Mona Lisa causes EU online library to crash

Well it looks like the love of art and history is still alive and well.

That is cool that they got this together. They should be excited how popular it is and was and will be once they fix it to withstand the traffic.

That little bitch!

"On Thursday, most hits came from Germany, followed by France and Spain.

However, 4% of online requests about Europe's cultural heritage came from the United States. "

Art and culture in America 4%? that sucks! I would love to go to that site but guess I will wait for now.

what a great project and that fact that it crashed shows how much something like this is needed

4%... perhaps because it was widely publicized in Europe and perhaps not at all here?

Though I will be the first to admit that Americans are woefully uneducted, and much more so when it comes to appreciating the arts, this may be a bit unfair. If the Smithsonian did something similar, would European participation be any higher?

I hope they pimp out their servers so it loads in lightening quick times. It's refreshing to see things like this happen. Going to an art gallery, as lovely as it is, can be time consuming, giving people the opportunity to see the art via the internet is a great move that'll only get more people interested in art.

I managed to get a looksee on it when it was launched, and ended up having access to lot's of what I believe was the not so public archive's, especially on Mona Lisa, John the Baptist, Joan of Arch, but I didn't have any permission's to copy or save anything because when I tried it just kept giving me protocol blah, and even telling me I wasnt authorised to even be looking at the stuff and I crashed out several time's, which was very frustrating, then they go and shut off the site within a couple of hour's of trying to get back into the same archive's.
Maybe they hadn't closed off some secret stuff area's of their system, and only realised afterward's when everyone was hunting down the same avenue's for historical link's and bypassing their security system's that they then realised they'ed buggered up somewhere, lol.

It's a shame that it's down. I'd like to pay a visit to the site once everything is up and running again.

I wonder whence the traffic was coming, and which particular resources were getting the most attention. (In fairness to Mona, the article doesn't get specific. I mean, it could have been the Venus of Urbino.)

There is hope for society after all!

The smile to (re)launch a thousand websites!

I love that the Internet is so incredibly democratizing. This shows just how big a demand for something like this is.

I feel proud to be one of the millions interested enough to cause this crash. It sounds like an amazing site, hope it opens up soon.

Talk about breaking the camera. I'm not that surprised though, she's not that good looking.

It was the Russians in a DOS attack! ahhh!! run!

Can't wait to check it out....it's a great idea. Other countries should be following suit.

Sounds like a ping attack. Any one agree or do just think its overwhelming people visiting?

that is amazing. I didn't know they were even planning this! So I almost creamed my pants twice.. once from reading that the EU created this and again when I read the overwhelming interest!
I'll certainly go there when it reopens!

How could they not have anticipated that there would be a huge amount of interest in this project? It's such a fantastic idea, it's a real pity it's crashed already. Better luck next time.

Can you imagine, 10 million hits at one time for one phrase....amazing.