Some of you may have noticed a reduced amount of traffic information during your morning commute.  In some cases automatic traffic data has been completely unavailable, and some traffic shouts have not been showing up.

The issues are related to some problems with our web servers, and we are working to get everything restored to normal as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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UPDATED: We experienced some problems earlier this morning due to a power failure with our Amazon web servers.  Everything has been restored and should be back to normal.

-Ryan

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you launch Aha it can take so long to start that you feel like you are requesting a flyby from the tower, and all you keep hearing is…

“That’s a negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.”

(Ok, I’m guessing that is a not the movie quote that comes to mind, but why should Facebook be the only site that gets to drop in random Top Gun quotes for kicks!?!?)

But just imagine if the time from app launch to when it finishes its initial load were to be so dramatically improved that you would never even have time to think about asking to buzz the tower (last one, I promise).

We’ve heard from some users that initial load can sometimes feel like an eternity, so I’m delighted to share that we have made updates to our systems that should result in a SIGNIFICANT improvement in that department.

Not only have we made some updates to our back-end (changes that you should benefit from right away), but we’ve also completed some tweaks to the iPhone app itself (already submitted and awaiting approval) so be on the lookout for an App Store update.

Something else to be on the lookout for in the coming weeks is the addition of new types of incident information in Traffic.  Soon we will be including alerts for traffic events like bridge and road closures as well.

So please take a look at the improvements, and don’t be shy about letting us know what you think.

Ryan “Merlin” Knight
Community Czar

Some of the folks who have linked their Aha account to either Facebook or Twitter may have noticed recently that the speed we were attaching to your messages was sometimes a little off (in some cases it was even off by about half).

Well I have some good news to report, because we tracked down the issue and got it cleared up.

If you haven’t yet linked your Aha account to Facebook or Twitter (or both), you can get setup by visiting ahamobile.com/services.  Keep in mind that if you already have your Twitter updates being sent to Facebook, you may run into duplicates if you send your Aha shouts to both at the same time.  Check out the video to learn more!

Ryan
Aha Community Czar

UPDATED: Everything should be back to normal now.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

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We’ve had such an amazing response from users this weekend that our poor servers are struggling to keep up. We will be performing maintenance this afternoon, which may result in spotty performance for some users.

We are also aware that many users are now receiving error messages when attempting to register. We are working on the problem, but want everyone to know that they can still continue to leave shouts. When you are able to successfully register all of your previous shouts will be re-labeled with your new username.

Sorry for any frustration this is causing.

-Ryan