Friday, July 25, 2008

Google - Too Many Errors.

This and many more errors have become a staple with Google which is really acting up of late. Not all the time of course but for those who use it daily, it’s occasional bad moods become very noticeable. And it’s the whole network. Temporary errors on Gmail, Gtalk, and Adsense, and article/comment publishing are becoming all too common. The one in the picture is as straight forward as they come but if you’re not lucky you’re confronted by a whole page of techno babble when trying to publish.

Few things in blogging are as frustrating as not being able to post articles and comments when you want to. But maybe the most annoying of them is when you write a comment and try to publish only for it to disappear into thin air. Just like that. And blogger says ‘done’. Done what? Where is my comment? And then you’ll have to go back to the post and open the comment window afresh. Woe unto you if you had not copied the comment elsewhere like in Microsoft Word - in which case you’ll have to retype it.

Some people have said it’s a question of poor internet connections but I beg to differ. Does poor internet connection only come to play when it comes to google? Does Africa Online and Access Kenya for example fall under poor? Plus how can you explain a scenario where there are several people sharing the same internet connection on a network and only one or two get these errors at any one time?

Something strange happened on this blog last week. ‘CIS vs Kenyan Law – Who Will Nail The Culprits’ was posted by HLumiti on July 16th with proper paragraph formatting. Then on July 21st it suddenly changed formatting and the whole article became one huge paragraph. How does an article change formatting when it’s already live for 4 days? Of course it can always be edited back although the whole 500 plus words article gets blown to what must be font size 20 in the edit window. It’s good Google are hosting our blogs, mail and all but can they also be flawless in the process? After all they’re Google no?

Maybe there are still a few things I’m yet to figure out about blogger. Any experts out there? Your word will be highly appreciated.

17 Comments:

Anonymous said...

nice to see you are joining me in taking a swipe against googzilla!!!

Shiko-Msa said...

Naiborian some of their error messages are just too frustrating. Just when you want to post ......

Anonymous said...

gmail is soo frusrating nowadays!

am thinking nostaligicly of yahoo but then i have more than 200 unread msgs!

BP 1 said...

Shiko, though Google is my favorite search engine, off late, some of it’s products especially Gtalk is giving me nightmares.
I might be online the whole day waiting for my friends to join me for a chat but unfortunately I don’t see them online while in the real sense they are , in fact, later on I get their e-mails demanding explanation as to why I didn’t come online. This issue has caused embarrassments and mistrust between my friends and I .

Normally, I make use of Gtalk for both business and normal friendly chats but nowadays because of this Problem in particular I have decided switching to other chat soft wares like skype which I found to be very user friendly and reliable for business chat. .

Shiko-Msa said...

Savvy take the time one day to delete all those messages and then start afresh. I did that once and it's not fun but it was worth it. Wish you luck!

BP Gtalk is another frustrating one. Sometimes also it just cuts you off in the middle of your chats.

Unknown said...

Google of late has been a royal pain I loved when google was a small little portal with a funny name that only geeks used. As of yesterday I can't send an email on my phones gmail app which means I am offline for ages since where I am net access is a luxury.
Blogger gave me enough misery despite its friendly interface disappearing comments were a constant source of grief. If you used that visual recognition thing here you can be guaranteed I would almost never leave a comment here cos it is close to impossible to use on a phone

Anonymous said...

i dont do google, so i have no idea. while everyone was running to gmail i stuck to good old yahoo. but it could be just undergoing a period of ish everywhere in the world not only where u are coz even yahoo sometimes does that and when i ask its evryone that uses it not only me. patience..lol.

UrXlnc said...

ciku with me its always been PEBKAC

i know you guys have seen many of these but they are fun to recycle

here is the best quick fix, when a computer hangs up on you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqkGfinCFs0&feature=related

here are other methods than work equally well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otiMil1kt1Y

http://www.daviscomm.net/resources/computer.frustration.JPG

http://blaugh.com/cartoons/070622_it_just_stopped.gif

Mai said...

hello.. thanks for the visit.. nice post.. :)

Shiko-Msa said...

Lol Kirima the visual. The one used to determine that you're human. No that one I don't intend to have.

Neema gmail and the whole Google network needs more than patience. I'll dust my yahoo address and start using it again. For chats I'm now using windows messenger mostly. I've just posted a comment in the previous article and it took me 5 trials before it finally passed thro. These days I've learned the little habit of doing comments in word and copy pasting otherwise.....

urxnlc thanks once again for the links. I'll check them out although youtube is another one.

emjei you're welcome.

Mama said...

Google hata msiseme! That thing just annoys me all the time!

Sometimes I make a post on blogger and then it just disappears into thin air, mara it cant save, mara u cant paste formatted stuff there, mara I do all my work then when I post the format is so radically different and most of it is lost anyway! I have abandoned numerous posts on account of google errors and me when I get angry I just delete those things completely! I better look for something better otherwise google will drive me mad.

Anonymous said...

Mcheku you better do your posts in word and transfer to blogspot.

That format you're saying I think I know it. Sometimes mine blows up into a very huge font and sometimes some gibberish. Usually I delete and paste again. And dont even start on uploading images!

Mama said...

Shiko, I have tried the Word thing, but when I paste all the formatting disappears! Sasa I have to do it all over again, its very boring I can tell you. Wacha tu.

Shiko-Msa said...

Mcheku that is blogger for you. True sometimes all the formatting from word disappears and the paragraphs merge into one huge one. The article ends up looking really funny.

Try this. Copy your article and paste in notepad. Then copy from notepad and paste to blogger. That one should work.

Pole.

Anonymous said...

i was on blogger before and experiencd those problems around 2006 so its nothing new, wordpress was till i was leaving less of a bother since i migrated there mid 2006 or thereabouts before going self hosted in 2008.

i have not had problems with gmail, touch wood, or google itself or in posting comments in blogger either but a solid connection is always a plus. i use the safaricom 3G offering, at the office on Swift Global and Access dedicated links i get lots of chat blocked messages but as soon as i switch to Safaricom they promptly disappear.

I understand there is something about a local google cache being set up so perhaps that is what is intefering with the sites?

i would recommend moving to a wordpress.com but they do not support ads on your page and you cannot edit css, perhaps its time to go self hosted?

Shiko-Msa said...

Thanks Intelligensia. I'd really love to know about the Safaricom connection. I use Africaonline. How are the safaricom speeds?

And the self hosting too I'd love to know the details. Even without problems with google, self hosting is definitely something I'd love to do.

Anonymous said...

read about it on my magazine here..

http://www.theintelligensia.com/think/2008/07/safaricom-broadband-bambanethotspot-review/

i would not recommend it to the faint of heart, the activation process can cause premature balding and a stint at Mathare but once on, barring infrequent billing and service outages you should be ok.

self hosting is an interesting minefield, but by befriending google, again, you can almost always find solutions to problems you may encounter.

this is the fourth time i am attempting to do this comment, using access kenya and it just keeps vanishing.