Why your blog won't post in blogger: The elusive “form error” problem

You've just finished a new post for your blogger blog. Whew! Another great post ready to go. But when you click “Publish Post” it says it cannot post due to “form errors.” Wha?? Before you go tearing your hair out, try this:

Getting a post to publish even though the error message says “form errors”

First, click the Edit HTML tab, and select all text and copy it (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C or however you like to select and copy). Make sure it is ALL selected. Now save this text somewhere. That way if blogger doesn't save all your changes, you have backed them up.

Next, look at the URL of the webpage that you edit your blog from. If it starts like this:

http://draft.blogger.com/home

Change the word “draft” back to plain old “www” like this:

http://www.blogger.com/home

…and hit enter to visit the www version of blogger.com/home. Now edit your post normally. It will probably save and publish now. The new blogger interface occassionally causes this problem. However, I recommend you use http://draft.blogger.com/home at all times, and only use http://www.blogger.com/home if you encounter this specific problem.

If you're looking for more tips and tricks, particularly how to deal with problems that come up when embedding videos in blogger, read the last part of this article about optimizing your blog.

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Community: it's not just for politicians anymore.

So much of the “noise” about connecting with people online focuses on having too many online friends (FaceBook and Twitter in particular).  The point being missed: we are all moving into an era were each of us have a “community” to manage. 

In person, natural filtering takes place: at a high school reunion, for example, we make connections only to a small number of people at a time, few connections “pile up” and very little happens simultaneously. Online, information that inbound us has no natural limits  to it. We have to be the filter—others will not filter themselves for us.

Community is coming at us every day, in our email and phone messages. We need to change our mindset from one-to-one to community-to-one and one-to-community.

Admittedly, online tools to help us filter our communities are still in their infancy. You have to seek out filters—they don't make themselves known automatically, nor is using them always intuitive. On FaceBook you can put friends into friend list groups, select a friend list, then select “recently updated” to check in on that part of your community. In Twitter you can download and use TweetDeck in much the same way. Feed tools feed tools such as Yahoo! Pipes can be used to help you filter your community by topic as well.

If you follow many thousands on Twitter and concentrate only on your DM and @ inbound streams you are just using another kind of IM tool. But the community is still there. zeFrank recently asked his community “Where were you and what were you doing when Obama was elected president?” Managing the inbound side of a large community is always a challenge, but one worth having.


How do you interact with your community?

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Em dash, en dash, copyright, trademark and other useful ascii character shortcuts, tips and Alt key codes

First of all, did you realize you can type in characters such as those on the next line?
▐▀█▄▌— · – ♫ ♪ … ♥ ‼ » ►◄ ☺ ♦ ♣ ♠ ₪  ≡ ░░░ ▓▓▓ ™, ©, ½, ± etc

Dashes and quotation marks are among the handiest to know. But for IM and micro-blogging services like Twitter, wouldn't it be nice to know how to type ♥?

You could just bookmark an ascii example quick-reference page like this one or this one and copy and paste the characters as you need them. For Twitter or places where there is a character limit, notice the the ellipses (…) and double exclamation marks (‼) in the symbols above are each just one character (try selecting just one of those "periods!)

But there are several tricks to make them easier to access. In Microsoft Word, you can just try to Insert>Symbol and then find them from a list. Or for example, if you type three periods (...) and then press space, it will be converted into the single ellipses character in Microsoft Word. But most useful to know is how to create the em and en dashes and different “curly” quotes. (Put these on a post-it note on your computer for handy reference):

Creating an Em dash —
This works on most Windows computers: 

• On the keyboard: hold down the alt key and type 0151 on the number pad (make sure num lock is on)
• The Microsoft Word trick: With no spaces type two hypens (minus signs) after a word, type another word (or any character) and then press space. The hypen will elongate into an em dash.

Creating an En dash –
This is the slightly shorter dash. Similar tips here:

• On the keyboard: hold down alt and type 0150 on the number pad (make sure num lock is on)
• The Microsoft Word Trick: type any word, then type space hyphen space (" - ") then type another word (or any character) and then press space. The hypen will elongate into an en dash.

