Got on Reddit

I normally read Reddit to find good posts on programming. My default view on Reddit is to view the top “Hot” articles. This weekend I was surprised to find my Days of VisiCalc post coming in at item number 63 for hot programming posts. It was on page 3. This was very exciting as I did not even submit the blog post to Reddit. I could not help but log into Reddit and vote my item up. Hey. I wrote the darn thing, so I am going to give it a thumbs up rating.

My blog post that go onto Reddit was just my 2 cents on another interesting blog post about VisiCalc development history. Some comments on the Reddit submission said that my post helped call attention to the blog item I wrote about, even though it had itself been added to Reddit a couple months ago. Other comments stated that the blog I referred to was better than my own blog. This may be true since that blog was written by a guy who worked on VisiCalc.

My Redddit submission had received 16 points. Not sure if that means there was a net of 16 positive votes for it or not. I don’t think so as the submission received 42 up votes and 32 down votes. Whatever the point calculation, I am still happy that I can say that I was on Reddit. Thanks to Reddit user gst who submitted my blog entry in the first place. Props man.

Beware Spell Check

Tonight I had a lot of blogs entries to post on my Software Maintenance blog. However I still had time to spell check each of my entries. One such entry took a long time to spell check. Then I made corrections and tried to post the results. I was not surprised when Blogger bombed and I lost my changes.

I was not phased so I edited the entry again, ran spell check, then successfully posted my changes. Then I went on with creating other blog posts. At the end I did a quick check on all my posts for quality control. Wouldn't you know it? The post that initially bombed still had some of the Spell Check highlighting in the actual published version. What a crock.

Luckily I was able to go back, rerun Spell Check on the blog entry, then post one more time. Now the yellow Spell Check highlighting is gone. What is the moral of this story? Double check your work, especially if Blogger acts funny when you are editing your post. I think there may be another moral lurking down somewhere inside me. However this rant is now over.

Blogger Broke Again

I would like to upload a picture to show you an error message I continually get in Blogger today. The only problem is that the error happens when I upload pictures. This is a bummer. Recently I have been trying to post images with the blog posts I create. Now I cannot do this.

Wouldn't you know it? I am finally fed up enough that I want to help. So I try to figure out how to report the error. But when I get the error, my only choices are to go back to my post, or try again. Trying again produces the same error. I am determined. So I log into Blogger and see if there is a way to report an error using the Dashboard. Nope. I found a link to review known issues. None of the issues seem to be the one I am facing. What's a blogger to do?

In case the Google Blogger development team is paying attention, here is the error I get:

There were errors during upload.

The following images were not uploaded.

filename.jpg : This image could not be uploaded due to an internal error.

RETURN TO POST TRY TO UPLOAD IMAGES AGAIN

Company Response

Some time ago I read an article from CNN Money about “when bloggers attack”. It outlined the best approach for a company to take when bloggers write bad things about the company or its products. In general the article recommended that you first check out the history of the blogger. See if the blog makes any difference to the big picture. Check if the blog is high in the list of search engine result pages for your company. You can always try to generate higher ranked positive hits in the SERPS.

The article warned you to not get emotional or hostile. The best way to handle such a situation is to turn it into an opportunity. For extreme cases, you can always hire a professional company to manage your online presence. This could be a costly option. And it may not provide any more benefit than what you can do yourself.

CNN stated that bloggers in general are fair. I am not sure if I agree with that statement. But let’s assume it is true. The article I read recommended that you provide the blogger with more information. That way they can generate more posts that at least speak the truth. Bloggers are interested in generating more content after all.

I can relate to some of the information in the CNN article. My own posts often criticize companies. However I have not been contacted by any companies following the advice from the article. But sometimes I praise good companies and products. Wouldn’t you know it? I have been contacted by people thanking me for giving them positive reviews in my blogs. Perhaps I am just a small fry. And companies that I slam are just ignoring me. I hope to become bigger and more influential. I also hope that I am not on the receiving end of bad blog posts too.