Blog Day 2008, August 31

Familiar with BlogDay? I wasn't either until recently when I saw details on Jeff Pulver's Blog. Some details: On August 31st, bloggers are asked to post recommendations of 5 new Blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

BlogDay posting instructions:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:
http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2008 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org.

Hooray! Google unlocked my Blog...

Well, after a couple of days of being locked out of my own blog (shame on me for using a free service!) Google has decided to unlock it and give me access again... thanks! Obviously, Google was merely attempting to do some housecleaning and get rid of the old, obsolete blogs... a great idea really, however, in the process they apparently inconvenienced many legitimate users, like yours truly. Below are details from a rant that I posted the other day on GISuser as I couldn't post it here! PS: See here for a Beta version of this blog on WordPress that I may wind up using once I have time for the full switch-over - should I stay or should I go?

Here's a new one for this week that is likely going to have the feathers of many Google Bloggers ruffled... Bloggers essentially have 20 days to save their blogs or else!!

I got a weird email message last night that I first thought was junk, then I realized it was actually legit! Google has some new automated system that is flagging potential spam blogs (whatever that is) and locking out blog owners. Email message from Google follows:

Your blog at: http://gisuser.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at ...

Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and you'll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. If this blog doesn't belong to you, you don't have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won't be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

---

I was one of the many unlucky ones with my very popular GISuser AnyGeo blog http://gisuser.blogspot.com being flagged for some reason and locked! Friggin marvelous move Google.

Above is the message that appears... since I was human I entered a code, however, that doesn't resolve the issue.

After searching the web for how to contact the blogger team -- good luck with that one!!! - it seems many others are having the same mis-fortune.

Above is how the blogger dashbopard appears when a blog owner attempts to publish from teh blogger UI

For one, I'm very pi#@#$#@$ed off about this, particularly since I'm off to San Diego for the ESRI UC next week and naturally, had planned on blogging... great! So, if anyone from Google happens to read this, maybe contact me (glenn at gisuser.com) and offer up some help or advice. Otherwise, WordPress is sure starting to look good!!

Oh, and team Google, when you locate the Blogger team member that came up with this move, maybe give him/her a slap for me too!

For more on how others are covering this see:

• Google Blogger Meltdown? You Have Been Identified As A Potential Spam Blog
• Google Snafu Shuts Down Blogger's Site

LizardTech z0,0m blog and a new era for GeoExpress

Today, Seattle-based Lizardtech has rolled out a new era in GeoXpress at release 7 - think interoperability! This from Lizardtech... For the first time, all of LizardTech's applications interoperate with one another. With the LizardTech Express Suite, users can manipulate and compress their imagery with GeoExpress, store their images in an Oracle Spatial database with Spatial Express, and distribute their imagery over the Internet using Express Server. Supporting the product the company is also promoting a new blog (z0,0m) where users and would-be users can stay informed on the latest product developments - see http://www.lizardtech.com/blog/
Thanks to Matt and team for including a link to GISuser from your blog but I would also like to point out that GISuser.com is not a blog. AnyGeo (right here at gisuser.blogspot.com) is our blog. See http://www.lizardtech.com/products/geo/ for more on GeoXpress 7

Geoblogger tip - spring widget

If you blog or simply have an RSS feed you'd like to share with others then you might be interested in this nifty app that's available for users of the cool feedburner service.. buried deep in the setting is an option to setup a SpringWidget. Use this app to create a nice widget feed that others can embed on their website or blog.. quite handy!

Get this widget!

Mobile Application Tips - Farcast Moblogger and Modazzle mobile social networking

Another tip on an interesting mobile app to consider adding to the portfolio.. Farcast Mobile Blogger... To get Moblogger, you have to first register with Farcast. Depending on your phone, you will then be given the option to download it straight onto your phone (over-the-air) or to download an installation file onto your PC and install it via your normal means of PC synch (Bluetooth, USB, cable, cradle or infrared). See http://moblogger.farcast.eu/

Another cool app is MoDazzle... Here's a tip on another interesting app that mobile-enables access to your social networks like linkedIn, facebook, salesforce.com etc... Check out more at http://modazzle.com

Art of the Start in Waterloo

Guy Kawasaki is giving an Art of the Start speech for Communitech Friday, October 6th at 11:00 am in Fed Hall on the University of Waterloo campus. Anyone in or near Waterloo (that's in Canada eh!) might want to go see Guy... he's a great motivator! See details

NeoWorks web counters and maps... a nice blogging tool for geobloggers!

You may have noticed the nifty little antique map displayed in the upper right sidebar area. This Neocounter is courtesy of NeoWorx who provide some very slick blogger site management tools and counters. This applet tracks visitrs and displays their location on a map (antique in this instance). The administration area for your tools is very easy to use and the quality of the graphics they use is great... have fun with this one you geobloggers and if you add a cool map counter/tracker to your blog tell me about it will ya! See http://www.neoworx.net

AnyGeo RSS feed back up!

WEll, this Beta testing of the new blogger functionality has some pittfalls... the joy of being a guinnea pig! Anyway, I think i have the RSS functionality back in order and feedburner is also working again. During the migration to Blooger Beta things got a bit mangled and the old RSS feed broke. the "old" link to blogger RSS feeds at http://gisuser.blogspot.com/atom.xml no longer works, however, the new feed can be found at Feedburner - see http://feeds.feedburner.com/Anygeo-AnythingGeospatial - anyone else having problems with this, i suggest you go login to Feedburner and recreate your RSS feed burn... this seems to be the only fix and there's nothing within your Blogger control panel that will help.

finally, add posts to Digg and Del.icio.us is enabled - a tip for adding this to your Blogger beta blogs

A little Sunday evening searching around and I now have the DiggIt and add to Del.icio.us functionality on the blogs.. woohoo. I have to say it was a snap although the fact that I'm now using blogger beta was a slight challenge. Thanks to this great tip from Hackosphere I simply grabbed the code that I needed and voila.. 2 minutes later we have lift off! The hacker has generously provided tips and the code needed to add this functionality to blogger beta blogs. Thos of you that have vanilla blogger blogs and want to add this functionality to your blog you can get the code here. Finally... if you don't know what Digg or Del.icio.us is then you better do some research! Try clicking the diggIt or add to Del.icio.us hyperlink below this post and check it out...

Blogger Beta issues and problems to date

Well it's been about a week since I "upgrade" the blog to blogger beta. Some of the new features are really great - like the labels (ie. categories) and the posting is much faster. The new templates are quite cool and robust too. However, some of the pittfualls I've noticed so far are really starting to piss me off! Some of the anoying features that I would call bugs:
- making edits to the layout will quite often not save. Particualrly, if you make multiple edits saving never seems possible. the only workaround seems to be to save your template after every addition or change. Also, adding to template elements will not save unless you change the order of an element, then saving becomes a valid option.
- problems with the import. Seems like only the items on the first page of the blog are viewable and attempting to view any older posts results in an error... that's really disturbing!
That's it for now... 2 things but to me, these are HUGE issues... stay tuned for more about blogger beta

Blogger beta upgrade

In case any readers of Planet Geospatial are wondering why all of a sudden all the posts from my anygeo blog have reapeared it's likely due to the fact that i just "upgrade" the blog to blogger beta. Apparently it recreated/republished everything and as a result planet geo reindexed a bunch of posts as if they were new. James, sorry about that and hopefully the migration doesn't freak out anything else... a good test i guess!