Working for an
the folks on Calculated Risk pointed out an elegantly designed web site
as y'all know, IndyMac Bank in good old Pasadena failed the other day - third largest bank failure in the US.
Most individual depositors are of course uninsured, but there are always some careless with their balances, or unlucky in being caught with large funds in transit, so a lot of people want to know if they are actually covered or not
So, the good people at FDIC put up a web site to check the status of your account
it is nicely designed, fairly clean code, little java script, takes you on for the information you need, no M$ crap code slowing you down.
And, it is at www4.fdic.gov - different server, not even same IP block - nicely spreading the load, in case it gets large.
IndyMac had tens of thousands of customers, hundreds of them might be looking up their accounts at the same time...
And, to get to you account, you go through a simple, easy to use, intuitive drop-down menu - which lists IndyMac Bank as its sole entry.
Nicely expandable code.
Web site designed for ease of update, ability to cope with large surge in load, and very easily and rapidly expandable in a backward compatible fashion.
Nicely done.
Technology
Comments
Assuming it's real (websites asking for account numbers trip all sots of alarms ;) ) I think that might be unprecendented - I thought there was a Rule in the Big Book of Rules which specified that governments and major corporations aren't allowed to produce decent and useable websites!
Posted by: Andrew | July 21, 2008 6:21 AM
Me no spell gud on monday :(
Posted by: Andrew | July 21, 2008 6:24 AM
Well, it is linked to from the www.fdic.gov website, so if it is a hack, it is a very good hack.
Link is on their frontpage under "What's New" right now.
Google's website is rather elegant and clean. There are always exceptions.
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | July 21, 2008 9:53 AM
"Most individual depositors are of course uninsured"
Insured?
Posted by: Dave Bacon | July 21, 2008 1:03 PM
oops. yes.
must have been opposite-weekend...
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | July 21, 2008 10:16 PM