Monday, February 19, 2007

Posting Note

I am unable to post directly to Flares tonight, and indeed all day today. Each attempt to log into the website leads me inexorably to a page demanding that I upgrade the whole website to the new format. Evidently our benevolent masters at Google (which owns and data-mines Blogger) have decided that upgrading to the new format is an offer we can't refuse. This post and the previous are being produced instead with the free Windows Live Writer blogging software available for free from Microsoft here. I edit the post and then hit the "publish" button to get it to post to the website, and this still seems to work. There are some other free goodies available on that page as well. Am I the only one having this problem?

15 comments:

chuck said...

Start by deleting all cookies that contain blogger, although it is probably a losing battle. Google is becoming an evil fascist company. Time to move.

chuck said...

Let me expand on that last comment. I don't mind if blogger tells me that old blogger is no longer supported. But the way they are doing things feels like arrogant manipulation and it angers me. As long we can preserve Terrye's stories in the archives, I will be happy to move and contribute some money to accomplish it.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a plan.

Anonymous said...

Having said that, it would be good if all the contributions were preserved and if we jointly supported the new effort.

Unknown said...

This is the first time I have been able to comment in awhile. Evil fascists.

Barry Dauphin said...

Charlie sent an email several weeks ago about a potentially useful format for the design. I'll also contribute if we need to pay the piper and move.

offworld said...

I have set up several blogs and websites (mine for example and that of my second life avatar) based on the Mephisto software. It is far superior, more flexible, faster and easier to use in some ways but would be quite a departure from Blogger. I host them on my own colocated servers. I have heard of others migrating to wordpress.

I have also integrated google analytics into my websites and that is really amazing for tracking traffic, though it is oriented more to ecommerce. There are simple packages like Mint oriented more toward blogs.

Anyway, you can access my expertise via email if desired.

offworld said...

Oh and I will be extracting my old livejournal posts from 2002-2006 and importing them into my Mephisto database. Does blogger make it easy to extract? Probably not. Also, I think blogger has yargb by the short hairs a little because they probably will not issue a 301 redirect should yargb get its own domain name.

truepeers said...

I don't like the way they handled this, i hate having to sign out of one google account and sign on to another in order to write this comment, but what choice is there really but to move to new blogger as we discuss further options?

ambisinistral said...

Ehh.... I'm glad it wasn't me going crazy. I posted my first thread since the Turkmenbashi's demise and it was a nightmare of clicking to get it up.

Metiphisto looks pretty good. I was hoping Global Moxie would get 2.o out of beta soon. Blogs don't have robust enough category and section features to parallel an article and short blog scheme like we considered.

I had the notion we could embed a blog into the sidebar of a a Moxie system and hack the Moxie code to bring in the right blog category (although as busy as i've been that's probably a pipe dream anyways).

Moxie 1 doesn't allow for comments though. 2.0 does, but it is still in beta.

Google is getting more evil by the day.

chuck said...

Our informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil." We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users—as well we should. But being "a different kind of company" encompasses more than the products we make and the business we're building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees.

An explanation for those who might not know why we harp on the word 'evil'.

chuck said...

I notice that wordpress is able to import from old blogger and typepad also, although it seems complicated, and blogs with multiple authors might lose the author association. Pictures will be lost.

Hmmm.

Syl said...

Well, until something is actually decided upon I don't see why we don't move YARGB to the new blogger???

Or am I missing something beyond 'google bad'?

chuck said...

Syl,

Do we have everyone agreeing that they will get a google account? Also, there were problems reported with the new blogger and, as with all new software, it seemed best to wait until things settled. Another drawback at this point would be that export to other products doesn't seem in place yet.

I don't know who can make this decision and I am loathe to just give it a try.

Rick Ballard said...

Pretty quick nobody is going to be able to post. I can't and exdem can't even comment.