Yahoo Groups Migration to Google Groups

This post will be of no use to most regular readers, but it will be useful to those who are Googling, trying to figure out why their clients can't log in to a Google Group.

I just migrated the Design Outside the Lines workshop forum from Yahoo Groups to Google Groups. I had a number of problems, which I want to document for others to use.

Leaving Yahoo: Export your memberlist, pull it into a spreadsheet, separate out the address only, and place in a Word file. Replace the hard returns with commas, then separate into groups of ten. Google restricts you to adding or inviting 10 people at a time.

Importing to Google: When I was first adding, after I finished my 8th group of 10, the system locked me out, saying I had reached my maximum number of invites and to try again later. I waited 10, 20 minutes to no avail. As all the members of this group were selectively added to Yahoo in the first place, I felt I could direct-add them with no problem.

I switched to the Add New Members link and added another 60 or so before being locked out again.

Much, much Googling and reading later, I figured out I could add the rest with another ID. Fortunately, I have three Gmail IDs, one of which had been added to the list earlier. (Note to readers: make sure you have more than one way to get into the list!) I made my second ID a co-owner of the group, then opened another browser and logged in with the second ID. (I have not found a way to log in with two different IDs in different tabs of the same browser. Best to use a second browser.)

I was then able to direct-add another 60 or so before being locked out. I switched to Invite New Members and was able to add the rest of my 310 users.

Now the fun began! My inbox exploded with emails from users who clicked the link in the invitation email, then couldn't get in again.

If your users have Gmail addresses or are already using a Google app, such a Blogger, Groups, or Calendar, and have registered their non-Gmail address with Google, they should be able to sign in with no problem.

The snafus began with members who had non-Gmail addresses that were not recognized by Google. Here's the list I made for these users:

If you have a Gmail account:
You should be fine. Gmail and Google Groups are both Google applications, so Google already knows who you are and will let you right in. Go ahead and click the link when you receive the email.

If you do not have a Gmail account but use other Google apps, such as Calendar, Docs, (maybe Blogger - not sure about that):
Again, you should be fine. Go ahead and click the link. If at any time Google tells you you're not a member of the list or do not have access, please email me offlist at xxx and I'll work with you to resolve the problem.

If you do not have a Gmail account and do not use other Google apps:
First, register your email address with Google at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount
If it tells you that you're already registered, go to https://accounts.google.com/Login. If you don't remember registering and don't have a standard password that you use for everything (Smart Girl!), you can tell it you can't access your account and go through the password reset process.
Once you have a password and Google knows your address and recognizes you, then click the link on the GThreads invitation and go into the group.

I had one member who only had one email address. She had registered it previously with Google, but couldn't remember the password. Google wanted to text her the recovery code, but her phone doesn't text. I walked her through the "Verify my identity" process with Google, but it requires a second email to which to send the recovery code. She chose not to jump through Google's hoops to set a new password. Because she was a direct-add to the group, she was receiving the emails. I edited her account and changed her to digest. She's content with reading the posts and not contributing to the discussions.

Another user said her computer was so old that she couldn't access the group. She also will just read the digested posts and not contribute until such time as she upgrades her equipment.

For several users, simply deleting and re-adding/re-inviting them solved their problems.

So given all these hardships, would I recommend the migration again? Absolutely! The owners and moderators of the group were unhappy with Yahoo's user-unfriendliness for several years. There seems to be a general happiness among the members with the new formats (despite the difficulties in getting in).

My strongest advice to moderators who are performing this migration: patience. Be patient. Remember when you were first learning about computers? Be as gentle as you can with your users who are having difficulties, then pour yourself a large adult beverage at the end of the day!

In Love With an Object

When the Jazzman told me he was getting me an iPad for my birthday, I was conflicted. I had wanted to get him one for Christmas, but had never thought it was something I really needed.

The purchase occurred three days ago, and I'm already in love with this inanimate object.

My first feeling of love came when I was looking at some photos. The retina display on the new iPad is the most crisp, brilliant display I've ever seen. You thought your HDTV was some fine viewing? Pick up an iPad and look at some of your favorite photos. Just incredible!

