Service Unavailable

These days I find that Blogger is almost unusable. I get the same error many times when I try to sign in or add images to my blog. What the heck is going on here? Things were not always this bad. Blogger used to be tight. Now I can barely get a post up.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the new Google Blogs transition. I also hear that Blogger (or Google Blogs) is getting an upgrade. As for me, I would prefer the old version if it would be stable. These problems are in addition to issues I have with formatting when images are added. Sheesh.

I realize that Blogger is a free service. It is starting to feel like I am getting what I paid for this. Damn. I might have to search out some alternatives. Maybe a paid blogging service would guarantee better results. Then again, there are other free options like WordPress or TypePad. I will let you know what I find out.

Google Blogs

Pretty soon Google will be retiring the Blogger brand. Instead it will be called Google Blogs. WTF? Blogger is what we have been using all along. I know Google likes to put its name on stuff. But come on.

It looks like Google is doing the same thing for Picasa. The name is changing to match Google. The only thing Google has bought that is still safe is YouTube. At least YouTube will still be YouTube. For now.

All this name changing seems to be taking a back seat to the new Google +1 business. This is Google's answering to social networking. It is said to be a Twitter killer. The service seems more like FaceBook to me. For now I am ignoring the thing. But Google +1 is all over the news.

Product Blog

I want to put up a blog to gain eyeballs to a product web site I need to put up. It seems the simplest thing would be to use Blogger. Now I do not want to run off the blogspot domain. Blogger lets you host the blog anywhere. Here is the question. Is Blogger the right choice?

One of the reasons I am contemplating jumping to another content management system is that I have been having problems with Blogger. The thing seems to mess up the formatting of my post when I put a picture in there. For now my work around is to work in Edit Html mode. However that is not the best for me. I am not sure if Blogger does not support my browser, or if it just a bug, or what. I do know this is a major inconvenience.

I have also browsed around to see what other people are doing. Many sitemasters recommend Wordpress. I have never used the thing. But I am tying out new things. Maybe I should give it a test run. Either way I am going to be making my decision soon. Right after I get a domain, I will want to drive traffic there immediatly. What better way to do that than to start up and regularly write posts to a blog?