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Thursday, August 11, 2016

The brief disappearance of this blog --a cautionary tale of the digital era

A couple of days ago this blog disappeared from the Internet for the better part of a day.   Here's why.
In early July I started receiving notices from Google Apps warning me that the domain registration for koreainformationsociety.com would expire at the end of the month if I didn't update my payment method.  What ensued over the weeks of July was a seemingly endless exchange of e-mail messages with a tech support person at Google, who--despite all his efforts--could not provide instructions that actually worked, allowing me to log in to the admin console for the koreainformationsociety.com domain.   Probably not surprising since I registered the domain nearly a decade ago when I started this Blogger blog.  At that time, so I am told, Google automatically set up an admin console and login.
At any rate, to continue the story, I have multiple Google accounts, including one's through Stony Brook University, the Stanford Alumni Association and a Google Apps for Work account of my own.  This did not make it easier to decipher the e-mail tech advice.
The solution, finally, came when I called and spoke to a tech representative at Godaddy who asked if I'd completed Google's online form to solve admin login problems with Google Apps for Work accounts.  This was the first I'd heard of this, but I proceeded to fill out and submit the form.   About 30 minutes after doing so I received a phone call from a Google tech representative who quite efficiently walked me through the process of updating my domain renewal payment arrangements.  It took the better part of an hour, after I shared my screens with him, but I now understand the whole process, including why the first tech support person had been unable to help.
Welcome to the hyper connected digital era!  I'm glad to have the blog domain reserved for another year.

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