The day after getting the iPad, I dropped my iPhone. I'm prone to dropping my iPhone, but this time it hit the pavement at just the right angle to shatter the screen. When I told Tyler I was headed to the Apple store in Cleveland for a new phone, I asked if he needed anything. Of course he replied, "A new MacBook Pro with retina display." After seeing images on the retina display, I could fully understand his wish.

My second realization of my love came this morning. When I wake up in the morning, some two hours after the Jazzman has gotten up and left for work, I reach for my phone. I read my mail and then see what's happening with my friends on Facebook. This morning as I sat flipping from Facebook to knitting and sewing blogs, I was stunned by the clarity of the images. Then I followed a link to read an article in the New Yorker and was thrilled with the size of the print and the page. I didn't have to keep moving the page back and forth on the device screen to be able to read an article. It didn't hurt my eyes!!!

So, after thinking the Jazzman would have done better to just give me a pedicure gift certificate, I'm thrilled and happy to have my new tool.

Thanks to the Jazzman for knowing me better than I know myself!

Added Functionality

For the Jazzman and his cousin, Maggie, who asked, and for anyone else who prefers to read from paper, I've added a Print button. It's at the bottom of each post, near the place where one can post comments. I don't like that it includes ads, so I'll keep looking for a better way to enable this functionality. But for right now, you can PDF or print any of my posts and skip all the sidebar information. You'll get just the text and the photos. Enjoy!

Ways to Communicate

Sometimes I feel put upon that my communication with my mother is a one-way street. The last time she picked up the phone to call my number was about a year-and-a-half ago. So that proves she does know my number, right?

But I must look at myself. I almost never call my children. Tyler and I email and text frequently through each day, as I work for him. Jaci and I see each other's posts on Facebook. We text when we need something from each other. Just call to chat? No, our lives are too busy for that, and she has friends for that function.

Scott and I are more remote. Our primary method of communication is to follow each other's posts on Facebook and to comment on those posts when we are so moved. We see each other's tweets, and—on the rare occasion we seek input from each other—we text.

Is this merely a fact of this decade? Are we not unusual, but rather the norm?

I think the fact that my mother never calls me is a self-centered trait. But am I also self-centered because I don't communicate more regularly with my children?

I hope not. More than that, I hope they don't think so!

Learning by Doing

Probably the biggest challenge with getting one's feet wet in any new venture is learning how to use the available tools.

My Etsy store shelves are holding a bunch of this and that—things I've lovingly made and things I'm tired of working around.

My biggest mistake, to date, was in not understanding the shipping profile. The user can set up several shipping profiles that will pre-fill some of the shipping options based on what is being shipped and where it's going.

I thought I was indicating I would only ship to the U.S. What I really said was I would charge the same price ($4.95 - Flat Rate Envelope or Small Box) regardless of where it's going.

I was thrilled last night as we were returning home from Easter with the Jazzman's family in Columbus to read in my e-mail that I had sold a pattern off Etsy. This morning, as I was preparing the pattern to ship, I realized it was going to Canada and that the cost of shipping would be about 5 cents more than the total cost and shipping the buyer had paid.

Live and learn. And be grateful the buyer didn't live across an ocean!!

Things We've Known That Are On The Way Out

My friend-of-30-years, JW, sent me a compelling piece of text this morning. I've searched and searched, to no avail, to try to find the original author of the piece.

With each new gadget that Apple or Amazon introduces, I shake my head and wonder, "Why do we need this?" and then "How did we live without this."

Sometimes I long for the days when we were not all instantly available to everyone in the world! Cell phones, text messages, even faxes. What was the world like before we had faxes? I remember hearing the teletype machine delivering the news when I had my first job as a promotion and public service copywriter in a television station. The only way my grandchildren will ever hear a teletype machine is if they find a museum of communications that houses one!

So close your e-mail program, turn off your phone, and read these sobering thoughts. (Thanks, JW!)

