Google Goo...

I was so happy when I thought that Google AppEngine team fixed their time zone implementation overnight - but I was wrong. Quite soon, time zones went awry again. Then returned back to normal, then got broken again. The truth is that this is an intermittent problem. I have recorded it in the AppEngine bug tracker and let's hope it will be really fixed one day.

But this is only one of the problems with which I am struggling at the moment, instead of filling Lunarium with interesting and useful content. Another major problem is that three Google Gadgets that I have created a few years ago stopped working. I have spent just too many evenings trying to find out what went wrong. Everything seemed to be right as before the migration of Lunarium to the new platform I made sure that the feeds used by the gadgets keep working.

Yesterday I have discovered that the problem was in the fact that the main URL of the site was changed from lunarium.co.uk to www.lunarium.co.uk. This change was forced by Google, and since the gadgets were registered with the first version of URL, another department of Google, named iGoogle, decided that the gadgets should not work anymore. Thank you, all the different Googles!

I was able to resubmit the gadgets with the new URL but they are now considered as completely new gadgets. Now, how do i tell all those 5000+ users of Lunar Informer who think that the gadget is broken that it is available and works, and under the same name, but is simply hidden somewhere in the bowels of Google.

I was able to find a special procedure which will hopefully allow me to join these two identical gadgets into one, but after I jump through a number of hoops, and after a week or so of waiting.

At the moment, if you are interested in my gadgets, the easiest way to get them is to install from this page: http://www.lunarium.co.uk/software/gadgets.jsp

Sorry for my irritated tone in this posting, there are a couple more Google-related problems that I will have to struggle with in the coming days instead of doing something much more sensible. Google is a powerful platform but these days I am fed up with its bugs, idiosyncrasies and developer-unfriendly interface.

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