Hi folks -- so, a bunch of you have reported to me and Journals Editor Jeff of problems with nondelivery of New Entry & Comment Added Journals Alerts, going on since around Friday.
We've made the Journals & Alerts teams aware of the problem and are working to fix it. Apologies for not publicly replying to your reports earlier.
It appears to be one of those annoying problems where Alerts are completely working for some people, and completely not working for others, so the tech folks have to figure out why those two groups of people are being affected differently, and go from there.
For people who aren't getting their alerts -- I was one of those people you love to hate, who wasn't seeing anything wrong with alerts delivery... until just now. I subscribe to my own new Entry Alert (which you can do, it just involves some finagling with alternate screen names), and I didn't get a New Entry alert for the Hello Kitty post I just did. Up until then, though, I'd gotten all my Alerts normally (as far as I know, of course.)
If you're still having problems with Alert non-delivery, please let me know in the comments (if you've already notified Jeff, you don't have to do it again here).
When you do report a problem, please tell me the address of the affected blog, and whether or not it's a complete outage, or if you're still getting some alerts.
Also, if you're subscribed to a lot of alerts -- like, over 100, please let me know as well -- that typically causes problems.
By my reckoning, it's been a few months since we've had really widespread Alerts problems, so please bear with us and sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks -- Joe
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Hello, September (redux)
Hi folks -- hope you had a great Labor Day holiday (in spite of some Alerts problems some folks have been experiencing -- I'll get to that in my next entry in a couple of minutes).
As I mentioned on Friday, I didn't get a chance to snap a pic of the new month in the Hello Kitty calendar that adorns my cubicle wall, so here is September. It involves cows:
Apologies for the picture quality -- I didn't take the time to steady the camera properly. On the plus side, I did upload it to the AOL Pictures Beta, which I'm still playing with; you can see my publicly shared pictures here (including a fake "For Dummies" book cover that I generated, but didn't use in my Friday entry.)
Thanks -- Joe
Tags: hello kitty
As I mentioned on Friday, I didn't get a chance to snap a pic of the new month in the Hello Kitty calendar that adorns my cubicle wall, so here is September. It involves cows:
Can cats milk cows?
Apologies for the picture quality -- I didn't take the time to steady the camera properly. On the plus side, I did upload it to the AOL Pictures Beta, which I'm still playing with; you can see my publicly shared pictures here (including a fake "For Dummies" book cover that I generated, but didn't use in my Friday entry.)
Thanks -- Joe
Tags: hello kitty
Friday, September 1, 2006
Everywhere There's Signs
Hi folks -- that's it for me this week. Before I sign off for the Labor Day holiday, Journaler Deb sent me a link to another one of those wacky custom sign-generating Web sites, signgenerator.org, which lets you create custom sign graphics that you can put in your blogs and Web pages. Check out her creation.
Here's one that I made:
Thanks -- Joe
Here's one that I made:
Thanks -- Joe
Hello, September (Sort of) and Cherry-Picking the Boards
Hi folks -- well, it's the first of the month, so this should be the entry where I feature a photo of September's page in my Hello Kitty calendar... except I'm working from home today, and I forgot to take a photo of September last night (which would be kind of cheating, anyway). So look for it on Tuesday.
(I didn't do the Bunny Bunny, Rabbit Rabbit thing, either.)
Over here in the southern part of the mid-Atlantic, it looks like it's going to be rainy and soggy for at least the first part of Labor Day weekend, as Ernesto makes its way up the coast.
A few other items:
* Journaler Lori is getting some link-love from the AOL Video Blog for the video she posted to UnCut video of her dogs attacking the vacuum cleaner. In fact, her video is in the Hot List on the AOL Video page right now, so congrats to Lori.
* Looking over to the Journals Message Boards, Journaler Paul has another edition of his CarnivAOL up, where you nominate one of your own blog entries that you think deserves more attention -- you have until Tuesday, 9/5 to submit your link to Paul.
* Also from the boards, Journaler Amanda links the next installment of her Top 100 Men feature; one features picks 40-49. See if you can spot the photo-retouching trickery in this batch.
* And then, here are some new Journals that have been introduced in the Boards (click at your own risk):
- Thoughts From Me
- WHY REPUBLICANS CAN'T BE TRUSTED WITH OUR SECURITY
- Holly-Go-Lightly meets Reality BITES
- Briarpatch
- NekkedBare's Den
- Afterthoughts
- Ramblings From the Edge...
- College Students Unite
- BeautifulChaos
- EightArmsT0holdu
These should all be new Journals, if not new Journalers. Will they last? I'm not sure, but if you find a Journal you like, leave a comment and say hi.
