Appealing A Copyright / DMCA Violation

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we see victims of Copyright / DMCA Violation action, asking how to get their blogs or posts restored.

In the past, many blog owners, who did not check their email carefully, or who had even setup Blogger accounts not based on actual email addresses, were frequently surprised by DMCA takedowns.

Owners of blogs subject to copyright violation action should see two effects.

1. A large DMCA Complaint alert, at the top of the dashboard.
2. Specific posts in violation will revert to Draft status, rather than being deleted.

Rather than having the entire blog, or individual posts, deleted (and having no idea which post(s) in the blog might be a problem), the offending posts can be found reasonably easily, in Draft status on the "Edit Posts" menu.

Note that team blog ownership may complicate visibility of the DMCA Complaint alert. And alternate blog deletion scenarios may be present, even with a blog cited for DMCA Violation.

Owners of blogs affected can research and appeal the violations. Copyright / DMCA complaints, sent by Google, are forwarded to the DMCA Complaints Clearinghouse, ChillingEffects (now called "Lumen"), automatically. The blog owners needing to see the details, and file an appeal, will find promptly updated details, by searching for their blog's URL at lumendatabase.org.

Appeals may be submitted using Google Help: Removing Content From Google.

• Select "Blogger/BlogSpot".
• Select "I have a legal issue that is not mentioned above".
• Select "I would like to file a counter notice ...".
• Select "Yes".

With the problem content saved as Draft, the blog owner is able to simply edit then republish the Draft, when convenient. If the content dispute is not resolved - or at least successfully appealed within ChillingEffects / Lumen - it's likely that the legal owner of the content will refile the DMCA complaint.

Blog owners who repeatedly publish problem content are subject to deletion of the blog, and later the Blogger account.

Google+ Comments, And Missing Dashboard Options

As Google+ Comments become more widely accepted in Blogger blogs, we see some confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about comment moderation options, and missing dashboard features.

Besides the frequently seen confusion about ownership and visibility, of comments published under Google+ Comments, some blog owners become concerned when they cannot find the expected dashboard settings and utilities.

Google+ Comments use community based moderation - and don't need dashboard, or email, based moderation by the blog administrators. The Blogger dashboard is a bit simpler, with Google+ Comments in use.

Google+ Comments are much simpler to setup and to maintain, than Blogger Native Comments.

With Google+ Comments, you have just one setting, in the dashboard "Posts, comments and sharing" Settings page.

Use Google+ Comments on this blog

With Google+ Comments enabled, you have one option, in Settings - "Posts and comments".

Comment Location

Everything else is decided, for you.

With Google+ Comments, everybody reading your blog - in your Circles or outside - can designate any given comment as spam.

Report spam or abuse

This option is available, on every visible comment, to every viewer, equally. A comment, published as "Public", can be moderated by people not logged in to Google+.

The blog owner (administrator) simply has no need to moderate Google+ Comments. Neither moderation related options, under Settings - "Posts and comments" - nor the Comments dashboard wizard, or Comments moderation email - are necessary.

The owner has no special ability to moderate - or even to view - all comments published against the blog.

Setting up Google+ Comments is pretty simple.

• In the dashboard "Posts, comments and sharing" Settings page, select “Use Google+ Comments on this blog”.
• In the dashboard "Posts, comments and sharing" Settings page, select an option for “Comment Location”.
• You’re done.

Now, get into your Google+ Stream, and start reading and resharing comments and posts.

Country Code Alias Redirection, And GeoLocation

Occasionally, we see signs of confusion, from people who understand Country Code Alias Redirection, in general.

I live in Hungary - but I am reading blogs with the ".sk" suffix!

This blog reader knows about alias redirection - but does not understand why he is seeing redirection for Slovakia (".sk"), instead of Hungary (".hu").

Not all Blogger blog owners or readers understand that Country Code Alias Redirection depends upon the ability to determine the geographical location of each blog reader.

Country Code Alias Redirection uses geolocation, to identify the location of each reader.

Some smaller ISPs, located near a country border, may actually get service through a larger ISP in another country. Customers of the smaller ISP may appear, through geolocation, to reside in the other country.

This can be an unfortunate problem, with country code alias redirection, and with language detection. People located in one country, or reading a different language, may not appreciate the confusion which follows.

Thanks to domain based filtering, this may cause a security issue for some blog owners, near country borders, who may not be able to maintain / publish their blogs.

