Why I Haven't Blogged For A While
Believe it or not, (as I bite the hand that feeds me), Blogger sucks!

Microsoft released Word 2007, well, earlier this year. And around the same time, Google finished integrating Blogger into its authentication system. What do they have to do with each other, you may ask?

Well, Microsoft was kind enough to put in blogging functionality in Word 2007. Create new posts, publish old ones. It works with a handful of providers - WordPress, Windows Live Spaces, and Blogger included. Well, its supposed to work. But it doesn't.

You can put in your Blogger information, it will list all of your blogs, and for any you select, it will list your blog posts (if you want to edit an old one). But it fails if you try to actually open one of these blog entries. And it fails if you try to post a new blog entry.

Why do I blame this on Blogger?

Well, from what I understand, Blogger used a well-published standard for its API, making it easy for blog tools to work against. When people complained in early 2007 that Word 2007 didn't work with Blogger (around the time that Blogger became fully integrated with Google authentication), Blogger responded with a "we're working on it", and later with a "it's fixed". (As a side note, Word 2007 worked *perfectly* with Blogger, supposedly, when Word 2007 was still in Beta.)

In the time that has passed since, I acquired Word 2007. And discovered that it doesn't work with Blogger. (No, it's not my computer, read on...) And Blogger's only support option, other than a plethora of How-Tos, is the Blogger Help Group. Being a Google Group, it is a forum-style discussion system. Old posts get pushed out of the way for new posts. Hundreds of posts are made per day. (And a kicker, it seems that older posts cannot be replied to or edited, making them effectively dead.)

I've posted a couple times now, complaining about my problem, with no response. I've scoured it looking for other people with the same problem, and found a few that have, but the responses they got (from people that aren't affiliated with Google or Blogger), were all basically to the effect "Well, you shouldn't be trying to use Word then, stupid." With no follow-up, ever, from Google/Blogger personnel.

There is no e-mail address for customer support. No handy-dandy web form to file in a request for help. Just a Google Group, hoping you'll get answered, or at least noticed, by someone important. And so far I haven't been.

There is no accountability. No quality control. And thats what you get for using a free service.

So I'll post here, while my patience can bare it. But I'm considering moving my computer programming blog to WordPress. (Which sucks for Google, because thats the blog of mine that actually gets traffic.)
Sunday, December 16, 2007 2:40:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)      Comments [0]  blogger | technology | microsoft