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1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.
They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post
office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper.
They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and
e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price
without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book and think of the convenience once you start flicking your fingers
on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story,can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.


5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of
local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because
they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra
service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the
same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The
music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal
downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to
get to the people who like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem.
The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. Over
40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional
music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is
also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and
disturbing topic further, check out the book Appetite for Self-Destruction
by Steve Knopper and the video documentary "Before the Music Dies."


7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things
that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows
have degenerated to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates
are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I
say good riddance to most of it It's time for the cable companies to be put
out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and
through Netflix.

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to
own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future.
They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive
and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is
on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that
is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest
"cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet
will be built into the operating system.

So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet.
If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you
save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly
subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can
access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or
handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of
this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big
"poof"? Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It
makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a
book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on
nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long
time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and
even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7
"They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS
coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit
is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those
habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and
again.

All we will have that can't be changed are memories.

From the Mouths (and Tummies) of Babes

I spent quite a bit of time with the babes over the weekend, including piano recital time, dinner time, and Barnes & Noble time (our personal favorite!). Much discussion took place surrounding the plans for Ridley's Sunday birthday party.

On Thursday evening I asked what she planned to serve at the party. She said she didn't really know, that she would have to go to the grocery store with Rara (their name for their mom) and see what they could decide. (I knew, of course, that Rara already had matters well in hand and a firm menu, but seven-year-olds don't yet understand planning.) She continued, "I know it will be some food for kids, but I will also have some food that adults will enjoy."

She paused and thought for a moment.

"Cucumbers," she blurted out. "Adults like cucumbers. I don't really like cucumbers, but I know adults do. I'll have to make a cucumber salad. Rara will help me."

---

At another time during the weekend she told me that she and [her little male friend] were planning to have a lemonade stand during the summer. She asked if I knew how to make lemonade. (If you stick "lemonade tycoon" into the search bar at the top of this blog, you'll quickly understand what a superfluous question that is.)

I asked how she thought you could make lemonade. "Well," she started, "you squeeze the lemon." I nodded. "Do you add water?", she asked. I told her you needed water and sugar, and the best way was to make "simple syrup" because then the sugar would dissolve. She acknowledged that without sugar the lemonade would be too sour. I made a puckery face. Then I told her we could look it up in a cookbook. She quickly responded, "We could look it up on the Internet." Trying to keep her grounded in our old ways, I told her I really liked "Joy of Cooking" and had a copy on the dining table. "Oh," she replied, "we have that cookbook, too."

Yea! Maybe I can encourage these children to keep one foot in the ways of their elders while they're forging ahead with technology!

The Problem With Security Questions

It appears that "aging" is a consistent and recurring theme here. This morning I had to reset a password on a Web site, and that necessitated my resetting a security question. Here's the problem with security questions: the number of details about my life that I can remember is dwindling.

Why do you think I've been writing on this blog for four years? So when I decide to turn all those funny old stories into an "enhanced memoir", I can still remember them. At times I go back and reread some of the pages I've written, and think, "I did that? Really?"

I looked at the list of security questions available for the answering on this morning's site. Favorite movie? It'll probably be different next week than it is today. Favorite book? I read so many, it's hard to keep all the titles straight. Favorite pet? Pretty consistent, with apologies to the current pets. Best friend? I have four best friends. How am I going to remember which one I listed? High school? There were two. College? Give me a break! There were seven, plus law school! Elementary school? That one's okay, except it's 20 characters, and some Web sites only allow a maximum of 15 characters for the answer! And how about those kids who grew up in a military family? How are they going to remember the name of their elementary schools?

I guess as long as hackers and worms and Trojan horses exist, we'll have to keep coming up with more and more ways to secure our systems. In the meantime, I think I need a little notebook I can wear in a plastic envelope on a lanyard around my neck, like first-time American travelers to Europe do with their passports and money. I can put all my passwords and security phrases there, and just shoot myself if anyone steals it.

Or I could buy an Apple. Wouldn't that solve everything?

What Is Love?

