Main Page Computing Hobbies Fun About

Blogger fails at the internets!

Category: Computing Keywords: Googlewebblogging Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Digg

I don't blog, but I experimented with that once (it was just a "youthful indiscretion"). I went to blogger again just to try something, and first of all I was hit with a Chinese page:

Blogger home page in Chinese

I went to check my browser language settings. Sure enough, it requests English pages:

Browser language settings

Those settings translate into an "Accept-Language" HTTP header that is sent to the web server. Therefore, blogger's web server received a request that clearly specifies that I want to use English. I am, however, located in Hong Kong, and the server can find that from my IP. So they probably have some code that works like this: "Let's see this request.. it has an Accept-Language header? Who cares! Check the IP... Hong Kong? Ok, he/she definitely wants to use Chinese!"

Fortunately, there is a combo box in the top right to change the language. Unfortunately, the language names are written in Chinese first and then English, and sorted by the Chinese language name. Eventually I found "English" somewhere in the list and managed to change it:

Blogger home page in English

I logged in (with my google account) and got this page:

New Blogger page

What now? Something about a "new Blogger". Why don't they just upgrade it automatically? Anyway, I log in again, with the same google account (I don't remember using anything else on blogger) and accept the terms.

Claim blogs page

Now it prompts me to "claim my blog", and shows my old blog, which I thought I had deleted. I continue...

Google account login page

... and it asks me to log in yet again. This is the 3rd time already. So I log in again, with the same google account. Hopefully, this will finally settle it. But... surprise!

New Blogger page

You may notice certain similarities between this page and the "new Blogger" page. That's probably because... it actually sent me back to the same page! I thought there might have been some kind of disturbance in the space-time continuum, so I tried it again... and got back to the same page again! The first time I actually did it in a different browser, then I changed to Firefox to be sure. Same thing, it seems to be an infinite loop.

So I gave up on logging in, and decided to write this page instead. About the Chinese language thing, I noticed that most google sites do that. The first time you go there, they choose the language based on your location (which is extremely stupid!) If you change it, then they set a cookie to save it (one per site-browser pair). If you want to access 3 google sites with 2 browsers, you need to set the language 6 times. And if you clear the cookies, you have to do it again. But blogger didn't do just that, it also has this login loop. And I thought google hired smart people...

Created on 14 Jun 2009, last updated on 14 Jun 2009 Valid HTML5

Comments:

MeaCulpa's avatar
MeaCulpa

Just access www.google.com/ncr once

23 Oct 2009

Blogspot is banned in mainland :)

Just access www.google.com/ncr or your personal iGoogle once to wipe off the trash they injected. And for all, never www.google.cn! Or HK thing.

Welcome to China, Thank you very much for the help to Gentoo users. Salute!

--
maximameaculpa.com

Reply
aditsu's avatar
aditsu

Re: Just access www.google.com/ncr once

27 Oct 2009

That works for google search, but doesn't affect blogger, youtube or other services from google.

Reply

Add a comment

Your name:Email address:
(will not be displayed)
Title:
Comment:
Note: your comment will be reviewed, and displayed later if approved.
If you see this box, please leave it empty:
Your name:Email address:
(will not be displayed)
Title:
Comment:
Note: your comment will be reviewed, and displayed later if approved.
If you see this box, please leave it empty: