Friday, April 23, 2010

Journal - Email Blues

Okay, so I had another idea for my Blogger problems. I thought I would create a whole new Blogger account, completely separate from my existing account. I would then try the keyboard shortcuts in the new account and see if they work. That would tell me if there’s a problem with the current settings in my existing account, or if the problem lies elsewhere. It’s a long shot, but I’m running out of ideas.

In order to creat a new Blogger account, I need a new email address. Creating a new account with the same email will only attach a new blog to my existing account.

My existing email is through Google, a g mail account, so I went there to create a second email account. I went through the setup and provided all my information, but I got hung up on the CAPCHA. The Google mail CAPCHA has a listen link so you can hear the numbers and type them out. I listened to the recording and I could hear the numbers fairly well, although some of them were hard to understand. The main problem was the numbers were being spoken too close together. I would hear a number and type it rightaway. As soon as I typed the number, my screen reader would say it back to me. While my screen reader was talking, the next number was being spoken on the recording and I couldn't hear it. I tried several times but just couldn't manage it.

Next, I went to Mail dot com. Mail dot com is unique in that you can actually choose your own domain from a long list. First you choose a category that interests you like music. When you choose the music category, it gives you a list of domains to choose from such as “@matchbox20 dot com” or something like that. My favorite was the World category. Under the world category you can choose domains like "@rome dot com", or @paris dot com.” Anyway I went through the sign up process and got to the CAPCHA. Let me tell you, Mail dot com has the best CAPCHA I’ve ever seen. Or heard. When you click the listen link, you first hear a clear woman’s voice explaining exactly what you need to do. She says, “Listen to the recording and type out all the words you hear with spaces in between them. If you can’t make out all the words, don't worry. Just make your best guess." Then the recording begins. It sounds like a clip from an old movie. You can hear someone delivering a perfectly clear line of dialogue and all you have to do is type what you hear. No evil voices in the background trying to distract you by sucking your soul out through your headphones. I was very impressed. I got a new email account. The only problem was, I couldn’t log in to it to check for mail. Every time I try, I get a blank page that says "User name service." No links, no nothing, just those three words. Maybe it’s a temporary glitch. I’ll check back there later.

Finally, I tried Microsoft’s Hotmail. At Hotmail, you can choose from two different domains, “@hotmail dot com", or "@live dot com." I keyed in all my information and got down to the CAPCHA. Here, I had the same problem I had with G mail. The numbers came too close together. Also, Hotmail's CAPCHA does not return your cursor to the text box after you click the listen link. The other two did.

So that all took me about an hour and I accomplished absolutely nothing. That’s kind of how this whole week has been. I'm trying so hard to keep my Blogger blog, I really don’t want to have to learn a new system at Wordpress, but I'm just not getting anywhere. I haven’t completely given up hope yet, though.

Hebrews 10:36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

2 comments:

  1. Ugh the evil CAPTCHA. I've encountered one with the nice lady too and those are pretty good.

    So I have to ask, the main issue you're having with Blogger is that the short cuts aren't working? So what's the lesser of two evils, struggling with all the CAPTCHAs, moving over to Wordpress etc, or just learning how to get around without the short cuts? I'm not trying to be a brat, but wouldn't it be easier? I don't know...like I said before, I can't use the shortcuts, never could, so I just get by without them. I wouldn't want to go to Wordpress either. I actually really don't like those set ups. And I don't like how you can't follow blogs at Wordpress unless you have a feed reader or something. I dunno. Just seems like Blogger works pretty well except for a few little things. And would you have the Amazon affiliate at Wordpress? I'm just thinking it might be worthhwhile to figure out what would make the current Blogger liveable.

    ReplyDelete