Unfortunately, geolocation, using the Internet Address (aka "IP" address), will never return precise results. Some readers will always show up, in the various visitor logs, under a different location than geography would have them.

Renewing Your Expired Custom Domain Registration

Some Blogger blog owners, having overlooked the reality of custom domain renewal, discover their mistake too late.

We see various queries, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, about domain registration, after it's too late.

My blog now displays a search page! Have I been hacked?

or maybe

My blog is showing content that my kids should not see!

The possibilities, for renewing a domain registration after expiration, will depend upon how the domain registration was originally purchased.

Domains purchased directly from a registrar - whether using eNom, GoDaddy, or a third party registrar, will have to be renewed directly from the registrar - and renewal after expiration will depend upon registrar policy.

Once you purchase domain registration from a registrar, you are on your own.

If you do not renew registration on time, depending upon the registrar, the domain may be changed to point to a domain parking server, where the registrar will serve ads. Some registrars will serve ads which you, or your readers, won't appreciate.

If the domain registration has expired, and the domain was purchased from Blogger / Google, you may be able to submit late payment, and renew now.

If your original charge fails and you’re unable to resolve the form of payment issue within 7 days, you may still be within the grace period for renewals. If you’re still within 19 days of the renewal date, you can try again using any Google Wallet account by visiting http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/renew-domain/primary-domain-name, where primary-domain-name is the domain name you are trying to renew.

In some cases, once late payment has been processed, your registration may resume, with no long lasting ill effects. In other cases, you may end up having to setup the DNS addresses.

If you wait past the grace period, you will have to pay more than the original registration fee. If you wait past the redemption period, you have to pay substantially more - if the domain is available.

The best renewal experiences, of course, start with renewal before expiration.

>> Top

Almost Nobody Controls Their Own Computer

This month, we're seeing reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about problems uploading pictures (images, photos) to our blogs.

The monolithic advice, provided by Blogger

Use Draft Blogger!

suggests that Blogger Engineering knows about the problem, and has a quick fix in their beta testing environment, Blogger In Draft. Some blog owners have found this to be effective - as a short term solution.

Not everybody, however, finds all Blogger released fixes to be consistently effective. Many times, this is because very few people control their own computers.

Outside of corporate owned computers, managed under a very restrictive corporate security policy, no two computers in the world are identical.

Every computer owner has different preferences for security software.

Every different computer owner has their own opinions what products should be used, to keep their own computers safe from malicious influence. Most security products contain filters.

Different filters, in different security software, block access, cookies, and scripts.

Filters can block both cookies and scripts, essential components in Blogger code. Many filters use hashed values, known as "signatures", to index their databases of problem cookies and scripts. The filters are updated automatically, by the vendors of the software.

Filters occasionally contain signature references which cause Blogger cookies and scripts to be blocked. Other filters can block website access. This is why many owners go from "It's working.", to "It's broken!" - and "I never changed anything!!!".

Many different security products contain different filters.

There are many differing security products - in the browsers, on the computers, and even on the networks - used by the different owners. Almost everybody uses some security products - or their computers become part of the botnet universe, and help the bad guys to serve us our hacking and spam.

You have to choose - and every choice has its own consequences.

Here is the reality. You choose.

• Use various software products - and your computer becomes controlled by security product vendors, and updated automatically.
• Use no security products - and your computer becomes controlled by hackers and spammers, and updated automatically.

It's Hobson's Choice, for sure. Even so, I would choose, and recommend, the former - but choose your security, carefully. And, please prepare to learn as you publish.

---

Every #Blogger blog publisher, who owns a computer, has a choice, for giving control of their computers. You can either use security software, and give control of your computer to the publishers of the security software - or not use security software, and give control of your computer to the hackers.

I strongly recommend the former choice.

Use Draft Blogger To Diagnose Or Solve Problems, Selectively

Right now, we have several different problems, being reported in quantity, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

• Image / video upload.
• Stats, and the "Don't track your own pageviews" option.
• Some specific bX codes, and miscellaneous network issues.

Recently, the problems with image and video uploads were reported to Blogger Support - and eventually, we got a monolithic response

Use draft.blogger.com.

In other cases, we've been told

Stop using Draft Blogger!

The contents of Draft Blogger, and its differences from Production Blogger varies, at the convenience of Blogger Engineering.

