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Well it's Monday and somehow I still wish it was still last Friday. If it was I'd still be facing the weekend instead of another five days of solid work. That's not to say that I didn't work on the weekend because I certainly did ... but I'd still have a few days to enjoy where I could pretend that I didn't have to work if I didn't want to.

Of course where most of you guys are as I write this it is still the weekend ... well Sunday afternoon so I hope you're enjoying it. I know that there are plenty of people over there with businesses online that aren't so happy right now. It seems that Amazon's S3 servers have gone down again and lots of people don't have pretty pictures on their websites at the moment.

I'm not sure that I understand the reasoning behind a decision to place important parts of your business in the hands of others like that. Especially in the hands of others who run online services because, let's face it, there are just so many things that can go wrong online.

Servers, routers, cables, and a whole lot of other places where failures can occur make running a business online quite risky. So wouldn't you want to keep as much of your online business under the closest possible control?

It looks like a no-brainer to me but for the sake of saving a few bucks it seems that there are plenty of online businesses that are prepared to hand over control of important parts of their business to people like Amazon and their S3 service. Of course these big providers are going to respond quickly to outages but there are times when you just have to wonder if Amazon's employees feel the same sense of urgency about a problem that you would if it involved your business.

And that doesn't just apply to Amazon either, so don't get me wrong, I'm not picking on them. Any big service provider is going to appear to be less than responsive to the concerns of their small customers when something goes wrong.

With Amazon S3 the last time they had a major outage they didn't keep their clients informed at all. This time they have acknowledged that there's a problem but they haven't bothered to tell anyone when the problem is likely to be resolved.

At times like that small clients who are dependant on the failed systems need to be kept informed if for no other reason than to keep their stress levels down. Yet big service providers don't seem to understand that need and that's why you would never catch me using a big provider like Amazon S3. I like to have the ability to pick up the phone and talk to a real person on a help desk that really will be able to help me.

Sure I might have to spend some extra money each month for a service like that but when problems arise I want to know that someone who understands the urgency of getting it fixed is actually working on it.

And I have to say that here in adult online we are well-served by some great hosting companies who do understand the needs of their customers. When things go wrong they're on it straight away and they do keep us informed ... if we ask.

But here on the Web the question of what type of service to use goes well beyond just hosting. There seems to be a real move by some major software companies such as Microsoft and Adobe towards providing people with the opportunity to save on the cost of buying expensive programs by buying access time to online versions of their software.

Now there is no doubt that Microsoft Office and the Adobe suite of programs that so many of us use are very expensive to buy. If you haven't looked at the Adobe site in a while just wander in and see what it costs to buy the full suite of the latest CS software and you'll soon see what I mean.

Look at all the very helpful pieces of online software that Google gives away for free too. Being able to use programs like Google Calendar to control your busy schedule and their other pieces of software to help your business must look very tempting ...

So tempting in fact that the ability to spend a small amount each month to access some of that software online ... or even get it at absolutely no cost will encourage many webmasters who are just starting out ... and some of us who have been around for a while too ... to use them. If you're one of those webmasters then I'd suggest that you take a very cold shower before you make a decision that could have a very adverse affect on your business.

What happens to your business when, at a critical moment, Adobe or Microsoft have some downtime and you can't access those programs? What happens when one of those Google apps suddenly has a glitch and everything you've saved online disappears?

Of course some of you are going to say that things like that won't happen to you but sooner or later it will. One day you could find yourself facing the same problem that one well-known web marketer had last week. He uses Google's Calendar for all his appointments ... his daily schedule for weeks to come was there in Google Calendar ... and one morning when he went to open it to check on the day ahead it was blank. And it took Google over a day to fix the problem.

So think carefully before you place the future of your business in the hands of others who are far removed from the reality of survival at our level. For them an hour or two of downtime might be nothing ... for you it could be the difference between surviving and disappearing without a trace.