Blogger posts

Filed under: Blogging, Productivity, Web services, Google

Blogger adds ... more after the jump

by Jay Hathaway Sep 11th 2009

In "Wait, they really didn't already have that?" news, Google's publishing platform, Blogger, now supports jump breaks in posts. Users have been splitting their posts by hand for a while now, so no one can blame you if you thought it was already a supported feature. Besides, you've seen this before on practically every other blogging platform - heck, I remember LiveJournal having jump breaks 10 years ago - so it's good to see Blogger catching up with the times.

You can add a jump break in the visual editor using a new toolbar button, or you can add it manually in the HTML editor by inserting " <!-- more -->" where you want to divide your post. If you've got a heavily customized template, you may have slightly more work to do, but there are instructions to help you out.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: blogger, blogspot, google, jump, jump break, JumpBreak

Filed under: Blogging, Google, Web

Blogger turns 10, now Google wants to make (more) money from it

by Brad Linder Jun 18th 2009

Google's blogging service, Blogger is turning 10 in August. Google published a list of fun facts about Blogger today, including the fact that 2/3rds of Blogger's traffic comes from outside North America, the most popular sport for bloggers using the service is soccer, and at any given minute, 270,000 words are written on Blogger.

But while Google provides users with tools to publish Adsense ads on Blogspot sites (which can certainly help the company raise a fair bit of cash from all of those words), Google doesn't require users to post ads. And that means some users are basically using the service for free without generating any real revenue for Google.

Now Google Operating System reports that Google appears to be experimenting with another revenue generating opportunity. It's starting to place ads on the page that pops up when bloggers publish a post. These ads will never be seen by the readers of your blog, but there's a chance that some bloggers may click on contextual ads related to the articles they've been writing.

I tried writing a couple of test posts on several sites I've created using Blogger, but I didn't see any ads. If you use Blogger and have started noticing ads in the admin interface, let us know in the comments. It seems like a small price to pay for using a service that lets you host and update a blog for free. But I could certainly see it annoying some long-time users.

Tags: advertising, blogger, blogs

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Social Software

Skimmer: 5 social sites in one, on Adobe Air

by Jay Hathaway Mar 25th 2009

We've seen a lot of attempts to offer an integrated experience social web experience, where users can easily interact with multiple sites in the same interface. Skimmer is the latest of these, and it's definitely a mixed bag. On the plus side, it's a cross-platform Adobe AIR app, and its UI is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, it's still a bit sluggish and buggy -- not such a big deal, as it's still in beta -- and falls into the trap of doing a lot of things, but not doing any of them exceptionally well.

The things it does, specifically, are Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Blogger. Activity from all 5 apps is combined in a really slick-looking stream that forms the heart of Skimmer. You can click on any item to expand it, and Skimmer has its own Flickr and YouTube viewer modes for checking out photos and videos at a larger size. This app looks so good that you're better off with a second monitor dedicated to it.

When it comes to interacting with the individual sites, though, I found myself annoyed at some silly choices: you can see all the comments on a Flickr photo in the stream, but you can't see its title unless you switch to Flickr mode; you can retweet something from Twitter, but you can't favorite it. Unless you have that second monitor, or unless you happen to use all five of the sites Skimmer supports, you might feel too restricted by the app and find yourself heading back to your browser.

Tags: adobe-air, blogger, facebook, flickr, skimmer, social, twitter, youtube

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Atomkeep synchronizes your profile across social networks

by Brad Linder Aug 6th 2008

If you're a good, upstanding netizen, odds are you have accounts with half a dozen social networking service or more. You may only use one or two services, but if your friends or colleagues pressured you into signing up for LinkedIn, Plurk, or Pownce, you probably filled out an online profile before promptly forgetting about it. And now that you've moved, changed jobs, or gotten married, the profile is woefully out of date. Atomkeep can help.

Atomkeep lets you synchronize your profile information across more than 20 different services including Digg, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress, Jobster, Facebook, and Twitter. You can choose from a huge list of category elements to fill out and when you hit the sync button Atomkeep will send that information to your social networks. You can sync with all of your networks at once or just select the ones you want to update from a list.

