More on erratic behavior of online newspapers

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, using a MacBook Air, early 2015, macOS Sierra, version 10.12.6.
I was able to access and sign in to startribune.com.  I then clicked on e Access or whatever and asked to log in.  I didn’t keep track of the details but was told my account didn’t have access to that version.  I went back to the web version and clicked on eEdition.  Voila! and no intrusive overlay ads.  And I have access to the “Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee”.

Now the question is would I get the same result using my iPhone as a hot spot to my AT&T account.

I don’t feel like checking right now.  I would rather read the funnies.

And I read the Star Tribune and after that I accessed the Duluth News Tribune.  I forget the details on what I did, but I am almost done reading the opinion page.  Strange that I couldn’t access the DNT at all from home but I can from a coffee shop.

Erratic behavior of online newspapers

I sent the following email to the publishers and editors of the Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune.

Good afternoon,

If this email is upsetting the end of your day, I’m sorry.  But the erratic behavior of the online versions of your newspapers has been upsetting my month and many months before.

In the case of the Star Tribune, it has unwanted pop-up ads that are difficult, if not impossible to delete. Several days earlier in the week it occurred almost every day and I was ready to cancel my subscription.  The telephone chain to do so was ridiculous.  Yesterday, the eEdition worked fine, and I relented on cancelling my subscription.  Today the pop-up ads were back.

Jon of Feedback was very patient and supportive, but one piece of advice I should never have followed: resetting my iPad.  That wound up clearing all my saved passwords.  Now I have to look these up for my next visit to any of a number of password-protected sites.  And the problem of unwanted pop-ups is back.

In the case of the Duluth News Tribune, it may or may not come up with the eEdition.  On my iPad it was going in a circle of getting halfway to the eEdition and then wanting me to put in my password again.

At the moment, the eEditions are working on my MacBook Air, but I would rather eat breakfast with an iPad by my side: it takes up much less space on the table.

See my blog entry: "A newspaper’s takeover of subscribers’ computers"

http://magree.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-newspapers-takeover-of-subscribers.html

I am not alone in enduring these, but I wonder how many of your users have the knowledge and patience to work through this annoyance.  I know my wife who has over twenty years of computer experience wouldn’t and she is growing very impatient with my repeated complaints.  I know that I no longer wish to be an unpaid debugger of your software.

So, please cancel my subscriptions to the Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune.  I’ll renew them when you have fixed this problem.

Oh, yes!  I will post this email to my blog.

I'm still here!

To my loyal readers, I apologize for not posting any entries for the last few days.

My computer-use energy has been sapped by two problems and I've spent hours trying to resolve them.

One is confusion over my Apple ID, that which I need to access iTunes to download apps and podcasts.  Some apps are linked to one Apple ID and some are linked to another.  I won't bore you with the details, partly because I'm not sure of the details myself.  I do know that the Apple message boards have many messages about similar problems.

Two is trying to use the Duluth News Tribune Digital Edition.  The link descriptions are not clear, you need a special browser to use it, and some of the buttons are not very responsive.  I've spent hours trying to make it work.  Ironically, the Star Tribune uses the same software and I have no problem with it.

Mike Peters' "Twelve Days of Christmas" puns for 2012

Mike Peters, creator of "Mother Goose and Grimm" is at again with his puns on "The Twelve Days of Christmas".  As I write this, he is on the Eighth day of Christmas.  If your newspaper doesn't carry "Mother Goose and Grimm", you can find his comics at his web site.

I was led to write this for a couple of reasons.

First, my blog entry "For word nerds only" from last December has been getting several hits a week and a common set of keywords used is "mother goose" "grimm" "twelve days" "Christmas".  This particular set puts this blog entry first of over 25,000!!!

Second, we stopped buying paper copies of the newspaper.  The online versions of the Duluth News Tribune and Star Tribune don't carry the same comics as the print edition, and even then, you have to click on the individual listing of a comic to see the current panel.  It's almost enough to get me back to the print edition.  Oh, yes, with the Star Tribune eEdition I can get a copy of the comic section.  It does take a bit more effort than scanning the paper copy, but I do have all the comics in one place.  Shall I call the Star Tribune eEdition my Christmas present to myself: two chortle doves?  Or "my blue glove waved to me"!

And another interesting tidbit!  When you pass the cursor over today's Google logo, it shows "200th Anniversary of Grimm's Fairy Tales".