Gerd's Blog

As most of you will know Google Reader finally got a search function. I proposed such function also in an last post about Meta RSS feeds so at least for me it was no surprise. After so long time the feature I waited for was finally available so I started to do some demo queries. Searching for some words delivered really good search results. Then I started to try some of the more complex queries like searching for links or using the “site:” operator. None of the advanced operators worked. I really have not expected that and it looked to me they have done a new search engine just for the reader instead of using the old one that does already search for blog entires.

Today they posted an article in the goolgesystem blog with a few tips how to search for stuff in the reader which really makes me think. Why do we need a How to for a search if all the other different content searches (web, news, blogs) can be done with the same query syntax? Why they have invented the wheel again and done an new search engine just for the reader? Is Google getting to big? I do not know until now but it reminds me about several other big companies that are making this mistake over and over again.

I am still on vacation so i used Thursday to move my blog as described in my last post. As already mentioned i preferred WordPress so i gave it try on www.wordpress.com one of the free hosted site. Already the first impressions where grate i played around a little bit and felt very comfortable with the interface and the functionality that was provided. So I started to search how i can transfer the old posting and comments. At http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2006/05/move-blogger-to-wordpres i found an article how this can be done easily. WordPress supports an importer for several sources and Blogger is one of them. So i tried it an after a few minutes the content was transfered. I was very impressed how easy this part worked.

After i had finished the first import i tried to set up the http://blog.gerd-saurer.com domain to my hosted WordPress log. Unfortunately i could not register a CNAME entry so i decided to install my own WordPress instance on the server. After an hour everything was working and I searched and installed the most important Plugins (FeedBurner, Google Analyticator, …). Then began the most complicated part – finding an template that fits your needs. I found one but as so much of them it was optimized for 800×600 screens. I do not believe anyone is surfing with this solution any more so I changed it to an 1024×768. I hope you like the Theme.

No it was time to change all important tracking tools from the old to the new instance. First i changed my domain settings for blog.gerd-saurer.com at my provider. I created an new FeedBurner feed to track the old Blogger instance feed and changed the URL of the original post and comment feeds to the new WorPress instance. When this was finished i activated the Analytic settings and finally posted on my old blog my last message with an information that this will be the last message that is published on this blog and that everyone that receives this message via an RSS reader should update the feed URL.

Finally I tried to set up a mechanism to redirect people accessing my blog directly to the new one. You can find a nice HowTo at http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress.

It took me nearly one day to switch my whole blog. If it would have been possible to use the WordPress service hosted I think half a day would have bean enough. Everything was easy and straight forward. I hope the decision to move to WordPress was right.

Once again I apologies for the troubles the the moving had cause you but finally as you read this post you have switched successfully. I am looking forward for interesting posting and comments in the future.

I was using blogger since 2 months now and i have to admit that it is far no that usable as i thought. Today i decided to move my blog including the content to an other tool. I think i will shift to WordPress but i have not made the final decision. The domain http://blog.gerd-saurer.com and the RSS Fees for the Blog and the Comments will stay as they are.
I apologies for the troubles this will cause you. Until now i really was very satisfied with the Google Products but Bloggers is far not that i expected.

If you are interested what was the crucial factor for my decision:
A few hours ago i posted my Post Titled “Google Reader Feeds” which was original an older draft version about a month old. As i posted it i did not recognize that the publish date was set to the original date the draft was created. This is not what i expected because it was published today and not about a month ago. I tried to change the date but the only thing i go was an error that i should publish something at the bloggers google group. I searched there and found several entries already more than a year old – no comment when it will be solved.

On one of my last post i was writing about Meta RSS Feeds and that it would be nice if Google Reader would support a possibility to get feeds for special tags. I just step over a post by Niall Kennedy (already posted in December 2005) that describes how you can use the API of Google Reader and subscribe to special tags. Be aware that not all stuff posted there is still working. The API is similar to gdata.

After a short look into my Reader settings i found that you can share special tags also within the readers settings.

I must admit that i have not seen the settings as i was writing my last post.

I was playing around with OpenID for some time now and until now I am very satisfied with it. For this reason i also activated it on my blog as authentication mechanism but more on this later.

First of all for all of you who don’t know OpenId – what does it mean? OpenId is an decentralized Single sign on system for the web. In reality the user just have to know an URL. Instead of entering and User name and Password on every site the user just the URL into the filed that is provided. If you are interested how OpenId works exactly just visit the wikipedia article or openid.net.

At the moment there are not that much websites that provide an log in with OpenId but the protocol is becoming more and more accepted until the last time. Even Blogger is trying it out in their beta version (see my experiences with blogger in Finally I moved from blogger to wordpress).

So if you are interested in your own OpenId there are several ways to get one. If you are an WordPress user you can already use the url of your blog as your id. On the other hand there are several providers out there that offer free OpenId Services or you can set up an server on your own. I decided to use MyOpenId. On the other hand i wanted to be in control of my id’s and not to addicted to one provider. The good thing here is the designer already took this situation into account. You can simply link your own domain to an other OpenId provierd. I for example use www.gerd-saurer.com as my OpenId. I entered the following configuration to my default website which indicates every OpenId request for authentication to use my MyOpenId service. The nice thing here is if I want to change the service I just have to change the meta tags to my new Provider.

<link rel=”openid.server” href=”http://www.myopenid.com/server”/> <!– For delegating OpenID v1.x–>
<link rel=”openid.delegate” href=”http://gerd.saurer.myopenid.com”/> <!– For delegating OpenID v1.x–>
<meta http-equiv=”X-XRDS-Location” content=”http://gerd.saurer.myopenid.com/xrds”/> <!– For delegating OpenID v2.x–>

After using my new OpenId on several sits now i wanted to inform you that you can use your own Id now on my blog to post Comments. I hope you enjoy the smooth way of loging into sits and don’t have to press the reset password button every two months because you forgot the user pass word again.

If you like to see some videos on OpenId, how it works and what you can do with it just check out the following presentations:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2288395847791059857
http://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/openid-bootcamp-tutorial