April 24, 2006

Blogger is annoying me...

It just can't seem to push the posts through. This is just a post designed to ram the preceding posts through, not that I think it'll work... just that I feel like doing something.

UPDATE: Yay! It's back!

32 comments:

Icepick said...

FWIW, I didn't see any new posts until right now (1:17 PM Eastern) when I hit the refresh key on my browser. Just clicking onto the site wasn't sufficient.

Jennifer said...

Hey it worked! I haven't been seeing new posts or comments all day until just now. Just clicking onto the site worked for me. This time.

Ann Althouse said...

Yeah, tell me about it. Imagine how many times I tried refreshing...

ElisaC said...

Blogger isn't working for me yet. Have been trying to publish on 2 different blogs all morning.

I may use the newbie session at BlogHer to learn how to convert my Blogger blogs to word press or typepad or something else.

I'm sick of this!

Freeman Hunt said...

The posting functions are still running very slowly for me. I hate that.

Oh well. A small price to pay for free hosting, free bandwidth, free tools, and ease of use.

Ed said...

You might want to bookmark status.blogger.com and check at times like this. It took them a few hours to post, but it's useful to know it's all of blogspot, not just your blog.

Downtime tonight 4 pm PDT to 4:45 pm PDT, too.

Ann Althouse said...

The reason I don't change is that the thing changed to can just as well have problems. It's not about paying or not paying for the service. I do not trust the alternatives. At least Google is a big operation that will have to succeed.

I knew all along that it wasn't just me. I used the Blogger Help Group which was much better at getting info out than the status page.

As far as using students to help me with my blog -- I have tech people at the Law School who are excellent. But the problem is that my blog isn't all law, and I have ads, so I need to keep some separation between the blog and the Law School, even though part of this blog is regarded as part of my job. Anyway, the law school licenses Movable Type and provides for blogging on the Law School website, but I don't want to be there.

You point out the Glenn Reynolds has his own site, but why is his wife using Blogger?

reader_iam said...

It's been annoying for quite a while today, for sure. What's weird is that it wasn't even consistently weird, based on my access to two different blogger blogs.

Eh, well. I ended up with time to start listening to your latest podcast.

Sanjay said...

Does that mean one can,. by commenting on this post alone, comment simultaneously on the preceding n posts? Is there a linkage out there? Surely some clever Althouse reader can do that.

Eli Blake said...

Well, blogger is free, so even though on my blog I've gotten frustrated a few times, I always keep in mind that for a free service, it's not bad.

And yes, thanks to blogger, you actually CAN get 'something for nothing.'

Doug said...

Ann,

I moved off Blogger earlier this month, partly because of outages and partly because I am able to do more with a Wordpress blog than I ever could with Blogger, and everything else is alot easier.

I look at it this way. Its great that Blogger is free, but in some sense you get what you pay for. What incentive does Google really have to provide reliable service to people who aren't paying them anything and who don't generate any revenue for them ? Very little I would think.

I got my own domain and got a great hositng deal from LRE Hosting and I haven't had anything to complain about.

Ann Althouse said...

I don't buy the excuse "you get what you pay for" for Google. Google makes money. It has a business model, and offering things free is part of it. Using the free service enhances their business, so in that sense we users are paying. They owe us proper service. Don't make me say this again!

s1c said...

Tell me about it! I get up early to post on the previous days red sox blue jays game, I post early the next morning before I start work at 5:45 a.m. Nothing, nothing, nothing, just ruined my whole day knowing that I had a post out there sitting in limbo. grrrr

SippicanCottage said...

I felt a great disturbance in the force; as if a million voices had cried out "Bush is Hitler" in terror, and then were suddenly silenced.

Doug said...

I understand that Google has a business model that includes giving away free stuff, but I've never quite understood where Blogger fits into that......they don't make users run Google ads on their blogs, for example, so I've never quite understood how it figures into their plan.

I agree they owe customers something, but the question is what ? The Blogger user interface, for example, doesn't have half the features you can find on Wordpress or Moveable Type, and there doesn't seem to me to be any reason for them to upgrade it at this point.

It was the u/i, and the features and add-ons you can add to Wordpress that were my main reason for leaving. Publishing in Wordpress is much easier, IMO.

Anonymous said...

