A number of people were talking about difficulties getting into Gather. I emailed Chuck at Gather support and he said that they are aware of the issue. Could be that highly viewed articles from the Skyword side are causing the difficulty. That makes sense, since there are a lot of articles on the NEWS channel side and they all (mostly) have a large number of views.
If that is the case, a larger server would probably fix the problem.
People were talking about: uploading images, creating articles, selecting groups or in getting into Gather at all. The 'server timed out' issue is recurrent and that is what I had emailed Chuck about.
Once you are into Gather, if you have problems posting articles:
make sure:
1. You update your browsers when requested. Firefox and Chrome are the best. If Firefox is slow, switch to Chrome and use that browser.
2. Make sure you update your computer system regularly when requested.
3. Make sure you update your Java when requested. These are all important for normal computer functioning.
Updating these things is like brushing your teeth and flossing. Not that you have to do these daily, but if you don't, gunk gets in your system and you will be sorry. :)
4. Make sure you have a fast system. DSL, FIOS or XFinity is best. Satellite can be beyotchy, depending on the weather. If your computer is about 5 years old, it is likely to not work as well as a computer that is 2 years or newer.
Sometimes my Firefox is so slow regarding images (the box add photos never changes from gray to orange) so then I use Chrome. 2 years ago, when Skyword first started, I had difficulty uploading photos, because the system would switch to 'add photos to an album' or would go back to some previous step. If this happens, WAIT about 30 seconds to 2 minutes after you ADD the photos BEFORE the next step. It means either the server is slow or that the communication between the server and your system is slow. Could be partly the server and partly your system.
Best to take things slowly. As I say, I have not had trouble recently, but I did have trouble in December 2010 when a lot of people were getting a message 'add photos to album' when they were trying to upload a photo.
My creds: I've been covering technology for a few decades and currently write about technology and edit tech articles.
Note that Windows XP will no longer be receiving support from Microsoft or from Firefox in the near future. If you have an XP computer (our desktop is XP), you need to read up on how to migrate your system to a newer OS, or backup everything on an external hard drive and use newer computers.
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Comments: 81
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=XP&Filter=FilterNO
I think support is available for XP through 2014 but probably only with certain updates. Not sure. Am going to call Best Buy and our computer center store.
If you ahve Docs or images you can send them to the cloud, via Gmail, for example and keep things alive that way. If you do it routinely, such as a special gmail for your docs, that is great. Google also offers a special cloud app, but I don't have it. I just send my drafts to myself on one of my Gmail accounts.
Sometimes, I have the sense to use 'Select all' and 'Copy' with what I've written. But unfortunately, not all the time.
When in doubt, write in word or in your outside email.
Or use a plume!
You can get an excellent computer for about 700; maybe less, like 500. And an okay one for about 400.
You can talk to a software engineer, maybe you can just upgrade a few things to extend the life of your system.
Click your orange G to the left of your MY GATHER.
Skyword, Inc. is the official name for Gather.com and Skyword.com. Gather, Inc. rebranded in Dec. 2010 b/c the company was officially starting to provide content for websites, such as the Gather NEWS channels, Imprevmedia (Espanol),. Pampers and the Daily Glow (beauty).
Gather.com is a part or subsidiary of Skyword, Inc. Just a biz reorg. You get your giftcards from Gather. But it is no longer, Gather, Inc.
gather
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Regardless of Gather issues.
It appears that come April 2014, Microsoft will discontinue extended support for the OS. Security patches, bug fixes, and other updates will no longer be issued.
Thanks for the info.
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I'm not saying that I disagree with what you stated because I also think the access problems are server overload issues, but how do you know how many Skyword articles have a large number of views?
I did write for Skyword for 2 weeks in 20102.
I wrote about 15 Celeb articles and all but about one or two got 1,000 views in the first 24 hours. Politics might not and Technology might not, not sure about Business. But Celeb, Entertainment, Sports and News, a person just writes it and it gets the views. Before I joined Skyword, I had written some celeb-type articles and they also got between 500 and 1,200 views - some in the first 24 hours and some within a few days. That was before Google changed its policies (below).
Pretty much all Celeb, Entertainment and Sports articles would get 1,000 views or more within the first 24 hours.
The reason WE don't has to do with the Google search engine and how Google sets up its priorities for SEO value. The Gather NEWS channels, (your orange GATHER tab) are listed with the Google and Bing search engine. This is a somewhat complicated task that involves some technnical expertise. People who have blogs and websites and are forever begging and tweeting people to come look at their blog are wasting their efforts because once listed as a primary site with the Google and Bing search engines, the hits automatically come.
The regular Gather is not listed as a primary site and so it has to rely on hits from people find it randomly. Google changed its priorities in late 2010 and early 2011 to favor the sites registered with it, because there were simply too many millions of websites and blogs.
I write Technical articles and have covered this topic several times in my freelance job. I read such geeky stuff as PCWorld, ComputerWorld, ZDNet ... AllThingsD, Mashable... etc...