If you have a new Journal and I missed you, feel free to leave a link in the comments.
Also, the Message Boards problem with the extra "www" in embedded hyperlinks is still unresolved, so you're going to have to keep cutting and pasting URLs. I have no new information on any fixes. Sorry for the inconvenience.
As a reminder, if you know someone's screen name, you can see what publically-available Journals they have under that screen name, which is useful for new Journalers who know they have a Journal, but don't know exactly what their blog's address is. Just go to the URL:
Thanks -- Joe
(I didn't do the Bunny Bunny, Rabbit Rabbit thing, either.)
Over here in the southern part of the mid-Atlantic, it looks like it's going to be rainy and soggy for at least the first part of Labor Day weekend, as Ernesto makes its way up the coast.
A few other items:
* Journaler Lori is getting some link-love from the AOL Video Blog for the video she posted to UnCut video of her dogs attacking the vacuum cleaner. In fact, her video is in the Hot List on the AOL Video page right now, so congrats to Lori.
* Looking over to the Journals Message Boards, Journaler Paul has another edition of his CarnivAOL up, where you nominate one of your own blog entries that you think deserves more attention -- you have until Tuesday, 9/5 to submit your link to Paul.
* Also from the boards, Journaler Amanda links the next installment of her Top 100 Men feature; one features picks 40-49. See if you can spot the photo-retouching trickery in this batch.
* And then, here are some new Journals that have been introduced in the Boards (click at your own risk):
- Thoughts From Me
- WHY REPUBLICANS CAN'T BE TRUSTED WITH OUR SECURITY
- Holly-Go-Lightly meets Reality BITES
- Briarpatch
- NekkedBare's Den
- Afterthoughts
- Ramblings From the Edge...
- College Students Unite
- BeautifulChaos
- EightArmsT0holdu
These should all be new Journals, if not new Journalers. Will they last? I'm not sure, but if you find a Journal you like, leave a comment and say hi.
If you have a new Journal and I missed you, feel free to leave a link in the comments.
Also, the Message Boards problem with the extra "www" in embedded hyperlinks is still unresolved, so you're going to have to keep cutting and pasting URLs. I have no new information on any fixes. Sorry for the inconvenience.
As a reminder, if you know someone's screen name, you can see what publically-available Journals they have under that screen name, which is useful for new Journalers who know they have a Journal, but don't know exactly what their blog's address is. Just go to the URL:
http://journals.aol.com/SCREENNAMEand just put their screenname in (no spaces). For example, since my screen name is JournalsEditor, my public list page address is:http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor
Thanks -- Joe
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Make a Bling Ring Out of a Dollar Bill (Plus, the AOL Pictures Beta)
Okay, so one more entry tonight. This one has pictures, in counterpoint to my two previous text-only posts. It's also kind of fun.
Back in December, I blogged about how you can fold a dollar bill into a shirt (complete with collar and sleeves).
You can find the complete instructions on the Money Origami site by Clay Randall; in addition to shirts, you can do a bunch of other designs.
This time around, I focused on rings:
With singles, the "one" centers pretty well; I'm not sure how the redesigned bills line up (though they'll still fold the same way, of course).
Next up: Maybe the spider? I'm not sure, it involves five separate bills. We'll have to see about that.
On a photo note, I uploaded the pictures to the AOL Pictures Beta, which is the test site for AOL's social photo sharing service. After uploading the photos to the AOL Pictures Beta, I used the photo's permalink address to put it in my blog.
(I need to talk more in-depth about the AOL Pictures Beta, but I have to use it more first.)
Click on any of the photos above to see how the individual photo pages look (including the tagging), or see all of my public gallery pics (it's only these three pics so far).
Thanks -- Joe
Back in December, I blogged about how you can fold a dollar bill into a shirt (complete with collar and sleeves).
You can find the complete instructions on the Money Origami site by Clay Randall; in addition to shirts, you can do a bunch of other designs.
This time around, I focused on rings:
They're pretty easy to make once you figure out how big the loop has to be to fit your fingers. Note how a few are a little sloppier than the others.
With singles, the "one" centers pretty well; I'm not sure how the redesigned bills line up (though they'll still fold the same way, of course).
Make me mad, and this is the last thing you'll see -- the Five Dollar Fist of Fury.
Momma said knock you out.
Next up: Maybe the spider? I'm not sure, it involves five separate bills. We'll have to see about that.
