Hi to everyone who was smart enough to bookmark this page, and smart enough to come here when @U2 isn’t working.
@U2 and U2tours.com are both down at the moment. Don’t know why, don’t know when they’ll be back. Both sites sit on the same server (at least until we move @U2 to a separate machine), so that machine must have crashed. All I can do is notify the people who can fix the problem, which I’ve done.
In the meantime, if anything urgent comes up, we still have our little blog. 
And that’s the other reason to start our move toward Blogger — audio posts via a telephone call, posted immediately to the blog.
So there ya go! We’re ready, ready for what’s next — hope you are, too!
One of the reasons we want to start using Blogger is the integration with Flickr’s wonderful photo sharing tools. The photo at right is from my Flickr account and was uploaded last month to my photo collection.
Even cooler is the ability to send images from a cameraphone directly here on the blog via Flickr. That sounds like something we’ll be able to use at events like the “Vertigo’s Eve” party and all year long while U2 is on tour.
Welcome to the @U2 blog!
As times and technology changes, we’re doing our best to keep up. The entire @U2 news staff has access to posting here on the blog, so check back in regularly — you never know who will be posting or what we’ll be posting about. Most of the newsy items will continue to be posted on our home page under “Bits And Bytes”, at least until we move @U2 to a new server and do some other site upgrades.
One of the most common requests (complaints, really) we get is that the news stories written on “Bits and Bytes” are available for a week or so, and then disappear forever. So we see the @U2 blog as one way to solve that problem. At some point, probably several months away, this blog will be integrated into our home page as a replacement for “Bits and Bytes”. Not only will we have archiving at that point, but we’ll also have comments and feedback from @U2 readers right with the Bits and Bytes material.
There are two other reasons we want to move away from the current B&B setup to what a blog offers, and particularly, what Blogger offers: integration with 1) Flickr, and 2) Audioblogger.com. As you’ll see in the next two posts, these two features will give us the opportunity to bring you immediate visual and audio reporting from anywhere we happen to be. I think you’ll like the new opportunities for news reporting we’ll be able to do from here on out.
So, welcome to the newest feature of @U2. Enjoy!