Any time that you use Draft Blogger ("draft.blogger.com"), to solve a problem, you are using whatever tweaks Blogger Engineering is currently developing or testing, before deploying the necessary changes into Production Blogger ("www.blogger.com").

Draft Blogger may contain one solution for you - and dozens of challenges.

You may use Draft Blogger to work around one problem (for instance, Image / video uploads) - but find yourself also subject to whatever changes Blogger Engineering is testing which are needed to support the latest update to Chrome or to Internet Explorer. If you're using Internet Explorer, you may find yourself subject to changes necessitated by Microsoft, in their latest security fix update.

If you use Draft Blogger, and find your recent problem with Image Uploads solved, you may find Stats, or Comments, to be problematic now. Or maybe the Template Editor, and the Preview feature, may stop working.

If you have a problem with Blogger, and you are advised to use Draft Blogger for that specific problem, you will do well to use a second browser (or an Incognito / Private window) - and to clear cache, cookies, and sessions, before starting.

If you must use Draft Blogger, use if for specific tasks.

If your problems are confined to one or two specific Blogger features, you'd do well to use your Draft Blogger session for those specific features - and continue with Production Blogger for other features, using two browsers / browser windows. Conversely, if Draft Blogger is prescribed to solve a general problem, such as the (long ago) well known white screen of death, you'll have to use Draft Blogger only.

In either case, I strongly suggest that you always first clear cache, cookies, and sessions, and restart the browser, whenever changing between Draft and Production Blogger. If you have cookies or scripts from Draft Blogger cached in your browser, and you switch to Production Blogger (or vice versa), you may get unwanted results.

If clearing cookies may present a problem because of other, non Google applications, Use Draft Blogger for all Blogger / Google activities, from the new browser / browser window (again, after you clear cache, cookies, and sessions) - and run non Google applications from the current browser / browser window.

Using Draft Blogger selectively limits exposure, after your fix goes into production.

A good reason for limiting your use of Draft Blogger is to reduce your exposure, after Blogger decides that the new problem fix - that you're helping them to test - is stable. Soon, they will move the new fix into Production Blogger. The next major change following that may, or may not, be applied to Draft Blogger.

If you, later, find yourself asking why the newest Blogger update does not work for you, you may be asked

Are you using Draft ("draft.blogger.com"), or Production ("www.blogger.com"), Blogger?

If the people trying to diagnose your next problem don't think to ask that question, you may find yourself waiting, helplessly, for the next Blogger fix. Blogger may apply an emergency fix - but overlook Draft Blogger, when applying the fix.

So use Draft Blogger, if it helps you - but keep track of it, as you use it - and know how to get out of Draft, when necessary. Or maybe, you'll be advised to try differential testing, to diagnose your next problem.

Posts Automatically Resaved As Draft May Involve DMCA Complaints

Occasionally we see the report, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

My posts keep getting saved as Draft, after I publish!

If this is not caused by owner action, it's someimes the result of a DMCA Complaint, placed against the blog, citing specific posts as containing scraped content.

Blogs which consist largely of content extracted from various blogs and websites are vulnerable to DMCA Violations complaints. This is an alternate result of "scraped / syndicated" content, in abuse related deletions.

• Content scraped (stolen), or syndicated (copied, with permission), from other blogs / websites. Content scraped or syndicated to other blogs / websites.

Part of Blogger abuse handling includes processing DMCA Violation complaints.

If a complaint is received from ChillingEffects, the DMCA Violations clearinghouse which Google uses, the posts mentioned in the complaint will be taken offline and saved as Draft.

The owner(s) of any offending blog(s) should be sent email notifying of the complaint, and should also observe a dashboard notice. Thanks to anonymity, and multiple account ownership, some blog owners will see neither advice.

The first symptom of DMCA complaint, as observed by a blog administrator, frequently involves posts having been mysteriously saved as Draft. To identify any DMCA Violations, the ChillingEffects database is searched. Finding a database entry mentioning the blog, the owner must then appeal the complaint.

The owner of any post saved as Draft can always publish the post again, with no long term effects. If the complaint is valid, however, it's likely that any posts simply republished will generate a second DMCA complaint from the offended website owners.

When you include any substantial amount of quoted content from other blogs and websites, it's generally a good idea to request permission from the source websites - and to respectfully comply with their requirements, when composing your posts.

Owners of blogs repeatedly cited for DMCA Violations, and not successfully appealed, will eventually find their Blogger accounts locked or deleted.

