The sharpest tool in the shed

by Lauren

I've had technology on the brain this week.  Recently, our server failed us in catastrophic fashion (apparently Outlook doesn't like it when you save all your emails forever and ever just in case you need information later--who knew?), and as the company's liaison to our IT company, it's been my good fortune to orchestrate its replacement and the lengthy process of moving from one to the other.  On top of the system upgrade, I've been working on a couple new things for the blog (stay tuned for fun changes coming up!), so I've been thinking a lot about how dependent we are on technology and how tough it can be to figure out what's new and worth investigating.

Finding a new tool can change everything.  My mind was blown a couple years back when I found out that you could change existing text from ALL CAPS to various other options in MS Word with the press of two buttons: Shift+F3.  And I can't imagine how I managed to regularly read any newspapers or magazines or blogs before I found Instapaper and Feedly.

So I'm wondering, as writers or editors or readers, what technological tools do you find that you couldn't live without?  Have you found, say, a trick in a common program that changed your life?  Or an app that makes you more productive?  What websites make your social networking efforts easier to manage?  Any techniques to make editing easier?  Let us all know below--who knows how many hours you might save of us!

Technical difficulties

by Lauren

Hello there, blog readers!  I've recently been alerted to a couple technological snafus related to our blog.   Fortunately, you guys have been super helpful in the past, so I'm coming back for more.  In the eternal tech conundrum, it's near impossible to troubleshoot a problem you can't replicate, so naturally both these things don't appear to be an issue on our end (and we haven't changed any settings recently, related or otherwise).

First DGLM client Joelle Anthony let us know that sometime in April or so, she stopped being able to comment on our blog.  Here's what she says:

"Just so you know, what happens is I click comment, the window opens, I type my comment, I choose my name and URL (I’ve also tried anonymous) and then when I hit post, instead of word verification coming up like it used to, everything just disappears and I’m back reading the comments that are already there."

She can comment on blogs where comments are formatted like this: http://anthonysundaysoup.blogspot.com/ but not on blogs where comments are formatted like ours: http://ramblingsofadevotedbookworm.blogspot.com/.


And second we heard via Facebook from reader Mark Janousek that lately our blog entries don't show up in his Facebook news feed.  I suspect Facebook's the culprit here, with their constant setting switches and such, but I don't see a way to change those settings. 


I still get the blog feed on my Facebook and have no problem commenting on our blog.

So for both questions: a) does anyone know why that happens?, b) does it happen to anyone else?, c) has anyone narrowed down the circumstances under which it happens to a narrower set?, and/or d) does anyone know what settings I need to tweak?


If you can't comment, please feel free to email me at labramo@dystel.com with any answers to the above!

Thanks in advance, guys, and thanks especially to Joelle and Mark for giving us the heads up!