Unmigrated Legacy Blogger - huh?

Google, what are you doing to me? To others? It was you, wasn't it? Sent the email warning that "legacy" blogs were endangered and required to be moved.

You are receiving this message because your email address is associated with an unmigrated legacy Blogger account. As we announced in April of last year, legacy accounts will no longer be accessible after May 30th, 2012 unless they are updated to the Google Account system. Any blog content associated with this account will also be unmodifiable after that date.

To transfer your blog to the Google Account system you need to visit the Legacy Migration page at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/NQQ3dQolv1dns1 right now to make sure that your account and associated blogs are claimed. If you’ve forgotten the Blogger password that is associated with this email address, you can use our Account Recovery page at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/PPo3H8hLB9iHIK to request password information to be sent via email.

For more information, please see our initial announcement we posted to our blog at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/STvPY7lCij04Of . If you have questions, please visit our Help Forum at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/jW60wlPTgtyRtX and create a message with [Legacy Account] in the subject line.

Regards,

The Blogger Team Google 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 ---- This e-mail is being sent to notify you of important changes to your Blogger account.

So, I obeyed. My old Blogger password was not accepted. I had to make a new one. Have I have conned? Hacked? What is this all about? It is now harder to get to Blogger. The pages seem to want me to get Chrome. I already have it/

Really - things don't get easier. One wastes an immense amount of time, STILL, fiddling with technicalities and mysterious tech requests. Or, please, someone tell me, have I just be done like a dog's dinner?

Oh, and since when did Blogger stop formatting? Why is everything running together these days? Do I have to do a refresher course in HTML?

I only turned my back for a minute

There comes a time when the new blood of the Internet has made it all a bit hard to keep up with. Those of us who leapt into cyberspace the moment the window opened got used to things the way they were. In many aspects, they were very good. Sometimes they were a bit hard to learn. I recall without affection the list of DOS commands one had to enter simply to get connected - and the general hiccups of getting online at all with the old dialup connections from "backyard ISPs" through 14k modems. But, ahh, the sweet music of those electronic trills and buzzes as connection was made and there was the world right there at your fingertips - wonderful, living people on IRC. That was the early 1990s. It is incredible to think that we now have a generation which has not known the world without the Internet. Back in the 90s, people thought you were mad to spend so much time on it, to be so enthusiastic about it... They wondered what it was. Now they have taken ownership of the technology - along with the new breed who are making their living and often their fortune from it. But they can't leave anything alone. If it ain't broke, they bloody well will fix it. And thus is Facebook so appalling with its obfuscating Timeline. And what on earth have they done to StumbleUpon. What a mess of a wonderful application - the most civilised open online community ever. Now we are transitioned and transported on Google. I have been busy on other things - and I turn around and find the blogging world about which I have written so much over the years has had some sort of a facelift. I should merge other applications with it. Um...now which password do I use for this? The original blogger password was outdated some time ago. It is all Google now? Let's not get on to the subject of passwords. The new generation, who I have nurtured and adored and in whom I have oft expressed my trust and hope, has been being too smart and too short-sighted and, methinks, not listening and certainly not reading. Just making changes because they can - and they wish to make a mark. They wish to impress whoever is paying their wage. We all do that, I guess. But it's not improving things. If only there was some sort of artistic director, a Steve Jobs to arbitrate quality control and logical elegance of style. If only.

Street View dilemmas

Google Maps have released Street View and caused quite a flurry in the world of citizen's rights and privacy. As we all leapt online to look at our homes and see just how well the Google camera cars performed, a general kerfuffle of anxiety erupted.
There is a lot of concern among some people about vulnerability to crooks "casing" their joints from afar, checking entrances and exits. Indeed, if one adds the satellite imagery to the street view, one does get a pretty comprehensive look at properties. A boon for the real estate trade. A boon for people trying to sell roofing, too, perhaps. But the general paranoia is a bit much, I think. The photos are old. They are not live. Car number plates and people's faces have been cleverly blurred. This is not spying. It is not Big Brother.
It is, however, a comprehensive mapping of the world. And it is a joy for squizzy people - for those who think they can tell a lot about a person by the house in which they live. I, as you can see, am decidedly secretive and inscrutable.

Things which fascinated me about this development were, firstly, the revelation (which somehow I have missed these last years) that Google Maps were in fact developed in Australia by Google's Sydney team.

Secondly, despite my unfortunate brush with Google guards when I went to pay homage to its home in Silicon Valley, my experience here in making contact with the media office to find out about Street View was unbelievably prompt and friendly and helpful.

I was a bit peeved, I have to say, when responses sought to the new facility were met with legal caution, criticisms of Australian privacy laws and of Google - and the call for reform of said privacy laws. It sort of took the wind out of my own sails - and demonstrates howone's own opinions so often end up buried under the informational process known as news-gathering.

Googling up the dregs

Somewhere along the line, a mob of tatty exploitationist amateur hour sods has totally screwed up the business of Google search.

These are the phoneys who leapt into what they assumed would be a zillion dollar business of rallying businesses to register on listing sites. Heaven knows what they charged them but, presumably, part of the deal was that they would buy priority listings for the listings with search engines. This all worked. Really badly. It has turned into an alienating mess which makes one shake one's head in despair and go back to the old phone book. Google has been nobbled by business listers.

I was searching for gelato manufacturers today.
Usually, doing a pure information search, one surfs quite neatly into news, web and blog data.
Search for something with a commercial edge and one comes up against the conmen who gave birth to these dire listings.
My suspicion, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that these sods ran around and rustled up the businesses, charged like wounded bulls, set up the sites - then took the money and retired.

