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7 September 2008

Sunday Salon #24 - 8 September 2008

Last weekend I was away from home and didn't get to write my usual Sunday Salon posting. So today, Father's Day here in Australia, you get a double whammy.
I felt guilty also because I didn't get to read all last week's postings, nor did I get to comment on many of them.
Well done to everyone who is hanging in there and managing to post every week. Sometimes the volume of traffic feels quite overwhelming, but it is great to see what you are reading and what you've been up to. I pick up many ideas from all of you, and I hope I am contributing to you too.

This week I have passed the 300th posting milestone as well as passed 13,500 visitors.

My postings:
Currently reading
  • now - WHERE ARE YOU NOW?, Mary Higgins Clark
  • next - DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS, Peter James
  • audio book - MY LADY JUDGE, Cora Harrison
Blogs I'm watching

I'm now up to 69. If you write a crime fiction blog and I'm not watching yours, leave a comment to let me know.

New feature: Blog Follower

Blogger has a new gadget. I'm not sure how it works. By the time I became aware of it, I already had one follower (not at all sure how that worked). You are welcome to join in. Locate the little block in the right hand side bar. I'm not sure whether you have to be a subscriber to Blogger. Perhaps you could try it out and let me know.

Blogger still thinks this blog is Spam.

If you've been reading my blog for a few weeks you'll know that about 2 months ago a robotic error decided that my blog, and thousands of others, were spammers. I never lost the ability to create posts, but I still have a very annoying "word verification" anti-spam tool happening. Sometimes the "word" is really unreadable, in a dreadful font, and also I think it times out, so I sometimes have to try 3 times before I get it done. Along with that the auto save has been turned off so I live in constant fear of losing my posting.
Every week I complete the request for this to be turned off, but so far this has fallen on deaf ears. If any one knows how to converse with a "real human" about my problem, I'd be glad of a tip.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous7 September 2008 at 20:29

    I never found a way to converse with a real human on blogger, one reason why I switched (Wordpress (free) and Typepad (small fee) both have responsive email helpdesks). For Blogger, so far as I could ever find, you are limited to their FAQ list; their blogger technical issues blog (you can see it in your dashboard) in which they let you know about issues that they know about and are fixing, etc; or the Google bloggers usergroups, which are mainly full of frustrated users who can't do things, and into which Google tech support people occasionally drop to offer advice. (you have to find these groups to join them, I think via google home page?)

    I am not sure of your posting problem but in any event it always makes sense to write the post offline and then paste it in, so you can't lose it. If you do this, it is good to paste into Notepad or similar (comes free with your operating system) rather than try to past in direct from a programme like Word because Word has all kinds of spurious code in it that doesn't always sit well with the blog post window. Apologies if you know all this already!

    As ever, I admire the tireless energy you put into your blogging, posting, organising and attaching widgets to your blog. Congratulations!

    The captcha squiggles drive me mad, too, many is the time I've had to attempt to post a comment several times before being able to read the characters. Crazy....Again, wordpress and typepad have more readable versions, I find. (And have very good auto-spam filters "behind the scenes")

    I have long since given up reading all the Sunday Salon posts. I was a founder member and while the number of participating blogs was less than 10 or less than 20 it was possible. Now I just follow SS through the Friend Feed room and only click through if a post title looks interesting. (I have also subscribed to a couple of the blogs that I found consistently interesting to me in my RSS so I read them the rest of the week too.) I was finding it a waste of time on a Sunday clicking through and reading lots of posts I wasn't very interested in, sometimes not even about reading. For me, the FF "solution" is the best.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maree Jones7 September 2008 at 23:28

    I agree that trying to comment on all the Sunday Salon posts is an exercise in futility. I participate in a weekly writing challenge and I usually choose ten or so to comment on and then I always comment on whoever comments on mine. Nice and fair that way. :) I can't believe you can juggle reading 69 blogs. I just cut mine from 40 to 30 on Bloglines today. My entire life could be sucked away by reading blogs if I let it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. wisteria8 September 2008 at 00:45

    Hi, I wasn't aware of the "follow this blog" feature". It is pretty cool. I don't read strictly crime. My main focus is historical fiction, but crime is sometimes included in that. Have you read Outside Child yet? I have a review on my blog. Very well written....new novelist.

    http://www.bookwormsdinner.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous8 September 2008 at 09:35

    Kerrie: A couple of things.

    1. Congratulations on the 300th posting milestone and 13,500 visitors! Whoa. I'm at about 5 or 6,000 maybe? Anyway, congrats, you deserve all the readers you get.

    2. In connection with No. 1, personally with no offense to the other blogs that were nominated for the BBAW awards, yours should not only have been nominated, but also won.

    3. Just FYI: I believe Weekly Geeks and the Hidden Side of the Leaf both are run by someone named Dewey, not Debra Hamel, unless I'm mistaken. Deb runs The Sunday Salon, plus her own Deblog and a couple of others, but as far as I know not Weekly Geeks and the Hidden Side of the Leaf. If Deb wants to correct me on this, though, I'm open to being corrected myself.

    4. I'm in agreement with Maxine that Blogger is not very good. I'm on WordPress.com and have had little to no problems. That's my tip: leave Blogger, you can export your posts easily to another platform.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kerrie8 September 2008 at 18:44

    To say that I'm "watching" 69 blogs is a bit euphemistic (not sure that is the right word) - the blog roll is more to connect others with new-to-them blogs. Having the posts referred to in order of recency make sit easier for me to spot ones I haven't read.

    The visitor counter is a bit odd too. - very susceptible to people clicking on anything I suspect - nevertheless it is encouraging

    Debra herself put me right about the ownership of those blogs. Thanks for pointing my error put though "reading fool" and for your kind accolades. It helps if you are addicted to blogging like I am.

    Somebody told me to look for an "export this blog" link on my dashboard but I haven't located that yet.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Clare Dudman22 September 2008 at 22:00

    think you can turn that word verification off if you wish...I may be wrong about this but I think this is right...

    Go to settings on your dashboard

    then select comments from the options at the top

    then scroll down to where it says show word verification for comments and select no

    and I think they should disappear.

    Maybe I am talking a load of rubbish here - if so I apologise in advance!

    ReplyDelete

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