MidHudsonNews [dot] com is reporting the video conferencing platform Zoom now in common use by millions nationwide experienced widespread outages on the east coast of the U.S., Mon. Aug. 24. Because many colleges in the Hudson Valley began their fall semester using the distance-learning model and relying on Zoom, the outage affected many students in the region. Down Detector, an online service that tracks issues for various services, showed a major spike in Zoom users unable to log in and join meetings, beginning around 7:00 a.m., Monday. Zoom issued a statement around mid-morning that said, “We have identified the issue causing users to be unable to authenticate to the Zoom website...and unable to start and join Zoom meetings and webinars, and we are working on a fix for this issue.” By 2 p.m., the number of complaints had dramatically declined. Read the full story at MidHudsonNews [dot] com.