I have to admit I've been partaking of trash television. I've been watching The Bachelor. And then listening to Christine and Molly on Broadminded (Sirius/XM) trash the women the next day.

These are all women—well, really, they're just girls, many of them in their early twenties—whom you love to hate. Or at least dislike intensely. They all whine and catfight like little girls. Jake must be thinking with his Johnson if he's drawn to any of these women. (Actually, Ali was my favorite. Until she started the sobbing and whining about having to leave to go back to her job. And Michelle was my most behated. I'm hoping the outcome next week is that he chooses none of them. Especially not spoiled brat, fake boobs Vienna! But I digress. (Shades eyes with hand in embarrassment over her trash TV revelation.))

Here I am, pushing 60, having professed love to at least five men in my life. I listen to these girls, and to Jake. "I'm falling in love," each of the women proclaims. And Jake states he's in love with three women. I listen to them and think they don't have a clue about love. (And why does it always have to be "falling"? Can't it just be, without having to lose its balance and fall?)

But do I have any greater clue?

What tells you you're in love? What white light inside your eyelids makes you unable to hold those three syllables inside any longer? Is a 25-year-old's declaration any more or less believable than a 60-year-old's? Is each love the same? Different? Is it made real by your belief in your own declaration? Is it more believable three months into the relationship? A year? Is it made more believable by your partner's desire to hear it?

I remember saying it to husband number one and then, ten years later, telling him "I don't think I ever meant it." Was I simply trying to hurt him for all the pain I perceived through the years?

Does just verbalizing "I love you" make it real? Irrevocable?

I offer a snippet of Wordsworth from "{Risking Everything}: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation", edited by Roger Housden. This is from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of settings suns
…

Is love simply that which impels us? And the desire to verbalize that love simply as natural as the act of breathing? And as necessary?

I've been ignoring, for sixty years, the fact that my birthmother laid in the hospital for six days and held me and [probably] cooed to me and [probably] stroked my hair and marveled at my long fingers. And gave me my bottles. Her breasts were swollen and aching. Her bottom was sore. She knew she would walk out of that hospital with empty arms. And yet she laid there and held me, saying a long goodbye, saying a long "I love you."

I've lived my life paralyzed by the threat of rejection, when maybe all along I misinterpreted the unspoken statement.

Is love, at its most basic, just staying. Staying and holding and supporting and caring. Walking with one to life, as my birthmother did with me, or to death, as I did with John. Or through life, as so many long-married couples do, day in and day out. Or away from fear and angst and into peace, as the Jazzman frequently does with and for me.

Is that love, by implicit definition?

I am disturbed by the joy, and long to remain in this state of being disturbed. Disturb me some more, dear man, dear friend.

We Bumped!

I love technology. Since my first Fortran programming class at Florida Technological University in 1969, and continuing when I learned to "drive" a mag card typewriter to get my first temp job at IBM (hmmm, most of you will have to go into the IBM Archives to learn what I'm talking about), I've been infatuated with all things technological.

All right, I'll admit that there are times I can't figure out exactly how to make some of these gadgets work. My eight-year-old grandson had to prod me to use the voice feature of the Google iPhone app. But he's been able to point-and-click since he was two, so maybe he's not a very good example to use. I complained to my younger son once, about six years ago, that I couldn't hear on my phone, and he had to show me where the speaker was so I could position it over my ear.

So—given the fact that an hour into my first date with the Jazzman, he admitted he has an iPhone—maybe this relationship was Meant To Be. (Remember the scene from "Sleepless in Seattle" when the kids are sitting in the audio chair, using acronyms like MFEO for Made For Each Other? Love that scene!). At the end of the date, when he wanted to give me his e-mail address and phone number, I opened up a new Contact record and handed him my iPhone. No more worrying about being able to read someone's handwriting. Put it in pixels!

Last week we Bumped for the first time. We each downloaded the Bump application, I selected a photo he wanted me to transfer from my phone to his, then we each gripped our phones and bumped our knuckles together.

Voila! My pic was in his photo album.

Sexy, Baby. In the truest high-tech sense of the word!