>> Top

No Visitor Log Or Meter Is 100% Accurate

Confusion about Stats, and referer spam inaccuracy, is expressed, weekly.

You never have a real idea as to how many real visitors view your blog, since these referrer spammers are in fact identified by their name, and their number of visits on the Stats "referring URL" list.

Referer spam inaccuracy is possibly the best known - but certainly not the only - Stats problem, discussed daily in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

Stats is a controversial Blogger feature, because of various perceived inaccuracies - but even so, is more useful than competing products, because of its unique design.

Not every blog owner realises that all visitor logs / meters provide displays and statistics, which contain known inaccuracies. The fact is, no visitor log / meter can ever be 100% accurate.

Many blog owners see the tabular design of some visitor log / meter displays, and treat the various displays as different views in a balance sheet.

Some blog owners download details and statistics from the visitor log / meter of choice, and save the contents in logs or spreadsheets. Some like to reconcile details in one spreadsheet page, against summary totals in another. Others may use multiple visitor logs / meters.

Comparing aggregated details to totals - or comparing figures between different products, they will discover discrepancies.

• Cache related deflated counts.
• Daily count reset time skew.
• Detail to Totals reconciliation.
• Main page / post page reconciliation.
• Owner activity inflated counts.
• Page load impatience deflated counts.
• Referer spam inflated counts.
• Security filter deflated counts.

Without understanding the origin of the various discrepancies, some blog owners will become enraged, and accuse the various log / meter suppliers of providing defective or inaccurate software.

Some of these discrepancies, unfortunately, are inherent in every visitor counter, log, or meter.

Cache deflated counts Every visitor log or meter which counts visitors, or records visitor activity, based on access to a web server, will be inaccurate. Some people will use browsers and computers which cache heavily. Others will use browsers or computers which are subject to upstream cache. In either case, content which is cached - and when cache has not expired - will not require server access, and won't be counted by server access that never happens.

Daily count reset time skew Every visitor log or meter which provides totals for any delimited time period (day, week, or month) resets the totals at some time during the day, for all blogs / websites. Since most countries subject their inhabitants to a twice yearly clock reset (aka "daylight savings time"), no inhabitant of the world will see the totals, in their visitor log or meter, reset consistently at their own local midnight.

Everybody must accept the reality of seeing the totals reset at some time other than midnight, at some time of the year. Some blog owners will see a skew of up to 24 hours, at some time of the year.

Different products will reset at different times of the day, because not all products reset at midnight GMT. Comparing daily totals, between services, will produce discrepancies.

Detail to Totals reconciliation Stats provides breakdowns of pageview counts, by browser / computer operating system, by country, and by page / post - but limits the breakdown displays to the 10 most popular entries, in each list.

When trying to reconcile totals of (the 10 most popular) posts, against totals by browser or country, discrepancies are unavoidable. With any blog of any appreciable size (more than 10 posts), or reader population dispersion (more than 10 countries), any attempt to total up any breakdown will be a waste of time.

Main page / post page reconciliation Many visitor activity logs provide a breakdown by individual post (page). Since many Blogger blogs publish post content in the index pages (archives, label indexes, and home / main page), pageview totals will never equal counts aggregated for all displayed (10 most popular) posts (pages).

Owner activity inflated counts Every visitor log or meter will have problems with owners of blogs with low visitor activity, who may consider their own activity to generate inaccurate counts. There are workarounds for this inflation - but no workaround is 100% effective, persistent, or transparent.

Page load impatience deflated counts Every visitor log or meter which uses installed code will contribute to page load delay - and be subject to impatient visitors, who may close a browser tab or window because they get tired of waiting for the complete page to load.

Referer spam inflated counts Stats is subject to inflated counts, from people who use referer spam to attract visitors to their blogs and websites.

Security filter deflated counts Every visitor log or meter which uses cookies or JavaScript, in the process of recording visitor activity, will lack some detail. Everybody who reads your blog will use a computer which is protected against malicious code from unknown websites. Almost every visitor log or meter, other than Stats, will be subject to some security filter (blocking cookies and / or scripts) based deflation.

The bottom line here is that there will never be any visitor log or meter which will be 100% accurate, when loaded into a spreadsheet, and rows and columns are tabulated, and totaled. Every blog and website owner has to understand that visitor logs and meters are subject to some inaccuracies, and simply use the log / meter on their blog to identify trends, and to proactively watch for problems.

