the new channels when they become available.

New Freeview HD equipment is expected to be available from next month, but manufacturers and retailers are seemingly playing on customers’ ignorance by continuing to sell equipment to customers who are unaware their equipment will not work with Freeview HD channels.

The Nintendo Wii has become the fastest-selling home games console in the history of the UK with sales in excess of six million since it hit the market three years ago.

MCVUK reports that the console hit the milestone in week 48 this year – two years and 51 weeks after it first appeared on the shelves, citing a report by GfK-ChartTrack.

The Nintendo Wii was launched in December 2006 and had sold 185,000 in just a few weeks before going on to sell 1.81 million units in 2007. Its popularity was even greater in 2008 with 2.73 million units sold, and to date in 2009 it has sold 1.31 million units and is expected to build on that figure on the run up to Christmas. The console was also boosted by the release of the black Wii console in mid-November.

Despite the figures, however, the Wii still has some way to go to become the best-selling console of all time in the UK. While it might be the fastest selling console, it still lags behind Sony’s Playstation 2 which has sold around 10 million consoles to date.

The website is reporting that for a short time on Amazon.de an offer appeared for an 250GB version of the Xbox 360 Elite, which included two wireless controllers and a copy of the game, Forza Motorsport 3 with a listed price of €279.99.

We say shortlived because the offer was pulled soon after it appeared. The offer, which was originally spotted by the AOL-owned Kotaku, follows on from an earlier listing from Amazon.de which featured a PS3 slim as far back as July. Sony released their PS3 Slim edition in the UK today.

The current largest hard drive available in Xbox 360 consoles is 120GB and while Microsoft have made no announcement for a larger HDD model, could there indeed be a 250GB model in the pipeline? Is Amazon Germany ahead of the game once again?

This could perhaps give an added explanation as to why Microsoft elected to drop the price of the Elite this week and not simply because of the launch of the PS3 Slim.

Industry insiders believe the mid-range Pro model of the 360 will be ditched, while the Elite model will see a price reduction. There is also speculation that changes will also be made to the Arcade SKU, although which way the Arcade’s price will go is uncertain.

This would seem to be corroborated by news from the US, which according to Yahoo’s GamesDomain, has seen the Xbox 360 Elite repackaged in a glossy white box, and which details only two models of the console – the Elite and the Arcade, suggesting that the Pro model is indeed doomed.

With the launch on Tuesday of Sony’s PS3 Slim console, it would appear that Microsoft’s timing is designed to impact on the latter’s launch and steal some thunder from its biggest rival.