Saturday, February 10, 2007

Strong-armed into Switching to Blogger 2

Just so you all know, Google has now started forcing users of the old Blogger (which is what I have been using) to upgrade to Blogger 2. I have resisted upgrading for months and months but now it seems that I can no longer log into my own blog and make a post without first upgrading. So I upgraded to Blogger 2 just so that I can make this post.

Whether you realized it or not, I have resisted upgrading mainly for YOUR protection and convenience. You see, the new Blogger 2 requires everyone, including those of you who want to leave a comment, to sign in using your Google account (if you don't have one then you must create one). The reason why Google does this is so that they can track your click history (where you are going on line, what you are doing, how long you lingered on a page, did you buy anything, etc.) and correlating it with your Google profile (you have to complete a "profile" to get a Google account) so as to push targeted marketing in your face and to better sell advertising.

Not everything Google is golden.

So to interact with this blog you must now create a Google profile. My suggestion is to not put any personal information in that profile (unless you really want to, of course). Don't even provide your real name. For example, to keep my anonymity my user name is my inherently anonymous email address, my display name is "marinite", my gender is not specified, etc. No other info needs to be entered into the profile. So you can remain quite anonymous with a Google profile. So don't be scared to create a profile if you are concerned about anonymity.

I won't change to another blog hosting service as I don't want to lose all the posts to this blog and I don't want users to now have to remember a different URL.

But so far I am not impressed with Blogger 2. It seems to have that problem that plagued the old blogger in the early days... unable to reliably upload pics. How hard can this be? First they torture us with their old buggy software and now we get to be tortured again with their new buggy software...sigh.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know the feeling. This trend to increase(force) user loyalty will eventually backfire. I get royally upset when sites force me into a register or leave category. Usually end up leaving 90% of time or fake regiestering. At least you know what google is doing I found out that microsoft actually keeps a netmonitor on your computer once you update and a few other things which keeps logs and sends info back so they could monetize your internet experience just like google. Upsetting as well.

Anonymous said...

Time to leave the net, all good thing scome to anend once the shysters arrive. A society of predators and parasites.

Chuck Ponzi said...

Yes, I am in the process of finishing my own hosted solution for this particular reason. If anyone is going to be big brother on my site, it should be me (which I'm not)

John Doe
socalbubble.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

And now that I've switched to Blogger 2, my Gmail account no longer works...an infinite loop of attempting to login to gmail. What a joke Google is.

Anonymous said...

Hmm. It seems you don't need a google profile after all despite what they say. Maybe that will begin to change.

Anonymous said...

Wordpress

Anonymous said...

I just heard that Marin RE is going down......

BigTime!

Marinite said...

pothead -

I am thinking about it. WordPress has gotten a lot of good reviews. But my blogging days are numbered so is it worth it?

Marinite said...

I just heard that Marin RE is going down......

Source please.

Soumyanath said...

Best to avoid all these service providers with big brother attitude; I find it actually a big bother. I discovered a service provider DeciGen. This fellow has hosting solution from $1, no ads, no tracking. I have gradually started to shift my stuff to this guy.

I am sure, if you look around, you will find some thing similar.

Anonymous said...

marinite, what are your blogging days numbered? Are you going to be focusing all of your efforts on sweeping heavily into the foreclosure market this year? ;)

I think that most of the bloggers that are trying to monetize their blogs have gone the wordpress route. I'm told it is a relatively flexible platform compared to blogger, but if you are chucking in the towel shortly then it's probably not worth the effort.

Anonymous said...

Are you going to be focusing all of your efforts on sweeping heavily into the foreclosure market this year?

I have no interest in buying property other than the place I currently live. I have all that I want and I don't plan on moving any time soon. My house's value is not part of my retirement plan and I can care less what it is currently worth or not worth.

I have no interest in monetizing this blog. How cynical of you to think that this is what this blog is about. I just don't see myself doing this for much longer. But then that's what I've been saying for a while. Basically, the trainwreck a lot of us saw coming is clearly here or nearly so and so what's the point now?

Anonymous said...

"Basically, the trainwreck a lot of us saw coming is clearly here or nearly so and so what's the point now?"

This is a joke, right? Last time I looked the Marin real estate "bubble" you predicted never popped. Have prices gone down in Marin since you started your blog?

Anonymous said...

Housing bubbls takes years to unwind. to expect it to "pop" in a short period of time is just your red herring argument.

Anonymous said...

Wow. To quote Office Space, "looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays".

The foreclosure thing was a tongue in cheek comment, I tried to illustrate that point with the ;) bit, generally construed as a wink in the internets.

Also, I wasn't implying that you are going to try and monitize this thing. Just saying that if folks that are trying to monetize (with much larger reach) have all pretty much centered on Wordpress, then you could do worse than choose them.

I've enjoyed the blog, thanks for doing it as long as you have.

Anonymous said...

"looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays".

It's true.

Anonymous said...

this has been a great blog Marinite. Great writing, sense of humor, no mincing of words, etc. Wish you'd keep at it til the bitter end.

That said, it's clear where this is surreal RE experiment of the past 10 years is heading and I can see why, at this juncture, it'd feel nice to just sit back and pay as little attention as possible while it implodes.

I swear, I've always loved watching RE cycles, but after this one's done, and I've finally bought a house again,I think I'll be pretty much in RE cycle burnout mode for the rest of my life.

RE is quickly becoming a stupid stinker, even for a junkie such as myself.

Wake me up when it's over. I'll buy my house and never think about RE "values" again.