I’m special, Google told me so…

Below is my notification e-mail from Google regarding the shutdown of FTP support next month.  I always knew I was special, but now Google quantified it for me (0.5%).  I’m not one in a million, but five in one thousand isn’t bad.

I’m moving to WordPress (wordpress.org), but the import (Blogger, and RSS) both failed.  I took a break and will revisit the issue this evening.

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog),  and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/. 

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows.

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing[1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.
Three years ago we launched Custom Domains[2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.
For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

• We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
• We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
• Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Regards,

Rick Klau
Blogger Product Manager
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

[1] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[2] http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/01/blogger-custom-domains.html
[3] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[4] http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373
[5] http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/

----
This e-mail is being sent to notify you of important changes to your Blogger account.

 

Technorati Tags: Blogger,WordPress,PaulIsSad

Bye Bye Blogger

Blogger is eliminating support for FTP publishing as of March 26, 2010.  For once in my life, I’m not waiting until the last minute to change.

I previously experimented with WordPress, then had the mySQL database explode when I attempted an upgrade, so I reverted to Blogger, and have been fat, dumb, and moderately happy since.

After a quick review, I’m looking at WordPress (again), and Movable Type.  I considered using Drupal, and it looks interesting, but I don’t have the bandwidth this year to go deep geek with Open Source. 

I have installed WordPress 2.9.2, and I’m having issues importing ten years of Blogger posts. I don’t want to retain 150 Meg of redundant posts, so I’m looking into alternate methods of exporting and importing Blogger data.

Any input is appreciated. 

Technorati Tags: Blogger,WordPress,Internet,blogging

I am pbegley

I am registered on almost every major site as pbegley and I registered the e-mail address pbegley at gmail dot com while Google Mail was in beta. 

Off and on, I have run into problems with some other Begley either giving my e-mail address to family (Patricia in Kentucky), or signing up for various services (jobs.com, Pat Begley in Wyoming).  Tonight it was someone attempting a password reset for Ubernote.

I’m hoping that posting this so it shows up in the major search engines.

Technorati Tags: identity,Internet

Phishing e-mail today

Below is the body of the message I received.  It’s obviously malicious because I control all the services for paulbegley.com, but I was intrigued. 

Dear user of the paulbegley.com mailing service!
We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (rants@paulbegley.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:
http://paulbegley.com/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=rants@paulbegley.com&from=paulbegley.com&fromname=rants
Best regards, paulbegley.com Technical Support.
Message ID#T1SYDT2B4BVZJ72

First, I looked at the header information and the entries below flagged this as fake.  It originated in Japan (.jp TLD), there is no reverse lookup for the IP address 119.152.104.119, and it’s part of APIC (Asia-Pacific Information Center).

Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: best guess record for domain of transitioning unquotingpoy4@strl.nhk.or.jp does not designate 119.152.104.119 as permitted sender) client-ip=119.152.104.119;
Return-Path: <unquotingpoy4@strl.nhk.or.jp>
Received: from CAWADZSGG (unknown [119.152.104.119])
Received: from 119.152.104.119 by iron.nhk.or.jp; Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:45:04 –0800

Also embedded in the message is the real link to some server in Korea (.kr TLD):

http://paulbegley.com.yhuttte.ne.kr/owa/service_directory/setting

Last, if you have a modern browser installed and configured correctly, your browser (at least Chrome and Firefox) flagged the link as a malicious site and blocked any connections.  IE let you through, but blocked the automatic download.  Screen shots below.

Chrome

Firefox

IE 8

Technorati Tags: Security,Internet,phishing,e-mail

Verizon Responds To Erroneous $1.99 Fee

 

More interesting is the phantom $1.99 fee Verizon's been hitting consumers with for doing absolutely nothing. The fee was first exposed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer last summer. It only gained the FCC's attention after David Pogue at the NY Times posted a column featuring a Verizon insider -- who claimed Verizon was aware of the glitch -- but was too in love with the millions in additional revenue it generated to do anything about it.

Verizon Responds To FCC Inquiry On ETFs, Erroneous $1.99 Fee - And the excuses are just as lame as you thought they'd be... - dslreports.com

Technorati Tags: wireless,Verizon,finance

Google Sandbox closed

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ is now offline.  We have to take our toys and go home.  I enjoy using the various beta products from Google and Microsoft.  For the past few years most of the ‘beta’ tools, with a few exceptions, have been production ready.  Participation in beta programs provides insight into new product features helping define best practices and roadmap technologies for my clients.

Thank you!

We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

©2009 Google

Thank you!

Technorati Tags: Google,beta,internet

Verizon Droid

I went to the Mount Laurel Verizon store at 6am this morning to buy a Droid.  Oddly enough, I was the only one in line over the age of, oh, 30?  Lots of customer service people and they even had a photographer and some marketing folks.  Bill was my customer service person, and he did a great job – he knew the Droid and even took some time to walk me through the interface and apps a bit, even demonstrating how to search the App Marketplace for a Twitter client.

I was the first person to complete my purchase, so they took a picture of Bill, me, and the Droid with the time displaying.

My first impression is very, very positive.  I will wring the hell out of it this weekend and post my comments. 

I bought a set of screen protectors, but the Droid fits in my Samsung i760 holster as well as my car holder.  I’m amused that the Droid manual has fewer pages (it’s actually a gatefold) than the Product Safety and Consumer Information brochures.  The only accessory is a 115V USB wall adapter and USB/mini-USB connector, but this fits into my existing car charger, so I’m ready to go.

Current Favorite Apps

• TwitDroid – twitter client
• Advanced Task Killer Free – task management utility
• Google Voice
• Car Home – GPS navigator
• Barcode Scanner – scan barcode and web lookup
  
  

Technorati Tags: Droid,Android,Google,mobile,communications

speedtest.net 2.1.7

http://www.speedtest.net/result/564822809.png

I have Comcast BLAST! service in New Jersey and I’m getting 13.74 Mb/sec download and 4.42 Mb/sec upload speeds. 

Speedtest.net now has a Philadelphia server, which is physically closer than the previous NYC server.  I will test monthly and see if my speeds are sustained.  From memory, the download speed is a bit slower (15 Mb/sec previously), and uplink speed is a bit faster (3.0 Mb/sec previously).

I am very pleased with Comcast BLAST!, particularly with the increased uplink speed which resolved VoIP problems I had with AT&T CallVantage.  AT&T is discontinuing CallVantage, so I am migrating to Vonage this week.  I will document the cut-over experience, and hopefully it will be painless.

Technorati Tags: Internet,Comcast,VoIP