On a photo note, I uploaded the pictures to the AOL Pictures Beta, which is the test site for AOL's social photo sharing service. After uploading the photos to the AOL Pictures Beta, I used the photo's permalink address to put it in my blog.
(I need to talk more in-depth about the AOL Pictures Beta, but I have to use it more first.)
Click on any of the photos above to see how the individual photo pages look (including the tagging), or see all of my public gallery pics (it's only these three pics so far).
Thanks -- Joe
A Really Late (or Really Early) Morning Mix
Here are a few items that I meant to get to this morning. Actually, a few were from yesterday morning or earlier. Does that really matter?
A lot of times, we content programming types worry that a story has gone stale, even if it's only been out for a day (sometimes less). This is because we're always online and watching the news, looking for the next story. No one wants to be seen as covering old news (unless you're doing some in-depth analysis or think piece, which doesn't happen all that much when you're writing for a broad audience). This is especially true because we're really sensitive about the relatively limited inventory of promo space on main screens.
Even in places where I don't have to worry about promo space limitations, like this blog, I still don't want to waste a lot of my own time trying to go in-depth on something that's already been done to death, by people with specialized knowledge or specific insights.
Then again, if I can quickly cover something, why not? If you've already read about it, you can just always just skip ahead, and if you haven't, it's like that NBC summer reruns promo: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"
Anyway, that was a longer-than-planned intro for a few quick hits:
* 9,305 Years Wasted Watching YouTube Videos: This was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday -- columnist Lee Gomes "scraped" some publically-available data off the YouTube social video-sharing site and did some number crunching -- in addition to some other figures and anecdotes, he says people have spent a total of 9,305 years watching YouTube videos since it started last year.
That's a heck of a lot of Star Trek/Simpsons-theme theremin/synth mashups right there.
* The Katie Couric Diet Plan? -- Right on the heels of my entry on how photo retouchers alter reality, we find out that a magazine's photo of Katie Couric was digitally altered to make her look slimmer.
* Memo to CNN Anchors About Wireless Mikes: During President Bush's Katrina Anniversary speech on Tuesday, CNN Anchor Kyra Phillips forgot to turn off her wireless mike during a trip to the ladies' room, so you could hear her talking smack about her sister-in-law (among other things).
Many have remarked that the next family reunion should be interesting.
* More Fun at CNN: I actually saw this live earlier today, though I didn't give it much thought at the time -- a link on the CNN.com main page to a story about a speech President Bush gave today read, "Bush 3.0 releases patch for Iraq war."
The phrase "Bush 3.0?" is used as a sub-header in the story, so the headline writer extended the software metaphor with the patch-release thing.
I also note that it looks like the CNN.com folks rolled out a slight redesign of their article pages today.
* Political Sock Puppetry? A City Council member and mayoral candidate in Rochester, Minn. has been anonymously posting extremely complimentary things about himself in the comments area on the Post-Bulletin newspaper's Web site.
If he were identifying himself, this would be a very different story (probably not even a story), but it's a whole 'nother ballgame because he's essentially pretending to be someone else by referring to himself in the third-person.
This last item is from Backstage at Newza da Weird, which is the blog companion to the great News of the Weird newspaper column/Web site done by Chuck Shepherd. It's apparently been around since April, and I want to know why I wasn't informed. Needless to say, it's going into my daily reads list.
Was any of this "new to you"? Let me know what you think of these (or any other) links I feature.
Thanks -- Joe
A lot of times, we content programming types worry that a story has gone stale, even if it's only been out for a day (sometimes less). This is because we're always online and watching the news, looking for the next story. No one wants to be seen as covering old news (unless you're doing some in-depth analysis or think piece, which doesn't happen all that much when you're writing for a broad audience). This is especially true because we're really sensitive about the relatively limited inventory of promo space on main screens.
Even in places where I don't have to worry about promo space limitations, like this blog, I still don't want to waste a lot of my own time trying to go in-depth on something that's already been done to death, by people with specialized knowledge or specific insights.
Then again, if I can quickly cover something, why not? If you've already read about it, you can just always just skip ahead, and if you haven't, it's like that NBC summer reruns promo: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"
Anyway, that was a longer-than-planned intro for a few quick hits:
* 9,305 Years Wasted Watching YouTube Videos: This was in the Wall Street Journal yesterday -- columnist Lee Gomes "scraped" some publically-available data off the YouTube social video-sharing site and did some number crunching -- in addition to some other figures and anecdotes, he says people have spent a total of 9,305 years watching YouTube videos since it started last year.
That's a heck of a lot of Star Trek/Simpsons-theme theremin/synth mashups right there.
