Friday, January 10, 2014

Fuzzy Clouds and More Google Issues

When I tried to create a new post using the Chrome browser, I got the "Compose" screen like usual but when I clicked on the icon to add a photo, I was prompted to log into Google+  to access my online storage. There was no way to close the window or do anything except click the login button. But since I was at the "Compose" screen already, you'd think that Google already knew that I was logged in. After logging in (again!) I was presented with a blank window and no way to exit besides closing the browser. I think something is broken. Do others have problems with Chrome and Blogger? This also happens with Firefox but Safari seems to work fine….

I really liked the appearance of the clouds in this picture. This was taken about 3:15pm with some nice color on the horizon hinting that the sun was still around. The fuzziness in the clouds suggesting that there were still some wind higher up but it has died down somewhat. It was really feeling cold earlier with gusts up to 20mph and lots of blowing snow.

23 comments:

  1. No, I haven't had that problem...and that sounds scary. I don't have an online storage tho. I do use Chrome.

    This makes other browsers and Wordpress really, really attractive. I've not heard of anything like this with Wordpress. The manipulation by Google to get you into + is relentless apparently.

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    1. When I use Firefox, the NoScript extension warns me that there was an attempt to do cross-site scripting and it wasn't allowed by the extension since it is a security no-no.

      Google+ is a real mystery and I don't see zero value in it...

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  2. Love those colors in your photo. Good clean clear colors and image!

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    1. Thank you, I almost deleted the photo since it looked blurry when I just looked at the clouds. Took a couple and they all looked the same...

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  3. Richard, I sympathize with browser and Blogger challenges. I sometimes feel that I am collateral damage in the growing skirmishes between Google and Apple.

    I don't have issues with Firefox which is my goto browser on my work PC and my home iMac. It's a different story with my iPhone and iPad and mobile Safari. Blogger then becomes very iffy and often it's impossible to create a post or even edit and existing post.

    I have signed on to Google+ but to be honest I find it baffling. I'm not a social media fan, and scrapped my FaceBook page when I got fed up with FB's interface and tactics trying everything to get me interact with it. I'm also finding LinkedIn increasingly intrusive and disturbing.

    All my photos are in Picasa and I haven't had any issues.

    Bob Leong worked some magic in Google+ with some animated photos but it's not easy to see how that works.

    In the end all I have to offer is sympathy, unfortunately.

    I think I'll stay away from Chrome and Google+ until I figured out how they made blogging easier.

    I prefer Blogger to WordPress. Maybe it's just because more of the blogs I follow are in Blogger. I don't like the comment function in WordPress, I prefer Blogger's comment interface, though I am fed up with trying to pass Turing tests to prove I'm not a robot. Mostly because lately I've been struggling with the tests. Maybe I'm a robot.

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    1. In this case, it isn't Google and Apple but multiple groups within Google. I think they were a lot better when they were still a small, growing company. I looked at WordPress and SquareSpace but neither has comment authentication tied to Google credentials. And I really couldn't find any options besides WordPress authentication. Lots of features but lots of maintenance as well.

      The numeric captchas are a lot easier. I don't know why some have numeric and others are still alphanumeric.

      The image manipulation that you are referring to is called "auto-awesome". If you turn it on, it'll create animated gifs, panoramas, etc. After all, Google knows what you would've done if you could but they assume that you are too dumb to do it yourself. I used to be a proponent of Google but not any more...

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  4. I've had plenty of issues with Google+ though I don't recall mine being the same as yours. I was away from + or so I thought. Somewhere along the line I was drawn back in and that's not a good thing.

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    1. I haven't figured out a use for Google+. Maybe it's their attempt to out-facebook Facebook. But the terms of service are much, much better than FB. I think that's why it is so popular with photographers.

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  5. Richard:

    I have problems with Google Chrome. I cannot post reliably with it as formatting changes every time you move your curser over the text so I use Firefox except that when you link/post photos from Picassa (old interface), not Google+ you always start at the top and have to drag the bar down to recently uploaded images which is a pain. Using google, your photos stay where the curser was when you were there the previous time.

    I dumped Linkedin when I started to get too many emails asking me to add people whom I didn't know and even years after I still get Linkedin requestes. I refuse to sign up for FB, or twitter and any other social media, but I got sucked into google+ as everything I have stored on-line is with a google product

    Nice sunset

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast

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    1. The composition tools provided by Blogger are really "heavy". I.e. large and take a lot of resources. On a PC, no problem. Anything else especially if you combine it with touch is nothing short of useless.

      I don't know why I bother with LinkedIn as I'm not looking for a job or anything like that. I'll probably drop it. I have a FB account just to reserve a username but no content, no friends, no timeline, just an empty account that I log into a couple of times per year just so it won't get automatically deleted.

      I do have a Twitter account and have had it since the early days. It seems more useful especially to get news. If you follow folks like Andy Carvin, formerly with NPR, you hear what's going on in the world better than any traditional news media.

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  6. Very pretty. I like the whole scene. The nice colors in the sky, the sprinkle of lights along the horizon and the interesting texture of the snow. I haven't ran into the chrome/compose thing...at least not so far.

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    1. Thank you, I really like the sunrise/sunset colors on really cold days.

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  7. Since I use Safari I haven't had the issues you have been dealing with.

    The picture… is marvelous.

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    1. Thank you! The Chrome thing was just bugging me which why the rant...

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  8. Beautiful colors indeed....your rig in the foreground would have made it much better of course. :)

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  9. Very pretty colors in the sky. Something makes me think the clouds weren't warm and fuzzy though.

    Sorry, I am no help with Chrome. I just blog from the iMac with Safari and don't try to do mobile or anything else or use any other browsers.

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    1. I like the colors and immediately picked up the camera. Usually, I say "oh, it'll be the same tomorrow" and don't take a picture.

      After taking the picture, I couldn't figure out why the clouds were so fuzzy. I assumed that I didn't keep the camera steady.

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  10. Chrome was so bad for me I deleted it from my computer and am now going with Firefox.

    Funny though, now if I use Google Search to look for a bike part, or anything, I get a ton of You Might Also Be Interested in ads for that product.

    Tracking? Seems like it to me.

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    1. I'm getting ready to delete Chrome as it is more and more problematic. It may not be Chrome as much as Blogger as I had the same problem with Firefox.

      Google tracks everything but probably not as much as your ISP does. Google can track your searches but your ISP can track everything that you do.

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  11. i am also facing the same problem. do you have any solution for this?

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    1. I just end up switching to another browser for a while and within a few days the problem goes away. No aknowledgement from Google that anything was ever wrong. (They never make mistakes) So no real solution.

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