I've generally liked and use Google products; I was one of the earliest gmail users, I've got a Chromecast and Google Hub, I often embed multiple Youtube videos in my daily political posts, and I use Blogger for all my blogs. I was also an early adopter of Google Chrome. As familiar readers know, I have five PC's (long story: 3 of them were brought back from the dead) plus a Chromebook. I use them for different purposes. But one of the nice features (also implemented by other browsers) is Chrome's Google Sync feature, which includes, but is not limited to bookmarks. I've gathered and organized literally thousands of bookmarks over the years. I like being able to use any of my devices and having and being able to tweak the same bookmarks everywhere. I routinely maintain backups on multiple external hard drives, I've got cloud backups, and I could quickly switch to a backup PC in the event my workhorse PC becomes disabled. Oh, don't get me wrong; I would still need to reinstall certain apps, like my licensed Microsoft Office suite, but I also have flash drives with portable apps (including free open-source office suites, not to mention there's Google Documents and other apps via my Internet browser).
So I had started a new position and quickly gathered a number of links, e.g., to a timesheet system, web-based work email and other applications, an HR URL for paperwork, etc., quickly organized in a company folder. The other day I had switched to one of my backup computers and was working on a blog post when I noticed incidentally I didn't see my new company folder in its expected place. I double-checked: Google Sync was on in Chrome on both PC's. I double-checked setups on my backup PC, thinking maybe it wasn't syncing with the cloud. Nope.
What was wrong? The reader may guess the obvious correct answer, i.e., my workhorse PC wasn't syncing my local bookmarks to the cloud, that the bookmarks sync option had been toggled off. I had initially rejected that notion because I didn't remember going into sync options to toggle off any default option, never mind knowingly turning off a desired option. Well, not only was the bookmarks option toggled off, but all the others as well! So I had the paradox of Google Sync was on but not syncing anything to the cloud since all the options were turned off!
Obviously when I turned everything back on, my bookmarks migrated to my backup desktop, still leaving the mystery of how my sync options were in an interim off status. I did have a Chrome update issue a few weeks back and did a deinstall/reinstall of the browser as per guidance. I'm not sure if my enigmatic situation is an artifact of the reinstall process, but I'm making a mental check to reexamine Google Sync options routinely in the future, including any browser updates or reinstalls.
On a separate Google-related note, I remembered the Blogger Dashboard for a list of one's blogs and had a stored bookmark to it (see here for a mockup of what I'm describing). So a few weeks back I clicked on the URL--and no dashboard. Now I had noticed on my individual blog all-posts page there was a drop-down menu of my blogs (from the current/working blob ID), including an option to create a new blog. So it's fairly easy to switch among blogs; effectively the dashboard has been integrated into individual blog pages.
I think maybe this 11/22/2016 post explains it:
To kick things off, we’ve taken a crack at simplifying Blogger’s dashboard so that it’s easier for you to get right to the tools you need. Now, whenever you open Blogger, you’ll be taken right to your blog with the most recent post, putting you one click or tap closer to drafting something newUm, yeah, except I had already bookmarked the posts page for my signature political blog. So I wasn't going to the dashboard to start a new post. I was using the dashboard for a more consolidated view of my blogs. Now I could easily set up an html page to mimic functionality.of the old dashboard; I just wish that Blogger had given us an option to retain the old dashboard.