The coolest part of the service is the fact that you don't need to fill out your Atomkeep profile at all if you don't want to. It can import your profile from another service and merge it with your profile from other locations. So if your Facebook profile is already pretty complete but your Last.fm profile could use some work, Atomkeep can import the former and use the information to fill in the blanks on the latter.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: atomkeep, blogger, digg, facebook, jobster, last.fm, social-networks, twitter, wordpress, youtube

Filed under: Blogging, Beta, web 2.0

Switchabit Multitasks Your Blogging For You

by Lee Mathews Jul 3rd 2008

Maintaining your online presence can be such a giant pain in the ass nowadays since your followers are looking for constant updates on three hundred different web sites. It's especially annoying to try and publicize your new blog post manually after you've spent precious minutes of your morning typing and re-typing it.

Thankfully, the folks at switchAbit have been gracious enough to develop a web app for us that handles cross-site posting for us. What's not to love about an app that makes it appear as though you're doing much more work than you actually are?

Tags: blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogs, facebook, twitter

Filed under: Blogging, Google

Google gives Blogger a long overdue facelift

by Brad Linder Jun 26th 2008

Google has rolled out a whole slew of new features for Blogger, the company's user-friendly blogging software. In order to enable the new goodies, you'll need to login to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com. This is where Google rolls out tools that might not be quite ready for prime time. But once you try out the new version, you'll probably never want to go back.

First up, Google has redesigned the post editor. It's still a what you see is what you get editor, but the toolbar looks much cleaner and placing images got about a thousand times easier thanks to a new drag and drop image handling. You can also easily resize images by clicking (or double-clicking in Firefox 3) to bring up a box that asks if you'd like an image to be small, medium or large.

Blogger in Draft also has better support for HTML and enables tables and other advanced HTML code to be placed in a post. And the preview feature brings up a new window so you can preview your post without leaving the editor window.

One thing to note is that Google has turned off the autosave feature, so you'll need to click the save button periodically if you don't want to lose your work. Autosave should be restored in a future update.

Tags: blogger, blogger-in-draft, blogspot

Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0

Timeline your life with Dipity.

by Joey Celis Jun 23rd 2008

Timelines are a great way to provide an overview of events. But what's even better is a timeline that generates content automatically based on information you probably already have.

Dipity takes automated timeline creation to a new level. If you have (and quite frankly who doesn't) a Blogger, Flickr, WordPress, YouTube, Twitter or any of the other supported social networking site just enter in your user name, URL or an RSS feed and dipity will do the rest.

You can view your timeline in years, months, weeks or even one day. Dipity also let's you rate your events so that those with higher ratings are displayed more prominently than others with lower ratings.

You're free to embed your timeline on your own site or list them on dipity's searchable directory.

If you ever wanted to see your online life sprawled out in front of you, dipity is one way to go about it.

Tags: blogger, flickr, socialnetworking, timeline, wordpress, youtube

Filed under: Design, Internet, Blogging

Lycos launches Webon web site builder

by Brad Linder May 20th 2008

Lycos has launched a new web page builder called Webon. The service appears to be the latest salvo in Lycos's mission to remind people that the once powerful web portal still exists. A few weeks ago Lycos also updated its Lycos Cinema media player to allow users to chat in real time while watching movies together over the web.

Webon is sort of like a cross between Google Page Creator and Google's Blogger. There are a variety of templates for creating several different types of web page. You can make a standard home page, create and update a blog, a photo album, a travelogue, or a wedding web site. No HTML knowledge is necessary. You just pick a template and start adding content. You can customize the look and feel of your site by adding widgets or custom HTML code.

You can try out Webon without signing up for the service, which is a nice touch. But if you want to publish your page for the rest of the world to see, you're going to need to register for a free or paid account. Free sites are hosted at username.webon.com, while you can register a custom URL (username.com) for $8.95/month. While that might seem a bit steep, the Webon personal plan also lets users upload an unlimited number of images. Yeah, it still seems kind of steep.

[via WebWare]

Tags: blogger, blogging, html, lycos, web-page-builder, webon

Filed under: Design, Internet, Features, Blogging, Web services, Google, web 2.0

8 steps to a more professional Blogspot blog

by Brad Linder Mar 24th 2008

So you want to start your own blog. One of the first things you'll have to do is decide which blogging application you want to use. There are a ton of options, ranging from the incredibly simple (LiveJournal), to the infinitely customizable (WordPress). But one of the easiest blogging clients around is Google's Blogger.