* The Katie Couric Diet Plan? -- Right on the heels of my entry on how photo retouchers alter reality, we find out that a magazine's photo of Katie Couric was digitally altered to make her look slimmer.
* Memo to CNN Anchors About Wireless Mikes: During President Bush's Katrina Anniversary speech on Tuesday, CNN Anchor Kyra Phillips forgot to turn off her wireless mike during a trip to the ladies' room, so you could hear her talking smack about her sister-in-law (among other things).
Many have remarked that the next family reunion should be interesting.
* More Fun at CNN: I actually saw this live earlier today, though I didn't give it much thought at the time -- a link on the CNN.com main page to a story about a speech President Bush gave today read, "Bush 3.0 releases patch for Iraq war."
The phrase "Bush 3.0?" is used as a sub-header in the story, so the headline writer extended the software metaphor with the patch-release thing.
I also note that it looks like the CNN.com folks rolled out a slight redesign of their article pages today.
* Political Sock Puppetry? A City Council member and mayoral candidate in Rochester, Minn. has been anonymously posting extremely complimentary things about himself in the comments area on the Post-Bulletin newspaper's Web site.
If he were identifying himself, this would be a very different story (probably not even a story), but it's a whole 'nother ballgame because he's essentially pretending to be someone else by referring to himself in the third-person.
This last item is from Backstage at Newza da Weird, which is the blog companion to the great News of the Weird newspaper column/Web site done by Chuck Shepherd. It's apparently been around since April, and I want to know why I wasn't informed. Needless to say, it's going into my daily reads list.
Was any of this "new to you"? Let me know what you think of these (or any other) links I feature.
Thanks -- Joe
A Note on the Early Morning Maintenance/Install Window
Hi folks -- as most of you have figured out by now, I'm not a morning person. So, I rarely experience first-hand a phenomena that some of you early-risers report from time to time: problems accessing or posting to Journals in the early morning hours (like at around 6am ET).
What typically happens is that you'll have a problem with Journals somewhere around 6am; you'll send me a mail reporting the problem; I'll read it at around 10am or so, and when I take a look, Journals will be working fine.
For these kinds of early-morning outages, the most common explanation is that the tech folks were doing maintenance or installs during the install window, which is between the hours of 4am-6am ET.
4am-6am is usually the point of lowest activity for any given US audience -- the West Coast has gone to sleep, and the East Coast hasn't woken up yet, so the least people will be affected if something has to be taken down for maintenance or installs. (Some types of work can be done during the day without affecting anyone, but some things require a scheduled outage. It's kind of like how you can't work on a car engine while it's driving down the road.)
Of course, even if it's the dead of night, an outage will still affect some people -- our International users, as well as those US folks who are up during the maintenance window. It's one of those "greatest good for the greatest amount of people" things and no matter what time you pick, you're going to impact someone, so apologies for those affected.
Now, if the Journals tech team knows that they'll be doing work that's going to cause an outage during the scheduled install window, they're pretty good about letting me know so I can tell you ahead of time.
However, maintenance done on other systems -- rostering, authentication, hamster wheel lubrication, etc. -- may also impact Journals, and a lot of times, we won't find out about those ahead of time. So, again, apologies for the inconvenience.
Thanks -- Joe
What typically happens is that you'll have a problem with Journals somewhere around 6am; you'll send me a mail reporting the problem; I'll read it at around 10am or so, and when I take a look, Journals will be working fine.
For these kinds of early-morning outages, the most common explanation is that the tech folks were doing maintenance or installs during the install window, which is between the hours of 4am-6am ET.
4am-6am is usually the point of lowest activity for any given US audience -- the West Coast has gone to sleep, and the East Coast hasn't woken up yet, so the least people will be affected if something has to be taken down for maintenance or installs. (Some types of work can be done during the day without affecting anyone, but some things require a scheduled outage. It's kind of like how you can't work on a car engine while it's driving down the road.)
Of course, even if it's the dead of night, an outage will still affect some people -- our International users, as well as those US folks who are up during the maintenance window. It's one of those "greatest good for the greatest amount of people" things and no matter what time you pick, you're going to impact someone, so apologies for those affected.
Now, if the Journals tech team knows that they'll be doing work that's going to cause an outage during the scheduled install window, they're pretty good about letting me know so I can tell you ahead of time.
However, maintenance done on other systems -- rostering, authentication, hamster wheel lubrication, etc. -- may also impact Journals, and a lot of times, we won't find out about those ahead of time. So, again, apologies for the inconvenience.
Thanks -- Joe
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