Problems Verifying Domain Ownership, With Bad Domain DNS Addresses

We're seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from blog owners who started with bogus DNS addresses - and who can't retrieve the required verification address from the custom domain Publishing wizard.

What is my second "CNAME"?

or

The domain isn't working, and the Publishing wizard isn't helping!

These blog owners have domains with bogus DNS addresses, don't understand their mistakes - and are not being given the required advice from the Publishing wizard, how to fix their problems.

In some cases, the blog owner will see a well known "Error 12" (or similar alias error).

In other cases, the Publishing wizard will display incorrect advice, that the blog is now published to the domain. In neither case, however, will the domain actually work - even if the second "CNAME" advice is presented by the Publishing wizard, and verification is properly installed by the blog owner.

Sometimes, the domain may have published, without fanfare.

Alternately, the blog owner may await the second "CNAME" in vain, because the domain is already published. Once the DNS addresses are corrected, the domain may work. Simply given advice to clear browser cache, the owner may find the domain operational.

It appears that the Blogger script, in the Publishing wizard, that verifies proper domain publishing, has malfunctioned - and is not reliable.

This problem, plus inherent confusion over how to properly setup a domain, even after reading the Blogger supplied instructions, is leading to some confusion by some blog owners.

A long time ago, Blogger provided "Buy a domain" for custom domain setup.

Long ago, Blogger blogs could be published by any blog owner who could provide the required payment medium, using the extremely popular "Buy a domain for your blog" wizard. This lead to a population of blog owners who have no idea how non BlogSpot URLs are setup - or what their roles are, in setting up and maintaining non BlogSpot URLs.

With the discontinuing of "Buy a domain", many Blogger blog owners, anxious to setup a second domain - or maybe eager to emulate a family member or friend, who previously setup a domain using "Buy a domain" - are left out of luck. It's possible that Google Domains, currently available only in the USA, may provide a replacement for "Buy a Domain" - as it becomes more available.

It's also possible that the domain verification script, like other essential Blogger processes, is being interfered with by improperly setup security accessories, on the computers used by the unfortunate blog owners.

With all due respect to Blogger Help: How do I use a custom domain name for my blog?, the most reliable domain publishing experience will always start with properly setup DNS addresses, before using Publishing.

There are only three DNS address models, that are truly valid.

There are three valid DNS address models, for custom domain publishing. The owners need to understand how to setup the DNS addresses, properly.

All advice offered to you, the blog owner, about alternate, equally effective DNS addressing setups, is wrong.

If you are given advice about solutions that "work just as well", ask for advice elsewhere - or ask in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?. If your registrar does not support the required DNS addresses, either move the domain to a different registrar, or setup third party DNS hosting.

The sanity which you save may be your own.

Make A Contact Page In Your Blog

When it comes to encouraging visits to your blog, by people who need help, a properly presented "Contact" form is a very useful feature.

Some time ago, I used a comment form, and a specially written post, "Contact Me" (titled "Leave Comments Here"), to provide private contact. For this blog, with comment moderation before publishing, I simply read the unpublished comments published against my post "Contact Me", without publishing them.

Time moved on, however - and various changes made by Blogger made my unpublished comments based contact form less useful.

Recently, Blogger released a new blog accessory - their "Contact" gadget.

Just over a month ago, I added a Contact gadget to this blog, and made it display in the same way as my Topics index displays. Look in the Link Bar at the top of this page. To the right of "Topics", you'll see "Guestbook" and "Contact".

Like my labels gadget ("Topics"), I made my "Contact" gadget display as part of a static page, and positioned the gadget in the main part of the blog.

My Contact gadget, like my Labels gadget, displays as part of a static page, and is seen in the same location as the posts would be seen. This gives the Contact gadget the appearance of having its own page.

---

Note: You may find it easier get this working with the blog using a non dynamic template, with the Contact gadget initially located in the sidebar.

---

This is a surprisingly simple task, and makes a good demonstration of a separately documented technique, conditionally displaying a template object.

1. Publish a static page, "Contact Me".
2. Add a Contact gadget using the "Layout" wizard "Add a Gadget" - and position the new gadget above "Blog Posts".
3. Add a CSS rule, using "Add CSS" in the Template Designer, displaying the Contact gadget with the static page just created.

Having done that, I invite you to examine the results.

Google+ Comments And Private Blogs

Recently, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, we've seen signs that Blogger considers Google+ Comments and privately published blogs mutually exclusive options.

