Fact of life: things break. Web services rely on power grids, complicated hardware, platters of material spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute, and that's before the human element is factored in. Come to think of it, it's rather impressive that the whole thing is so reliable <superstitious>touches wood</superstitious>.

What defines an organisation is how they handle themselves when things go wrong. Do they ignore their customers? Deny there's a problem? Maintain a status page with red/amber/green icons? Communicate status via Twitter.

Here's how Flickr handled an outage this morning (BST), have to hand it to them, it's absolute class. A perfect balance of information and light-heartedness. I can forgive them the fact that some urgent updates to the conference site I'm working on will have to wait a few minutes.

Here's what greets you on the homepage:

Mysterious, but a quick look at their blog reveals:

and checking the @flickr twitter stream:

Yes, it's still a bit annoying that the service is down, but I do love their approach. If you're on a tighter deadline, it's probably more irritating, but I'm a big fan of whoever is putting together their copy. Very nice work indeed.

UPDATE:

And here's the results of the pics that flickr users uploaded whilst waiting for the site to come back up, flickr asked users to tag photos FlickrMassageOct2011.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I can't help thinking that if Facebook faced a similar outage, the response wouldn't be quite so positive. Flickr has an awful of goodwill despite Yahoo's best efforts to ignore the service.

Photo (c) Alford Charlie.

A couple of years back I started using a tool called ClearContext, which prioritised the 3-400 daily emails I receive based on their priority. Some special algorithmic magic looked at how often I read, how quickly I responded to automatically work out what was a priority based on my behaviour.

It was a real boon - apart from those difficult but important emails which I tried to ignore, don't pretend you don't do the same! - and helped me sift the daily waterfall of email.

Sadly, since the move to Gmail in January, I've been missing this functionality. Until now. When Google announced Priority Inbox for Gmail, I was very keen to get my mitts on it. Whilst my friends tweeted about its appearance and started to get to grips with a new way of working, I drummed my fingers, logged in, logged out and waited. And waited.

I keep looking for the option in the menu bar and well, nothing. Surely, there must be some magical option, or was Google just holding out on me? Perhaps it wasn't being rolled out to Google Apps (which we use at work).

Turns out, there was no magical option, just me being a touch on the dense side, or, ehem, let's say busy with work. If you're facing the same problem, here are the incredibly simple (when you know how) instructions to make Gmail Priority Inbox turn up on your Gmail if you're using Google Apps Premier edition.

Login to Google Apps control panel and choose the menu option for Domain settings and scroll down to the section labelled New Services and Pre-release Features. Make sure the option for Enable pre-release features is selected, then click Save changes at the bottom of the page (see pic below).

You're done! It'll take a few minutes and you'll need to logout, then login to Gmail and the option should appear in the top right-hand corner of your screen in bright, shiny red. Click to turn it on and see a short video, which I've included below in case you're wondering what on earth this blog post is all about.

This evening's challenge: find a set of free icons which will link to core social media sites. As a minimum, the set needs to include icons for

• RSS feed
• Twitter
• Facebook

and it'd be nice to have an icon or LinkedIn, too. Fortunately, the Interweb is littered with free icon sets, there, waiting to be downloaded. Hundreds, thousands of them.

So for your delectation, a (highly subjective) round-up of the best ones...

Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icons for Bloggers
from Spoon Graphics

Social Bookmark Iconset
from Vikiworks.com

Free Download Social Icons
from Design Reviver (missing Facebook)

3d Transparent Glass Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

3d Glossy Blue Orbs Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

Black Ink Grunge Stamps Textures Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

Silver Inlay Square Metal Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

Stitched Denim Blue Jeans Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

Ultra Glossy Silver Buttons Icons Social Media Logos
from Icons etc.

Handycons - a free, hand drawn social media icon set
from JankoAtWardSpeed

Social Network Icon Pack
from Komodo Media

Polaroid icon set
from webtoolkit4.me

(New) 27 Circular Social Media Icons in 3 Sizes
from Blog Perfume

Page Peel – A Free Social Media Iconset
from ProductiveDreams

Socialize Icons
from DryIcons

Social.me
from Junwei

Free High-Resolution Social-Media Iconset – PriceTag Style
from DeepuBalan.com

Free Social Media Icon Set: Chrome
from Chris Wallace

Free Social Icon Pack: Nurture
from David Leggett

Extreme Grunge Garments Icons
from Nikola Lazarevic

Other sites worth checking out:

• Icons etc.
• Icon Archive (check commercial usage)

If the prospect of putting a line through the final item on a lengthy to do list is close to nirvana, then you're probably trying to deal with inbox anxiety, that constant battle to keep your email under control.

I'm with you. The number of unread items in my email inbox steadily grows mocking me, like my own person national email debt clock. Although I haven't had to make any bailouts (Select All > Delete). Yet.

The fact that everyone in your social circle has found numerous and ingenious ways to multiply those neuroses through social networks with their alternate inboxes, direct messages, pokes, walls and who-knows-what next, there's no way of keeping up.

As Dolly Parton puts it, "islands in the stream, that is what we are". It's a case of letting the social river drift by, dipping a virtual toe into the stream from time-to-time and trying not to get anxious about what's just floated by - let's stretch the metaphor - whether a pretty little fishy tidbit or something decidedly unsanitary.

Don't feel bad. There's not much that can be done without resorting to technology, which hasn't quite progressed to the point where it'll know whether to reply immediately, fib about a deadline or quietly ignore a friend request (don't pretend you haven't done it).

Don't believe me? Check out the numbers on this social media equivalent of the debt clock by web & TV clever clogs, Gary Hughes...

It's disturbingly mesmerising, which is more than be said by some of the bilge in my inbox. Better get back to it, won't delete itself now, will it?

Picture courtesy of Rafiq Phillips. Some rights reserved.