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Shashank Tripathi, campaign manager for Christopher Wight, a Republican candidate in New York's 12th Congressional District, resigned his post and apologized to New Yorkers for a series of deliberately false tweets put out as Hurricane Sandy was devastating New York City. In his apology, Tripathi took responsibility for the false tweets and sought to shield Wight from any fallout, writing that, "It is my sincere hope that the voters of New York will see him based on his merits alone, and not my actions of the last 24 hours." New York's 12th District contains includes large swaths of Manhattan.
Campaign Aide Quits Over False Sandy Tweets
Sandvine, a company selling deep-packet inspection gear to Internet service providers, shared a blog post that in one East Coast city on the Monday ahead of Sandy’s landfall in New Jersey, Internet traffic was up 114 percent. Sandvine also tracked a more than 150 percent rise in Netflix traffic, which was later confirmed by Netflix. Skype usage was up as well. The Sandvine post noted that, “No single application was responsible for the surge; usage patterns were, for the most part, similar to what is observed on weekday evenings.” While the uptick in entertainment seems obvious, the results should encourage those worried about whether our networks can handle some problem that forces workers to stay home and attempt to telecommute. Apparently they can, or they can until the power goes out and the floodwaters swamp the telecommunications infrastructure.
Here’s what the Internet looked like on the East Coast during Sandy
New York City's fast-paced technology scene, known as Silicon Alley, tried not to lose a step after Hurricane Sandy knocked out power lines, devastated the public transit system and left portions of the city flooded. Companies from small startups to major players such as Google and Facebook, scrambled to balance employee safety with attempts to conduct business as usual. With laptops, smartphones and a dash of ingenuity tech companies powered through the adverse conditions — or at least tried to.
New York's Silicon Alley makes do after Sandy
Here is a lesson every Web site manager may be taking away from Hurricane Sandy: It is probably not a good idea to put the backup power generators where it floods.
As computer centers in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey shut down or went to emergency operations after power failures and water damage, companies scrambled to move the engines of modern communication to other parts of the country. Others rushed to find fuel for backup power generation. In some cases, things just stopped. As more of life moves online, damage to critical Internet systems affect more of the economy, and disasters like Hurricane Sandy reveal vulnerabilities from the sometimes ad hoc organization of computer networks. In places like Manhattan, advanced technology comes up against aging infrastructure and space constraints, forcing servers and generators to use whatever space is available. Power is the primary worry, since an abrupt network shutdown can destroy data, but problems can also stem from something as simple as not keeping a crisis plan updated.
When Floodwaters Rise, Web Sites May Fall
Cellphone networks that were crippled or overloaded in past disasters held up relatively well in the wake of Sandy, but iPhone-toting residents of the Northeast are closely monitoring a new source of stress: battery power.
People in the region hammered by the storm leaned on their smartphones for news of the outside world even after the lights went out. For those outside of hard-hit Lower Manhattan, where phone service was badly disrupted, the trick was keeping the batteries alive on devices that typically don't make it through a long work day. The scramble for a place to charge smartphones underscores a conundrum of modern life: People have more newfangled computing power at their fingertips, but it takes old-fashioned electrical power to keep it going.
Telecom Firms Skirt Worst Damage; Most Users Manage to Stay Connected
Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast leaving behind it a trail of devastation that had major cities like New York and Washington (DC) reeling. But the storm's impact had a much wider reach, with economic fallout expected to cost the entertainment industry millions of dollars.
Executives in Los Angeles stress that their headaches pale in comparison to the loss of lives and damaged property wrought by the storm, but production delays and lost box office are being keenly felt by an industry headquartered on the other side of the continent. Their problems won't go away any time soon. With large swaths of New York's subway system underwater and off-line for up to five days, audiences will continue to have difficulty making it to movies or plays, while film crews and other production personnel will face challenges getting to work. Already, New York is feeling the pinch. As the storm started to pick up steam on Sunday, the country's major movie theater chains began shuttering locations all along the eastern seaboard. On Monday, box office in all of New York was $3,000, while a week ago it stood at nearly half a million dollars.
Hurricane Sandy Slams Entertainment Industry With Production Delays, Lost Ticket Sales
For the second night in a row, superstorm Sandy and its aftermath forced David Letterman to live out that performer's nightmare: Telling jokes to a vacant theater, or as he called it, "a big ol' empty barn."
Letterman hosting the "Late Show" to an unpeopled Ed Sullivan Theater was the oddest sight of the considerable and continuing cultural fallout of the hurricane that left New York institutions like Broadway, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center no more open for business than the city's damaged subway system. But the New York entertainment industry was fighting to go on with the show, and none more than several of the city's late-night shows. Though "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" canceled tapings for the second day, the "Late Show," Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night" and a traveling out-of-towner, ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," went ahead with shows.
In NYC, Show Goes On, Even Sans Audience
Two ABC stations found a little bit of a silver lining in the clouds of Hurricane Sandy, as the websites of New York’s WABC and Philadelphia’s WPVI recorded record traffic during the storm. Both stations made their broadcasts available on desktops, as well as across all mobile devices for the first time, according to a spokesperson for the network.
ABC Sites Log Record Traffic During Storm
For the first time in a long time, CNN beat competitors Fox News and MSNBC in the 25-54 demo in both primetime (1.09 million to FNC's 875,000 and MSNBC's 477,000) and total day (546,000 to FNC's 528,000 and MSNBC's 260,000), though it lagged FNC in total viewers in both categories. It's been a bittersweet few days for the Weather Channel, another network with viewership that fluctuates wildly depending on breaking news. Two weeks after laying off 7 percent of its workforce, the network had its biggest day of the year, with an all-day average of 2.04 million viewers and a healthy 800,000 viewers in its key demographic, adults 25-54. It was also, notably, the highest-delivering cable network in that demo from 6 to 9 a.m. and outperformed all of cable news all day in the key demo.
Networks Top Ratings with Storm Coverage
During an emergency, one of the most precious commodities is information and the ability to communicate it without impediments. When the old reliable phone networks are creaky and central offices are flooded and wireless phone networks are strained to the breaking point with demand for voice calls, one of the most precious things someone might be able to find is an open, free and reliable Wi-Fi connection. With power out south of about 34th Street in Manhattan and throughout much of New Jersey and Long Island, it seems a little ridiculous at first to wonder where the steadiest free and open Wi-Fi hotspots are. But the need is there.
After Sandy, Wi-Fi Becomes Precious Commodity