Saturday, September 01, 2007

Swansong from Old Dreams and Daemons

Dreams and Daemons has moved home: New Dreams and Daemons can be accessed on the following LINK.


Update: April 23, 2016: cancel the above message. "New Dreams and Daemons" is no more (the hosts having notified me a while ago as to what I wanted to do with it: I decide to accept Option A and zap it completely).

 I shall be using use this long-neglected site as a testbed for experimenting with new widgets (like one for Latest Comments!) and then make a decision on its future.



I posted the following as a comment to Gigi's French Windows blog this morning. With her permission I am reproducing it here as a final swansong to Old Dreams and Daemons.

"I won't be bothering with Google/blogger anymore, Gigi, unless or until it stops locking folk out their blogs for no good reason, and allows one's copy to be searchable under Google.co.uk.

I found my present new home by inputting blog co.uk into google.co.uk.

I then went to the first blog I could find, written as it happens by a British-based Hindu, and entered one of his phrases into Google.co.uk and, hey presto, it showed up.

But when I did the same with phrases taken at random from Blogger bogs, or even those from TypePad or WordPress, they only showed up in Google www., and never in Google. co.uk.

I don't understand why Google plays the night club doorman/bouncer where google.co.uk is concerned. I know it's caused a lot of ill-feeling among Brits, especially those who are UK resident, who signed up with the "easiest" blog provider, invariably US-based, only to discover they are automatically excluded from Google.co.uk, which is where a lot of us Brits confine our searches if it's seen as a UK topic.

It is odd, and a bit sinister if you ask me, how Google defends this absurd policy with almost religious zeal.

It's the kind of thing that breeds conspiracy theories. I know Bill Gates made more than one visit to No.10 while His Toniness was still in residence. I must do some research and see if any of Google's top figures were ever issued an invite as well, by TB or Alistair Campbell, if you get my drift.

Who was it who left office complaining about the "feral media" which some commentators read as code for bloggers, both private and MSM.

01 September 2007 12:17:00 CET

3 comments:

Louise said...

Gave up on your new site! Posted a comment, eventually managed to read verification code and then had to go and sign in which site refused!

sciencebod said...

Hi Louise

Sorry to hear you are having trouble Louise.

I have just successfully cut and pasted your comment to the new site, by way of testing things from my end. To begin with it seemed the send had been unsuccessful, throwing up some message about not being correctly logged on. Yet when I returned 15 minutes later, the comment was up.

So I really haven't a clue what's going on. Could you try another test send ? Don't bother composing anything - just enter a few question marks and see if it sends !

Thanks for letting me know.

PS I see you've ventured back to That Place. Shermeen has been missing you.

sciencebod said...

Update: April 23 2016

Have just installed a Recent Comments widget, obtained from a site that is entirely independent of Google's Blogger. (Don't understand why it's not supplied with the administrator's software on this one!).

So far so good: it's appeared at the top, listing the most recent comments that appeared here (many years ago!).

Will this one now appear at the top of the list? I expect so. Let's see.