October 15, 2005

Some miscellaneous things about blogging.

1. I love Blogger! Nothing has malfunctioned around here since last May, and it's free. There must be a lot of people who left Blogger and regret it. How irritating it must be to have more traffic cost more. On Blogger, more traffic is unalloyed fun.

2. I really have meant all along to redo my template into something more distinctive, but lately, clicking around and seeing other blogs using Minima, I've started to feel that we have a kind of kinship. We are the Minimalists.

3. I must confess I've never understood trackbacks. I'm fairly sure Blogger blogs can't receive them, and I have no idea how to give them. I just quite simply regard trackbacks as something other people do.

4. I don't understand Blogshares, and I don't want to understand it. My interest in understanding it did not increase when I read this on the page about my blog:
Althouse suffered a huge setback with several analysts urging their clients to ditch the stock as it suffered a public relations disaster. The exact nature of customer dissatisfaction was not known but Txapulín was rumoured to have had a hand in it. Industry insiders suspect a Judge (artefact) was involved. Althouse share price dropped from B$7,667.73 to B$3,373.8.

The hell?

21 comments:

Doug said...

Ann,

A word on Trackbacks. Blogger blogs can receive them, but you have to use Haloscan, or something like it, in order for that to happen. Haloscan has a commenting an trackback system similar to Blogger's.

Be warned, though, if you sign up for Haloscan you will lose ALL of the comments people have posted on Blogger's comment system. You might be able to sign up for just the trackback's but I didn't look into that. Fortunately, my blog was young when I did this and I only lost a few comments.

Doug said...

And, oh yeah, I don't really get Blogshares either.

Meade said...

"Althouse share price dropped from B$7,667.73 to B$3,373.8."

As my financial adviser guy would say: "that looks like a strong buy opportunity," you know, as in "buy low..."

Ann Althouse said...

Lmeade: So maybe this Txapulín character was manipulating the market, defrauding other traders and haphazardly slurring me. Why wouldn't everyone do this? Does Blogshares have a regulatory system of some kind?

Meade said...

Gee, Ann, I have no idea. But if I were you, I'd be very careful not to engage in any insider... blogging.

I know, *groan*

Lance Burri said...

Must've been a bubble.

One thing about blogger - they're doing a great job of blocking the spam comments. Even my low-traffic blog is getting a ton of them. I get the notice in my email, but they don't make it through to my blog. And I don't have the word verification thing.

Ann Althouse said...

Lance: Thanks for the tip. I'll turn off word verification for now and see how it goes. (I'm terrible at getting the typing right.)

Ann Althouse said...

Uh... that lasted for about 2 minutes. Word verification is back on!

BlogVantage said...

There is a temptation to switch blog services, but I'm one of those minimalist bloggers who will stay with Blogger.

I have 12 blogs and a free blog service is important in my "blogxperiments."

Ann Althouse said...

12 blogs? Apparently, there is a subcategory of obsessive blogging that involves starting lots of different blogs. Not saying it's bad! I assume that whoever's writing Harriet Miers's Blog, for example, has lots of other single-idea blogs. That's one way to blog. I used to have a separate blog for my overflow ideas, mainly the most frivolous, lightweight things, where I let myself ramble and digress much more self-indulgently. (More like my "comments persona" here.)

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks, Jim. No way am I going to fiddle with Haloscan. The main way I see who's linking is with Site Meter referrals. And I actually pay the extra money to have the premium version of Site Meter, which lets me see a lot more information. It saves me a tremendous amount of time compared to Technorati. Technorati shows who's linking, but Site Meter shows who's sending readers over.

P-Zan Leong said...

Just stumbled onto your blog from a post about this entry.

I'm a BlogShares player. The share price of your blog dropping could be done to lower the price per share value of your blog. So each share would be more valuable at a lower price rather than costly but less valuable. There are many other reasons why that person wanted to lower your blog share price. That's just one.

BlogShares is also a good way of promoting blogs because blogs which are actively traded get more visitors checking into the blog. :)

Lance Burri said...

And...as soon as I write about blogger doing a good job keeping out the spam, I find two spam comments over at my blog.

Crap.

Jim said...

First, the good news: BlogShares is akin to "Fantasy Football."

And now, the bad news: I don't understand "Fantasy Football."

I guess, if your shares drop low enough, they trade you for a third round draft pick, and "a player to be named later."

PS: I don't think anybody'll be tradin' you anytime, soon. Keep on bloggin' & sloggin' along.

Ann Althouse said...

Jonathan: I've never noticed either of the problems you mention. It might ask "are you sure" if you're clicking away from unsaved material. Basically, I've found Blogger to be great in the last few months, and I really trust Google to stick around in the long run.

Unknown said...

I was ready to dump blogger until I read that Google purchased them. I figured it wouldn't take long until blogger leapfrogged all the other hosting sites. Google is hands-down, the best run software company out there.

Glad I stayed with them.

Ann Althouse said...

Jonathan: I'm glad there is competition for Blogger -- for one thing, it will keep pressure on Blogger to be good. But I think Blogger is the best bet. People told me to switch during the time of tribulation last May, and I'm so glad I didn't.

Judith said...

I got MT through my hosting service, which added $2/mo. to my monthly bill of $10. They also set it up and have provided occasional tech help. This is a version that allows multiple blogs, whereas the one-blog version of MT is free.

I love MT. The interface is much more user-friendly than Blogger. It has many more options, so it can be more complicated, but I like having them available.

If Blogger is more reliable now that's great, but for the 3 years I used Blogger it was frequently down, which was very frustrating.

Ann Althouse said...

Judith: I've used MT when I've guest-blogged at Instapundit and found it basically the same as Blogger. I actually prefer Blogger because the print is clearer to me in the compose window.

amba said...

WTF is Txapulín?? It sounds like an Aztec demon.

Nick said...

You can sign up for Haloscan and do just trackbacks. I successfully did it on my blog with great success.