Server trouble left many Sidekick users without their data yesterday. Danger's phone is a thin client, and data is stored on servers at the carrier. Danger itself manages the server, and the carrier business is its principle revenue stream. Outages were reported from all over the continental United States.

Danger, which sells the Sidekick through T-Mobile in the United States, explained yesterday that "some users may experience degradation in service (e.g., connection and email delay) which is currently being resolved by Danger engineers."

The outages affected email, web connections and messaging. However one user foresaw The Rise of The Machines™

"The machines are playing with our heads, their goint to take over. Judgement Day!" he wrote.

The upside of a server model is that users don't lose their data if the device malfunctions. The server also optimizes connections, which is why the device feels zippier than a standard GPRS mobile. The downside is that if the umbilical connection to the internet is lost, there's no local persistent storage. Many users affected couldn't reach their web desktops, either. ®

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