Which blogger in particular? There's a whole bunch that annoy me.

Freeman Hunt said...

I understand that Google has a business model that includes giving away free stuff, but I've never quite understood where Blogger fits into that......they don't make users run Google ads on their blogs, for example, so I've never quite understood how it figures into their plan.

Blogads are optional, but this helps to draw people into using Blogger. Once a person creates any sort of traffic presence for himself, he's more inclined to leverage that presence for income by incorporating Blogads. Thus, Google makes a lot of money off of the pay-per-click advertising by simply providing content distribution and without having to create content by itself. I admire this model. Very efficient, I think.

Freeman Hunt said...

Oops, I mean AdSense not Blogads.

Heh, I bet Google wishes it owned Blogads.

Ann Althouse said...

Nice of Quxxo to show up and say something that's both short and funny.

Wickedpinto: Would it kill you to spell my name right?

Doug: I've used Movable Type (guest-blogging on Instapundit) and I didn't notice much difference. And Google will work on its product, offering new features. They have so much invested here. I'm betting on them. Freeman Hunt is exactly right about how they make money, even though AdSense is voluntary. I'm not using AdSense, but I'm still helping Blogger get more people and many of them will use AdSense (and make almost nothing from it, while Google pockets everything). I am SO not letting them off the hook.

Dan from Madison said...

Ann - there was a scheduled shutdown of blogger at 6pm central time. I noticed it when I put up a post earlier today. There was a notice right when you logged in to create a post.

Doug said...

Ann,

I can't speak to MT as I've never used it. Wordpress has a more featured rich-text editor, allows you to create categories, integrated trackbacks, etc.

Its up to you, though, and who am I to argue with the success you've obviously had ?

Ann Althouse said...

I think there is a lot to be said for keeping it simple. Note the "Minima" template. I'd like something custom made, but not more complicated, and I don't care enough to have hired someone yet to do a custom design (or to teach myself how to do it on my own). I'm concerned with the writing and the photos or drawings within the posts. The shell is just something that should be unobtrusive and reliable.

Icepick said...

QUXXO! When are you going to start posting to your blog? AND WHY WON'T YOU OPEN COMMENTS!

I WANT MY QUXXO.BLOGGER.COM!

QUIT HOLDING US HOSTAGE!

FREE YOUR BLOG!
FREE YOUR BLOG!

Icepick said...

And no, I'm not joking. I've already linked to your blog, Quxxo. Why won't you post?

Ann Althouse said...

I'll back off the name-spelling thing then and move on to the sense-making thing.

Bradley J. Fikes said...

Ann, thanks for mentioning your Blogger problems. My blog is less than two weeks old, and I didn't know what was going on this morning. Now I know what sites to check for status info.

Maxine Weiss said...

The Law School should have some level of sponsorship. You can still have the separation and they can have a little disclaimer about none of your opinions necessarily reflect their views.

I'd think they'd want to get in on this, and you'd want to get financial backing.

Let them invest in you. I'd venture a guess none of the other professors are as popular/well-known.

And with the future goal of being published......they'd want in on that.

Peace, Maxine

Ann Althouse said...

Maxine: It's a state university. There are complications when it comes to talking about politics, especially particular candidates. I don't want that inhibition in the picture. You know, the university computers go down sometimes too!

But anyway, the school does give me recognition for the blogging. I do not feel unsupported. Not at all. There's interest in starting a law school faculty blog, and I'd be involved in that, though I have reservations about whether it will work/be good.

High Desert Wanderer said...

I moved to a WordPress site from Blogger late last year. Got tired of the random problems with Blogger. All the problems I have now are self inflicted.

Blogger to WordPress was actually quite easy. Everything transfered, no problems.

reader_iam said...

I'll back off the name-spelling thing then and move on to the sense-making thing.

Could that be the funniest flip-off line you've ever written, at least in this sort of context?

If not, damn close.

DavetheF said...

Blogger can be very annoyingly constipated, but it does have its good points; it's nice for html illiterates like me and the templates are pretty.

DavetheF said...

Oddly enough, I get gratuitous ads on my photographs on Flickr, which is google, right? A seaside picture got some fish oil pitch, and there are other rather humorously odd associations that seem to be sparked by my witty captions.