All of us who know anything about the Internet know that it is an ongoing concern.
Data must be entered and updated. Websites must be maintained.
Things change. Things go out of date.

This is what happens with these assorted business listings. They are ad hoc. They are half out of date. And a lot of them are so badly programmed that they can't even sort themselves out into what purports to be categories.

These business listings, however, continue to claim priority on the Google spiders. Have they paid for these rankings? I guess so because there they are dominating the search results. One wades through them in pathetic hope that one may find what one seeks.

It is not to be.
One just finds more lists - often with maps. Gee.

Oh yes, the wide boys found themselves are chink of opportunity, made their money and ran - leaving chaos.

I liken it to tag graffiti scrawled all over a very fine and valuable edifice.

Oh, Google, you let me down.

How to lose faith in Google.
Just try popping in on its Mountain View HQ in California. If you loved Google before, you will have the old blood running cold afterwards.
I guess I was just naive to think I could swing past the Google building and take a couple of photos.
Well, I'd seen the stunning Yahoo building towering triumphantly out there in Silicon Valley and I had taken a zillion photos of the Oracle building - probably the most elegant and superior high tech establishment in the country, if you ask me. Its sleek blue cylindrical glass towers reach around a lake where a fountain plays in cheerful circles. It is a huge complex and, if there is security, it is pretty low-key.
Google, on the other hand, is the great paranoia security hell.
You can't even drive up the driveway. Security guards stop you and tell you that you will be trespassing if you cross the line into the staff carpark."The campus is private land", one told me when I asked if I could pop in and take some photos of the building.

Yes, we're talking a building here. Just a couple of exterior shots.
I wasn't asking for a the latest search secrets or even a guided tour. I was not trying to find the "Visitor Lobby" marked on the exterior signpost or to see if I could purchase a Google cap, although, had things worked out that way, certainly would have left the place wearing a Google cap, if there is such a thing.
But, as it happened, I was asking just to take a quick snap of the entrance to the building.

I was simply told that I was not permitted to take photographs anywhere on the property.
"You can go to the public field and take a photo from there," he said. "That is public".
Oddly, the field had a sign in the middle of it saying "Closed for Repairs". This had struck me as the funniest sign I had ever seen in a field. Not that it would have stopped me, had there been a way to get to the field.
The problem was that there was no where to park. Even to get to the neighbouring field.

You can't stop here,' the security guard insisted.
"But the whole parking lane right down the road has banned parking," I said.
It was not the security man's problem. All he had to do was to make absolutely sure that people like me did not go anywhere near the Google building. Even if we have identified ourselves and explained our humble mission.

It was an odd thing, the parking ban in the street. Amphitheatre Drive has only a few buildings on it - large outfits on huge chunks of real estate. They are on one side of the road only. Opposite is wasteland with a spectacular view of the mountains.
There is what looks like a parking lane along one side of the street - but it was entirely roped off and dotted with witches hats and signs insisting that there would be no parking. This covered the road for hundreds of yards both before and after the Google property. Half a mile or more. There was even a police car stationed at one point. This was serious no parking.
Apparently, some way further down is an Amphitheatre - for which parking is discouraged on the road to protect the businesses...the one or two of them on their vast acreages.

It surprised me that Google had no visitor parking lot....in fact, a lot of things were surprising me.

What happened was that I suddenly felt my faith in and loyalty towards Google shrivelling within me.
Suddenly the negative comments about the wicked Google empire started to make sense.
Only a world with something to hide would hide.
Paranoia belongs to people with agendas.


I felt like a complete idiot.
A few months ago I had written a vast weekend magazine spread on Google - its wonderful rise and the fair and emancipated way it treated its employees and kept the spirits up. How Google had ethics as well as the best staff conditions in the world.
My boss read my piece and said that he did not believe Google was wonderful at all, that I had been conned by Google propaganda.
I was furious. Google has had a few problems - but, as one who hooked straight into the search engine when it evolved, as one who was thrilled to be an early starter with Gmail, as one who looks for the changes in the home page and touts the brilliance of the search algorithm, I was confident in my judgements. I could mention legal issues on the Google record, I told the boss, but I simply would not turn my article into any form of Google-bashing. I genuinely admired Google and I wanted the article to reflect this. It went to print - and it did.

Now I feel two inches tall.
The boss was right.
Google is not quite what we have assumed. Google has a friendly homepage but an unfriendly interface.

Google will not let its fans take a photograph.
Not just a fan, but a card-carrying visiting journalist from overseas. I had mentioned to the guard that I was an Internet writer from Australia - "just want to take a picture".

But the guards were there with rules to follow. Keep everyone out except employees.

OK Google. I got the message. I got more than the message.
I am as offended and alienated as you intended me to be.

I now will not laugh at those who say that you are moving towards becoming the new Microsoft, the evil empire.
Perhaps you now are too powerful.
Perhaps we do need to be concerned.

Botox for blogs

I've finally done it. I have given angrypenguin a facelift, thanks to Blogger's upgrade-to-Google facility. I am pleased with the crisp, clean look.

Of course, I am having problems in this new, much-overdue template change. Blogger says one can access the original blog to get at template adds, but now I can't find it. Maybe this is because I made more than one change to the template as I moved over. Seeing my original choice in full-screen, I realised the column width was too wide for easy online reading and sought a narrower column - this template. That is a flaw in the preview facility - the small window gives a skewed perspective. The design looked dramatically different when I adopted it.
So, all my logos, my counter and illustrated links are gone - along with the link Blogger originally offered to my archived original blog. I've scoured the Help lists - to no avail.
One always dreads making any changes online - it is never problem-free and ends up being really time-consuming. I am a content expert, but never claimed to have much aptitude for the techie side of the WWW. So here I am, floundering.