If you've got kids, and they're anything like my kids, then Webkinz world is a familiar place. Both of my sons login regularly to feed and play with their virtual pet, and to complete the hourly, daily, and specially highlighted tasks that can earn them KinzCash, with which they can buy their pal anything from food to furniture to medical attention.

So imagine the disappointment when, suddenly and without warning, a visit to the Webkinz URL, http://www.webkinz.com/, started returning an HTML error and wouldn't let them on the page? I mean, it's like the kids' equivalent of Blogger doing down for twelve days!

Anyway, Webkinz technical support here with a solution. Use the following URL:

http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/

Voila! Problem solved.

For the geeky, tech folks out there, here's what's going on: the main URL, www.webkinz.com, is receiving a parameter that tells it what location you're in, for the purposes (I believe) of displaying the site in your native language. But the programming logic that interprets this parameter is not working, causing the "Error on Page" message. By deep linking directly to the United States/English page (www.webkinz.com/us_en/), you bypass this faulty logic and proceed directly to the site itself.

It's been about a week now, and no one at Webkinz seems to have noticed, even though the number of kids logging in has to have dropped dramatically (has everyone figured this out on their own?). As I said earlier, it's like someone decided that customer service and technical support were just going to shutdown around the world, and no one told me...

Anyway, enjoy your Webkinz. I'll accept my fee in KinzCash...