Time to say Good-Bye!
No, not to blogging nor the oes tsetnoc contest (I am now on place 21 btw ;-(), but to my latest plugin! Remember the cute images you had to select to verify that you are a human and to be able to submit your comment? I discovered this morning that it stopped working, reason being the plugin site itself was down. So I disabled it and waited patiently.
Some hours later and Elxsy was up again. No, nothing on their blog what had happened and no answer to a comment I made on their own blog.
Now, if a plugin only works, when another site is up, then something is not right in my books. Especially as this malfunction meant, that nobody was able to post any comments until I disabled the ImHuman plugin.
I tried, as the plugin site came back online, to re-install it and it would still not work. Somehow I found this not very comforting and decided to live in future better with my not-beloved spammers, then with no commentators at all. Also, the idea to depend with the functioning of my blog on another site, had something, shall I say “creepy”?! Also security concerns were suddenly in my head. But perhaps I am only paranoid?! So, time to say Good-Bye to the “ImHuman Captcha”!
Does anybody here know of a similar plugin that uses images instead of text? And is secure?
On a more positive site: I discovered a new blog this morning, before the plugin fun started. Here my “blog post find of the Day”. Webcareergirl has written an excellent article about how to avoid overspending on internet marketing. I really can relate to the part of buying too many new domains 
So, bye for today, take care and don’t forget to share a link to your favorite image captcha in the comments SY
OMG for just about one second, I thought you were done with your blog by the title… I absolutely loved those images, even though I have to admit that I was a little confused at first when I was commenting. Too bad!
Nops, I love blogging and chatting away with my readers far too much to give up on blogging
SY
The plugin may only need to optimize so can work perfectly.
Dana @ Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Deep Thanks to HostGator and Readers
Yes, but that would be the plugin developers job, or not? I for once have precious little knowledge about plugin coding
SY
Fortunately Blogger accounts I use come with the word verification so thats one aspect I quite like about the system(there are several I don’t like). As for other plugins or add ons I am afraid I am not WordPress savvy.
To be quite honest I sometimes have a problem with live signature, where the signature is hosted on their server and I find this frustrating so I can understand you removing the plugin from your blog although I quite liked the pictures!
Mike´s last blog ..Across the Universe-A Trip Down Memory Lane
So did I, but it had to work all the time, because when it stopped working nobody was able to comment at all, not good for a blog ;-( SY
lol, I for one am glad that plugin is gone. I meant to email you, but forgot. I actually wrote a comment on your post about the IMHuman plugin … I thought it sounded like a way cool idea … but then after it telling me 6 times! that I was too dumb to pick which two pictures were similar, I just gave up … and thought I might never be able to comment here again. The problem was most likely due to my slow, slow, slow Internet connection (seriously it feels like a 1996 flashback or something), but still, for a plugin that is supposed to perform that sort of function, I’d say it wasn’t quite ready for prime time yet.
Todd Morris´s last blog ..My Diet and Exercise Plan for 2010
@Todd Morris
It is because you must choose 3. No wonder you are always rejected because you only choose 2.
Dana @ Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Deep Thanks to HostGator and Readers
@Dana … lol, seriously? I was only joking when I called myself dumb. I’m sorry I didn’t remember exactly how many pictures there were, it was a week ago. I just know that it was pretty simple, I chose the pictures that matched, but was told to try again … six times. The plugin obviously didn’t work all the time. But it did sound like a good idea none-the-less.
Todd Morris´s last blog ..Todd’s Weekly Reader 12-04-09
It was set to 3 out of 5, so Dana was right
SY
Just to inform, server was up and working, uptime nearly 7 months now. Maybe a DNS problem at your hosting or flickr problem?
It is not being dependent on other blog. It is API, sharing my data with you in a safe way. API failsafe version, including refresh option (1.0) is on my pc for weeks now but google restricted one of my domains for no reason, been deailing with that.
About security, your plugin just says “hey i am hospitalera” and api responds “hey sir, here is your keys, have a nice day”. You may check what you post and get via firebug for firefox, http sniffers, network watchers, firewall etc
Hi cenOTapH,
thanks for commenting on the plugin. Flickr was fine, but perhaps you are right and it was a dns problem, have to read up more on this one! As for security, I am a lousy, read absolutely lousy, coder, so it boils down for me to trust when it comes to things like third-party plugins. And it is important for me that people are able to post comments, they are the lifeblood of my blog! So, I am happy to give it a second shoot, but is there a possibility to disable the plugin automatically when something goes wrong to avoid the problem that people are not able to leave their comments? SY
Oh I thought you’ll be giving-up on oes tsetnoc competition. Just in case you don’t want to do anything special at all or interested to win, can you link my entry http://www.bleuken.com/oes-tsetnoc/ this will be highly appreciated. But if not then, that will be just fine. By the way regarding the plug-in, as I said on my previous post its a good idea but I still prefer the traditional captcha and I think the image plug-in consumes a lot of bandwidth (well correct me if I’m wrong.)
Felix´s last blog ..Google Search in the Future
No, I am more of a sprinter then a marathon runner, but even I stay focused on a goal for a few weeks
But I am also a good sport, and leave your link intact, just don’t count with a anchored text link on my contest entry itself 
Yes, page speed is a major concern for me at the moment due to Google’s ?new? approach to determine how much of a web site to index depending on PR+Speed, SY
Thanks so much for linking to my website! I didn’t realise you had, but I wanted to visit your site after getting some comments from you and noticed the link, so thanks! I like your site and am just having a read around
Ruth – Web Career Girl´s last blog ..The Importance of Looking Forward to Well-Earned Time Off
My pleasure, I simply loved your post, it really rang a bell with me
Enjoy the read and if there is anything I can do to help, just ask! SY
Hi SY,
According to what I’ve read on several blogs, Captcha is turning off a significant number of people from commenting or if they do comment they hate it.
For me it’s only a minor irritation so I put up with it.
When I read your post I was thinking of congratulating you on getting rid of it but I see you have another Captcha.
I hope it works well at least.
I’ve noticed that your site is loading much faster than 4 to 6 weeks ago.
I wonder what you’ve done if anything for that to happen.
Vance
Vance@Earn Money Blogging´s last blog ..Earn Money Blogging, Get Traffic Without SEO, True Or False?
Hi Vance, long time not seen
Regarding the captcha, yes I took it off, but some weeks ago I woke up to 250 comments in my pending queue! Most of them were posted by automated scripts and bots. I decided that I want to continue to enjoy blogging and that I give enough of value to my regular commentators (in form of a back link) that I can risk to annoy them a bit. Better then either stopping blogging here and / or making the blog nofollow. With this captcha I am down to less then 5 spammy comments a day, that makes it worth for me 
SY
As for faster loading times, I worked on it, I think what helped most was reducing the number of plugins and reducing the size of my header, something I absolutely overlooked before
Ha.. I agree with the first person who commented on your blog. I hate to see the word “goodbye” in any blog posts. I have never heard of the ImHuman plug-in.
Kai@SEO services´s last blog ..Keywords That Sell
Well, Image Captcha is so irritating some time. I simply don’t like it all the time. To prove that your’re a human, Instead of doing something like captcha wording, try to give some option of which only human can answered it.