Skype recovered from a major outage on December 22 that left millions of people unable to use the popular Internet communication service.

Skype chief executive Tony Bates said in a blog post and video that at 1700 GMT, some 16.5 million people were online on Skype around the world, about 80 percent of normal traffic.

Bates "apologized profusely" for the technical problems that began Wednesday and "took almost every user offline."

"This has been a very tough 24 hours for many of our users," he said. "Our priority has been to stabilize the problem, and then to begin to restore access to Skype."

Bates said engineers had "stabilized Skype's core functionality -- IM (instant messaging), audio and video -- but it will take longer for us to restore offline IM and group video calling."

He said the company was planning to offer Skype credit vouchers to paying customers inconvenienced by the outage.

In a blog post, Skype explained that the outage was caused by a lack of computers known as "supernodes" and that engineers had created new "mega-supernodes" in a bid to get the service up and running again.

source:http://www.physorg.com

Based on Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For, Number 1 on Fortune's Top 100 Employers list is Google.

Google has a lot of office around the world. Each office has own unique thing and look so cool.

Google Zurich

Reception of Google Zurich.

A slider connects two zones, second floor is a cafeteria and first a gymnasium. Why wait the elevator?

The restaurant serves from lunches to snacks and even complete meals, everything prepared from hands of the employed chefs. If you are vegetarian, no worries, you’ll have a complete menu and a wide salad buffet. All ingredients are produced in the region of the company, nothing is imported.

Kids are welcome in the building and employees that need to business travel can bring their pets. There are no restrictions for kids and the building is equipped with a complete infrastructure for them and babies.

Since food is free and very tasty, snacks in chill moments might increase weight of freshmans. To fix this the first floor is a free gymnasium.

Massage rooms are practically a sanctuary. Tables that vibrate and massage are free. The only thing charged is the service of a massagist – when necessary, they are subsidized by google, making it very cheap. Employees also win ‘Bonus Massage’ in various accasions.

In each floor exist at least one chill spot with free food and beverage for employees. Juices, sodas, coffee (lot of coffee), besides cereals, chocolates, ice creams, french fries and healthier foods too, to compensate, free for all.

Each employee is free to manage their schedule how they prefere. There is not time schedule and in the intervals you can play a match of guitar hero, billard or board games. The schedule for each project must be achieved, but the company doesn’t have problems with this.

This bar, just like the one used by firemans, connects the second floor with a game room. No need for elevator!

Work table are small, but spaces for meetings are wide and thematic. This cabinet for example is a telpher, stays in a thematic room with pictures and objects that reminds a ski station in the Swedish Alps.

If you are asking if in Google people works, this is the answer. It’s a conventional work place, called workshop. Table are freely chosen and it’s not rare to see people switching desks.

The technical service stays in a area of the building with a Hawaiian look and feel. Here you can grab a cable, mouse or whatever you need. There are spaces like this everywhere so Googlers doesn’t have to walk much.

Work places are always wide open, to have privacy in a phone call for example, it’s important to hide in one of the various cabinets distributed all over the place. All walls of the building contains pen and notebooks (paper) fixed – you never know when a good idea might appear!

The water room is a zone for peace and relaxing. There are massaging beds and illumination is minimal. It’s the perfect place for a nap and resting before a meeting.

In this room is prohibited to use a cell phone or laptop. The only allowed activity here is to rest and look the tropical fishes in the aquariums of the wall.

The names of the meeting rooms are taken from tv series and famous movies. These igloos are in an area called Star Wars and are exact copies of refugees used in scientific missions in Antarctic.

Google is more then a company, frequently employees get together to do activities and parties, it’s not uncommon to find groups practicing sports from bike to ski, the company also frees the employees to use 20% of their time in a personal project and further 10% for whatever purpose.

Employees stay very little in their desks, normally they prefere to work with their laptops in groups and in chill rooms like this, favour creativity and sociability.

The Library is one of the most surprising and visited rooms of the building. It’s a chill area with a huge kitchen and virtual cinema. All furniture are recycled, refurbished and bought in second hand stores.