[El Goog, tech, surrealism] Ghosts of Google Alerts Past
This not a plea for assistance. This is me pointing and laughing.
Many moons ago -- actually it was in June of 2009, to be exact -- I signed up for Google Alerts. I used the email address siderea-googlealert@mydomain.tld. This address has no spam filtering on it, aside from the fact that email routed through certain Far Eastern countries is not delivered to my account.
In particular, one of the searches I asked it to alert me to is links to this journal.
In the rest of 2009, I received a whopping 14 alerts.
In 2010, I received a whole 21 alerts.
Then in 2011, in January, I received one alert.
From time to time I'd think, "Hey, hadn't I signed up for some alert service through Google? Is that still on?" And then get distracted by cute cat pictures on the internet.
Anyways, eventually I figured it was yet another service that Google retired.
Today I got a Google Alert email. The first one since Jan 13, 2011.
It was alerting me to the fact that my search string appears in, well, my comment, the one I left, complimenting a friend on her TARDIS cake.
Note, I don't link to my journal in the comment. It's a two-word Dr Who in joke. Google Alerts was apparently reacting to, well, what LJ usually puts down to indicate who commented on a post.
Note, I have made, over the course of LJ (not counting DW or anywhere else on-line) coming up on thirty thousand comments.
So, I'm vaguely bemused. So I decide to follow the "manage your subscription" link to see what if any search parameters I set, and remind myself of what, exactly, Google Alerts is supposed to accomplish, because it's been so long I forget.
I'm prompted with a login page. Okee-doke, I cut-and-paste "siderea-googlealert@mydomain.tld" into the email field. Uh, password. I click the "I forgot my password" link. It asks me what email address I'm using, pre-populating the email address field with the one I copy-pasted in. I hit "continue".
You can see where this is going.
"No account found with that email address."
Yes, Google Alerts -- well, some deeply lost and confused part of it -- is emailing me at an address it swears it doesn't know about and will not let me log in to manage.
Of course, there's no way to get help with this. Google doesn't do customer support unless there's money involved.
Many moons ago -- actually it was in June of 2009, to be exact -- I signed up for Google Alerts. I used the email address siderea-googlealert@mydomain.tld. This address has no spam filtering on it, aside from the fact that email routed through certain Far Eastern countries is not delivered to my account.
In particular, one of the searches I asked it to alert me to is links to this journal.
In the rest of 2009, I received a whopping 14 alerts.
In 2010, I received a whole 21 alerts.
Then in 2011, in January, I received one alert.
From time to time I'd think, "Hey, hadn't I signed up for some alert service through Google? Is that still on?" And then get distracted by cute cat pictures on the internet.
Anyways, eventually I figured it was yet another service that Google retired.
Today I got a Google Alert email. The first one since Jan 13, 2011.
It was alerting me to the fact that my search string appears in, well, my comment, the one I left, complimenting a friend on her TARDIS cake.
Note, I don't link to my journal in the comment. It's a two-word Dr Who in joke. Google Alerts was apparently reacting to, well, what LJ usually puts down to indicate who commented on a post.
Note, I have made, over the course of LJ (not counting DW or anywhere else on-line) coming up on thirty thousand comments.
So, I'm vaguely bemused. So I decide to follow the "manage your subscription" link to see what if any search parameters I set, and remind myself of what, exactly, Google Alerts is supposed to accomplish, because it's been so long I forget.
I'm prompted with a login page. Okee-doke, I cut-and-paste "siderea-googlealert@mydomain.tld" into the email field. Uh, password. I click the "I forgot my password" link. It asks me what email address I'm using, pre-populating the email address field with the one I copy-pasted in. I hit "continue".
You can see where this is going.
"No account found with that email address."
Yes, Google Alerts -- well, some deeply lost and confused part of it -- is emailing me at an address it swears it doesn't know about and will not let me log in to manage.
Of course, there's no way to get help with this. Google doesn't do customer support unless there's money involved.