Googrrrrr

Happy Tuesday everyone! To be honest, today is a day I NEEDED to have my morning coffee in my Good Morning mug to remind me!

Okay, it’s not really so bad, I just woke up stuffy and with a tiny bit sore throat. And then Google, Oh Google!

Blogger, BlogSpot, is a Google property. Yes, the people who thought it would be a good idea to put all of my actual files for my photos for everything Google on the brand new addition to their family so that if you cleared things to unclutter the brand new community, you killed all the images in your blog and that’s why I’m still missing a year’s worth of images, is responsible for all the blunders in the world of BlogSpot too.

Let’s start with what it doesn’t do. I am currently migrating away from Google Friend Connect. We all know by now that after tomorrow, GFC will no longer be available to non-Blogger readers, who do follow Blogger blogs. That means those readers have lost the reader they’ve been using and it means that those of us who blog at BlogSpot are potentially losing followers too. I have 74 followers. I have no idea how many will be left on Thursday morning. Thanks, Google!

What makes me nuts is I don’t know for how much longer we’ll have Google Friend Connect as part of our blogging dashboard for the BlogSpot blogs either. And does it really matter? For 2 blogs in particular that I follow, I find out they are posting after I get concerned that they haven’t posted in a while. I just don’t know it because GFC has AGAIN mysteriously deleted them from my blog list. Infuriating.

I’ve done some looking around. I did sign up for Linky followers. You can see that list in the right column. I look at it as a new mug rack for my Information Superhighway coffee shop. The biggest problem I have with Linky as a reader, is it’s so new and not really funded that it doesn’t auto update. If I don’t go to my Linky account and enter in a new post every time I post, followers aren’t alerted. I post once, sometimes twice, a day during the week as well as the White Tornado project and the big scrapbooking project with deadlines looming. Posting that I blogged to Linky every time I post means a blog or two won’t be read or commented on by me. I’m often catching up a day or two as is because of my full days right now. So, if you follow The Chronicles of Nani with the Linky Reader, I will try to update to the most current post when I can, but if it’s been more than 2 days since I posted according to Linky, try me again. There’s probably something new!

As for a blog reader for me, I’m using Bloglines. The biggest pain is that I have to migrate all the blogs I read one at a time, but it’s a quick process to add. If you want to try Bloglines, it’s free to sign up. I use the extension for Firefox which enables me to one click add to my reader. It all takes some figuring out, but once you get the initial set up done, it’s very user friendly, updates automatically and thus far, hasn’t deleted any of the blogs I follow from my reader list. I can read the blog entries from my reader, or click the title to go to the blog itself so I can leave comments. I set this up and use it for free. So far I like it a lot.

Next point of Googrrrr is Capcha. Oh, I hated the type in an incoherent mumbo jumbo of letters to verify your comment before, which is why readers have NEVER had to do that to leave a comment here. I’m not the world’s greatest typist, okay I’m not much of a typist at all, letters that don’t naturally go together in English, or at least French or Italian, mess with my head and that messes with my typing hands. I have to stop and type one letter at a time. Yeesh! Now Google has changed all that. Instead of one group of unrelated gibberish, we get TWO! One may or may not be a word and the other is all warped against a background that makes it unreadable. I know there has been uproar about it. The kicker; if you didn’t have those silly characters turned off in the old dashboard interface, there is no button to opt out of using them that I could find in the new one. Kelly sent me an email asking for help because when she changed layout templates on her blog, Coffee Cup Crafts and Christianity, it automatically gave her the Capcha “protection.” It’s protection from people leaving comments because they get so frustrated with the little game to leave a comment that they don’t.

A few thoughts and tips on the Capcha gibberish. First, the only way I found to get rid of it on the new interface is switch back to the old interface, click the gear in the upper right of the dashboard and select “Old Blogger Interface.” Then click settings and the comments tab. Click “no” for comment verification, then save settings at the bottom. Then return to the dashboard and click “try new Blogger Interface.” If anyone knows how to turn Capcha off in the new Blogger Interface, please leave a comment. You won’t have to type in gibberish to do so.

Google’s filter for spam/bot messages in comments is good. I get very few spam comments because I approve of all my comments before I post them. Originally that was so I could be sure there were no comments on sponsored posts that bash my sponsors or use the post as a free space to advertise a competing product. As I’ve said before, I’ll post anything that respectfully disagrees with ME, but if you’re “dissing” my sponsors, you’re threatening my coffee!  But when I have things in my spam folder, I go in and check them and they're usually right about me not wanting it on my blog.

When choosing between Capcha garbage, approving all comments or taking a chance that the spam filter is working, I will offer this one thing; Capcha doesn’t work. I know I don’t type well. There are plenty of times that I have to retype the password to start my own computer. So I started wondering why I so seldom had to retype the Capcha codes. I’m bent over with my nose in the screen trying to discern what a letter in black on a scratchy black background is and I’m always right! Humph. I tried typing in a few letters that I was sure of wrong, simple “errors” like hitting a g when I knew the letter was h. The comment still posted! I tried it another time using three errors. The comment still posted. I tried making 3 or 4 errors with letter that were nowhere near the correct ones. It still posts. I finally had to retype when I hit all wrong keys, but the right number of characters. That didn’t work. So, I will offer that as irritating as Capcha is, don’t stress; you only have to kinda be right. It does make Capcha look like a bit of a FAIL though, doesn’t it?

I know a lot of people have vowed to not leave a comment when they have to enter a Capcha code. I don’t blame them. It goes back to the limited blog reading and commenting time and the extra time deciphering the code could be spent reading another blog and commenting without the code. I’ll still leave comments with a Capcha code now that I know what a joke it is for blog “security” of any kind. I’m just sure glad my bank’s website is pickier about security.

---PHEW---

Boy I feel a lot better now! Oh, I still have the stuffies and a mildly sore throat, but stabbing Google with a cyber-pitchfork helped.

Barn Charm

If you’re only here to see the barn, thanks for stopping by, but I do hope you’ll consider reading the Capcha rant and suggestions. I know a lot of the barns I visit have the Capcha codes to leave a comment and like I said, I know a lot of people who won’t leave a comment if they have to enter codes to do it.

Isn’t this barn a beauty? It’s in Ottawa County, Ohio, near the Ottawa County Bicentennial barn on State Route 2. I love the rich colors! It looks so dressed up!


See more barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily.

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