Blogger to discontinue FTP support. Who owns the content.

I have been a Blogger user since 2003. Today I received this email from Google who has decided to discontinue FTP support. Guess I'll be moving to WordPress.

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:

o 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.
o We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
o 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/

Google Search Insight: Yahoo Wins!

AT&T Virtual Card, order processing? Not instant.

I signed up and paid for an AT&T Virtual Worldwide pre-paid calling card. But, instead of getting my calling card information after paying I got this:

Your order is being processed. You will receive an E-Mail with the outcome of your order within 2 hours. If you have any questions about the web ordering process for your Virtual Phone Card, please E-Mail us at att@ecustomersupport.com or call 1-877-723-7679.

Huh? Come on AT&T if I buy a digital download from Amazon there's almost no wait. Why are you leaving me hanging for up to two hours? So much for speedy e-commerce.

Seeing and Believing

Today's reading has some very insightful commentary...

In fact, much of this week's portion is concerned with precisely this theme: the primacy of hearing over seeing and the enduring power of instructions heard and spoken, in contrast to the fleeting nature of the visual world. Indeed, although we speak comfortably today about "the' Sh'ma, there are at least three different times in this parashah when Moses repeats his commandment for the people Israel to listen (4:1, 5:1, and 6:4).

Why, then, is Moses so intent on teaching his people this particular lesson? In our parashah, Deuteronomy asserts that Moses not only was sent to liberate Israel from slavery, but also was positioned to teach the Israelites certain principles of proper Jewish belief (see 4:14 and 5:28). If this is indeed Moses's charge, then his repeated exhortations about proper spiritual listening must be intended to instruct the people about the rudimentary skills needed for their emerging religious lives.

In order to justify its own authority, the Torah must ultimately rationalize obedience to one god (who cannot be seen at all) and undermine obedience to the idols of other gods (idols which, obviously, can be seen). To this end, Moses assumes an anti-idolatry stance so vigorous that he suggests (in 4:15-19) that opposition to idol-worship--not the unification of Israel, not the coronation of himself as prophet, and not even the revelation of God's Torah--was the sole purpose of Israel's experience at Sinai.

Moses fears that visual observation, even of common natural phenomena, can lead one to the mistaken belief that some power besides God is involved in the governance and maintenance of the cosmos. (Note that his namesake, Moses Maimonides, refines this point further in his Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 1:1; 2:1). And so he teaches Israel to depend less on what it can see than on what it can hear. Even when retelling the story of the Revelation at Sinai, Moses downplays its memorable visual spectacle--the mountain engulfed in smoke and flame--and focuses instead on what Israel heard there. Only the words you hear originate in heaven, he insists; what you see is hopelessly earthbound (Deuteronomy 4:36).

I had not thought of the Sh'ma in this light but, in reflecting on the commentary it makes a lot of sense. Depend less on what you can see than what you can hear is good advice.

Wayman Tisdale, 1964-2009

Wayman Tisdale, 1964-2009
Title: Let's Do It Again
Artist: Wayman Tisdale

Former Indiana Pacer Wayman Tisdale, one of the very small number of professional athletes to boast musical careers that stand up in their own right, passed away yesterday morning at 44. He had been battling bone cancer since 2007.

I got to know Tisdale for he unique bass playing style while listening to a station on Pandora. I've never seen him in person. We are lucky to have his recordings now that he has passed on.

10 To Dos for Social Media (Twitter, Linked In, etc.)

1) Ensure all your social network (Linked In, Twitter, blog) profile pictures are the same.
2) Participate! Nothing happens without action on your part
3) Participate regularly and with relevance.
4) Participate
5) Set up some automation ( http://www.TweetLater.com )
6) Add your Twitter updates to your blog/Facebook
7) Add your blog feed to your Facebook page
8) Set up a Facebook Business page for your business
9) Add your Linked In/Twitter url to the signature of your emails.
10) Organize your Twitter "universe" into lists using http://www.TweetDeck.com or similar.

Google Profile Cards Arrived, Thanks iPrint

Google recently rolled out profile pages... as a bonus for setting one up? Some free profile cards from iPrint mine just showed up.