Curly quotes

• ‘    Curly single open quote ALT + 0145
• ’    Curly single close quote ALT + 0146
• “    ALT + 0147 (Tip: on a num pad, this uses all the keys on the left)
  
• ”    ALT + 0148

Automating curly quotes in Word

Microsoft Word automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ' or " ) to curly (smart or typographer's) quotes (’‘or“”) as you type, and you can turn this feature on or off:
1.    On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
2.    Under Replace as you type, select or clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box.
 
You can also find and replace all instances of single or double curly quotes with straight quotes in a Word document. To do this, clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. On the Edit menu, click Replace. In both the Find what and Replace with boxes, type ' or ", and then click Find Next or Replace All. To replace all straight quotes with curly quotes, select the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box, and repeat the find and replace procedure.


Other useful keyboard shortcuts:

• –   Endash … Alt+0150 (see above for Word trick)
  
• —  Emdash … Alt+0151 (see above for Word trick)
•  •   Bullet … Alt+0149 
• ·     Centered Period/dot/small bullet … Alt+0183
  
• ¼ One Quarter/Fourth … Alt+0188
  ½ One Half … Alt+0189
• © Copyright Symbol … Alt+0169
• ® Registered Symbol … Alt+0174
• ™ Trademark Symbol … Alt+0153
• …  Ellipses … Alt+0133
• ±  Plus/Minus Symbol … Alt+0177
• °   Degree/Ring Symbol … Alt+0176
• ²   Squared Symbol … Alt+0178
• ³   Cubed Symbol … Alt+0179
• µ   Mu Symbol … Alt+0181

Fun symbols:
Here's a great list you can use from your browser toolbar (follow the tip under the icons to drag the link to your toolbar). Many of these less usual ones you may need to cut and paste, unless you are in Microsoft Word.

• ♥   Alt+9829
• ☺ Alt+9786
• ► Alt+9658
• ♪  Alt+9834
• ♫ Alt+9835
• ♀ Alt+9792
• ♂ Alt+9794
• ♦ Alt+9830
• † Alt+0134

Related word processing keystrokes:
Nonbreaking Space … Esc-space-h
Nonbreaking Hyphen … Esc-(hyphen)-h
Straight Quote Single … Ctrl+'
Straight Quote Double … Esc "

Foreign characters and Math symbols

General basics everyone should know
This is from the New York Times (click the headline above). This is a very short must read. If you know it all, send the article to the people who look to you for help. It's short, and there are also a lot of great tips in the comments.

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Greenspan now agrees there is a need for regulation, admits accountability?

Alan Greenspan is famous for not making clear what he's thinking. But he was clear about one thing: he said markets should be deregulated.

Those favoring market regulation said people can't be trusted not to act in their own self-interest, and so markets need regulation. Regulators felt that humans were vulnerable to motives of greed and power, and that creating opportunities for people to indulge their greed caused people to demonstrate a lack of integrity.

Now the New York Times points out that Greenspan says the reason markets failed is because people can't be trusted not to act in their own self-interest.

As the Times summarizes: "The problem is not that the contracts failed, [Greenspan] says. Rather, the people using them got greedy. A lack of integrity spawned the crisis, he argued in a speech a week ago at Georgetown University, intimating that those peddling derivatives were not as reliable as “'the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician.'”

“In a market system based on trust, reputation has a significant economic value,” Mr. Greenspan told the audience. “I am therefore distressed at how far we have let concerns for reputation slip in recent years.” Or as he said in an earlier time: “There is nothing involved in federal regulation per se which makes it superior to market regulation.”

The New York Times reports that in 2000, speaking to Congress, "Mr. Greenspan said that Wall Street could be trusted. 'There is a very fundamental trade-off of what type of economy you wish to have,' he said. 'You can have huge amounts of regulation and I will guarantee nothing will go wrong, but nothing will go right either.'”

So really, is Alan signaling that he agrees with the need for regulation? Here's a summary:

• Regulators: People demonstrate a lack of integrity when given opportunities to indulge in greed. They need to be regulated so they will not abuse the system for their own self-interest.
• Greenspan: People using derivatives got greedy. A lack of integrity spawned the current crisis. The market would have worked properly if people had more integrity.
• Conclusion: Greenspan agrees in principle with those who seek more regulation, and (almost) admits some accountability in creating the mess we're in.
  

Okay, he finally came out and admitted his error.

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