How do I enable Google+ Comments?

and, alternately

I am trying to change our blog to private - but no options come up under "Permissions" - "Blog Readers". There is no "Edit" link.

These blog owners are discovering that, though one of the earlier publicised features of Google+ was the ability to distribute a substitute private blog posts feed, a private blog comments feed won't be offered.

As we've discovered, and written about, various deficiencies and problems involving Google+ Comments, Blogger Engineering has been busily disabling some dashboard settings, to prevent use of incompatible blog features.

With Google+ comments enabled, you get a notice under Permissions.

Under Settings - Basic - Permissions, we see

Google+ Comments enabled. Learn more

In this case, "Blog Readers" shows as "Public", and there is no "Edit" link to designate readers.

With a private blog, you get a notice on the dashboard Google+ page.

Conversely, for a blog which uses Blogger Native Comments, and made Private, we look under the dashboard "Google+" page, and see the unpleasant advice.

Google+ Comments are unsupported on non-public blogs and blogs marked as containing adult content. Learn more

In this case, the option to "Use Google+ Comments on this blog" is grayed out, and the check box is inoperative.

We are advised to use Google+, to distribute private blog post content.

Long ago, Google+ was recommended as a way to distribute blog post updates, for private blogs - making up for Blogger's inability to provide newsfeeds for private blogs.

It appears that the benefit of Google+ only extends to posts, for private blogs. Private blog posts can be distributed using Google+ - but private blog comments will be limited to using Blogger Native Comments.

---

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2014/01/private-blogs-and-google-comments.html

Visibility Of Google+ Comments Is Similar To Participation In Real Life Conversations

One of the more intriguing issues about Google+ Comments, as seen in in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, comes from people who can't see all of the comments, posted against their blog.

If the link below the post says "4 Comments", why can't I see all 4 comments?

These people don't understand that the caption ("4 Comments", in this example) refers to the total number of comments which refer to the blog.

1. Comments published to "Public".
2. Comments not published to "Public", by people in their Circles.
3. Comments not published to "Public", by people not in their Circles.

The blog owner, and the various readers of the blog, can each see the caption "4 Comments".

Individual viewing of Google+ Comments is limited.

The individual ability, to see the comments themselves, is limited to comments which are part of Groups #1 and #2. Comments in Group #3 (or the names of the commenters) are not visible, for each person viewing the blog.

For any blog with significant reader population, there will always be readers who are unknown to the owner - and whose comments will be invisible to the owner (and to various readers).

Google+ Comments mimic real life conversation visibility.

Google+ Comments are based on Google+ Stream posts - and Google+ Stream posts are based on real life.

We, individually, hear about very few of the total world conversations.

There are millions of people in the world, and various conversations by those people. Some conversations we can hear (read about, see) - and others we cannot.

1. We can hear (read about, see) conversations made in public (in “newspapers, on “televsion”, and in other media).
2. We can hear (read about, see) conversations made in private, which are directed to us.
3. We cannot hear (read about, see) conversations made in private, which are not directed to us.

We can't (shouldn't) hear conversations made by other people, which are not directed to us - even if the conversations are about us. Nor can we read comments, or see +1s or forwardings, by other people who we don't know (or are not in our Circles) - even if the comments reference our blogs.

Concentrate on conversations with your Followers (Circle members).

Concentrate on the relationships of which you are a part - people who listen to you - and speak to those who concern you. Don't obsess over relationships which don't concern you.

The "Recently Updated Blogs" Display Is No More

In 2006, we discovered an interesting feature of Blogger, which let us monitor blog publishing activity, in real time.

Sometime last year, "Recently Updated Blogs" stopped working.

Last month, we reported the outage, to Blogger. Recently, Blogger Support described "Recently Updated Blogs" as an "experimental" feature, which won't be restored, for reasons of privacy / security.

R.I.P., R.U.B.

The Custom Search Gadgets Are Broken

We've seen a number of reports, in the recent past, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about inability to search Blogger blogs.

It appears that the problem is with the Google "Custom Search". Both the Google gadget (available from the CSE website), and the Blogger native gadget (available from "Add a Gadget"), appear to be broken. The current workaround is to install a direct blog search, as an "HTML / JavaScript" gadget.

The direct blog search offers few options, such as the ability to offer contextual web searches, offered by the CSE search. Right now, though, it appears to be the only option available.

>> Top