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A while ago I became interested in blogging from OpenOffice.org when Sun released its “Sun Weblog Publisher” several months ago. Weblog Publisher is a, non-free, plugin for StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. Once I saw the announcement I proceeded directly to the Sun website to purchase the plugin. At only $9.95 I thought it was a pretty good deal, meaning not so expensive and I would probably get a lot of use out of it.

After downloading the package I tried it on my laptop running Ubuntu with OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately I could not get it to connect correctly to my blog. I then tried it on several other computers/platforms: Solaris 10, Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.4, and another Linux variant openSuse 10.1, all with OpenOffice.org of course. As my luck would have it none of those configurations worked. I tried it from different networks thinking it might be some weird anomaly with my home network.

I then signed up for a Blogger account and a Wordpress account, I couldn’t get it to work with those either! At this point I decided to attempt to send an email to the feedback email address supplied for the Weblog Publisher describing my problems and exactly what testing I have done to this point trying to get it to work. That was on October 20th. Later that day I heard back from someone and they asked me several questions about my setup. Then three days later someone else contacted me and requested that I create a temporary account for them on my blog for to test. I did so and sent them the login information. I never heard from anyone again, one way or the other!

Over a month later, on November 27th, I received an email from Sun Microsystems regarding my purchase of the Weblog Publisher. In the email it stated the following:

“ We have found an issue with the Sun Weblog Publisher which occurs when
the SWP is used without a proxy server. This is fixed with the new version of the Sun
Weblog Publisher which is available now. We are offering the new version to you at no
charge for the next thirty days and we strongly recommend that you download the new
version even if you have not come across any issues. Please follow the detailed
instructions given at the end of this email to download the new version of Sun Weblog
Publisher. ”

Great! I thought to myself, they have apparently fixed the problem that was frustrating me and they are letting me download the new version at no cost! I eagerly opened Firefox and proceeded to follow the instructions detailed in the email on how to re-download the Weblog Publisher. Of course, I am not that lucky. Once I got to the end of the instructions I was greeted with an error message politely informing me that my 30 day window to download the product had expired.

Bewildered and more than a little disappointed I reread the email again and again to see what sentence I must have misread to lead me to believe that I actually had the opportunity to download the new version. So let me see…” found issue”…” fixed with new version”…” offering the new version to you at no charge”…” next thirty days”…” follow instructions”…well hmmm, sounds okay to me.

There was a link at the bottom of the email to contact someone if you had any problems or questions. So sent them an email explaining that I could not download the new version and asked what I needed to do to get the new version.

The response I got told me that because I had not purchased the “Extended Download Service” when I purchased the Weblog Publisher I was not eligible to download it again and to get the new version I would have to repurchase the item all over again. Funny thing is, I don’t ever remember seeing an option to purchase any “Extended Download Service”!!! Even so, why in the world would they bother to send me an email (with all my order information) telling me how I can re-download the Weblog Publisher again at no charge? I sent a reply back explaining as much but never received a response.

Just now as I was typing this blog entry on the subject I decided to go to the Sun site and see if there was any kind of “Extended Download Service” available that I might have easily missed. I proceed through the entire order processes and DID NOT SEE ANY SUCH OPTION, it simply does not exist for this product!

Now, to what brought this subject backup in the first place. As I was downloading OpenOffice.org for a family members new computer I was checking out the OOo Extensions wiki and found a link for an OOoBlogger plugin. I just installed it and this blog entry was a test from that extensions.

Let’s see how it works…

UPDATE: Unfortunately it only half worked…the formatting got all screwed up and it doesn’t let you set your categories. Oh, well…it will only get better.