Blogger is not as easy to customize as WordPress, but Blogger's simplicity also makes the process of setting up a blog a lot less daunting. You can literally start blogging within minutes of signing up for a Blogger account. Google will also host your blog for free, which means you don't need to pay for domain registration or web hosting. WordPress does also offer free hosting, but WordPress doesn't allow free account holders to include advertising. Blogger does. So if you have dreams of quitting your day job, but don't want to pay a few bucks a month for web hosting, Blogger provides a good way to test the waters.

But while Google offers a handful of widgets for customizing your blog, if you really want to make your web site your own, you're going to have to get your hands dirty editing your blog template and adding some HTML and JavaScript code. Fortunately, you don't have to know much about HTML or CSS to implement the tweaks in this guide. As long as you're handy with the copy and paste keys, you should be all set. So let's get started.

Tags: advertiisng, blogger, blogspot, cloud, contactify, labels, navbar, tags, templates

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Commercial

BlogBackupOnline goes pro

by Brad Linder Mar 7th 2008

BlogBackupOnline plans to end its public beta next week with the launch of version 1.5. Most existing users won't notice much difference. BlogBackupOnline will continue to scan your site daily and perform a complete backup of your Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, or other blog for free. But some customers with larger blogs will be prompted to sign up for a paid subscription.

The cutoff point is 5MB. While this might not sound like a lot, in our tests, we managed to backup nearly 400 blog posts while using less than 4MB. Users who need more storage space will have the option of purchasing 50MB for $49.95 per year or 1GB for $99.95 per year.

Users who haven't hit the 5MB point yet will be upgraded to BlogBackupOnline 1.5 automatically when the new version is launched. Anyone who's already over the 5MB limit will get a 6 week grace period to decide whether to upgrade.

Tags: backup, blogbackup, blogbackuponline, blogger, blogging, livejournal, wordpress

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Google, Beta

Sign up for Google's Blogger and get a GrandCentral invite

by Brad Linder Feb 22nd 2008

Looking for an invite to Google's GrandCentral? The service has been in private beta since Google bought internet telephony company last year. While the private beta label hasn't exactly come off just yet, Google is making it a lot easier for anyone who wants a GrandCentral account to sign up for one.

Today Google posted a little note on Blogger Buzz letting users of the company's Blogger service know that they could sign up for GrandCentral accounts immediately. As far as we can tell, that link should work whether you have a Blogger account or not. But if it doesn't work for you, all you have to do is sign up for a Blogger account. They're free.

Once you have a GrandCentral account, you will be assigned a phone number that you can link with a number of real world phones. Whenever someone calls your GrandCentral number, the call can ring through to your work, home, or cellphones. You can listen to your voicemail from the web. Or you can set rules for how calls from various numbers will be treated.

What's the Blogger connection? You can also use GrandCentral's WebCall feature to add a "Call Me" button to your web page. Visitors can click the button, and GrandCentral will connect their cellphone to your number without ever showing them your phone number. You can either take the call or send all calls directly to voicemail which you can access from the web. You can even post voicemail messages to your blog using GrandCentral's embeddable audio player.

Tags: blogger, callme, grandcentral, voicemail

Filed under: Internet, Google, Googleholic

Googleholic for February 19, 2008

by Romeo Wahed Feb 19th 2008

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!

This edition covers:

Google loses #2 spot on Alexa rankings
Blueprint of Google's new data center in Harper's magazine
Google Adwords makes changes to URL policy

Tags: adwords, alexa, blogger, data center, DataCenter, google, googleholic

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Google, Search

NSFW? No SEO for you!

by Amber Rhea Feb 18th 2008

What's your first thought when you hit a Blogspot blog that slaps this warning screen in front of your face?

Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is objectionable. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about our content policies, please visit the Blogger Terms of Service

My first thought is, "splog." Followed, as a close second, by, "threats of violence." In any event, it gives every indication that previous readers thought the site was problematic and flagged it.

Well, that might be the case.

Tags: adultcontent, Blogger, Blogspot, SEO, Sex2.0, sexuality

Filed under: Blogging, Google, Beta

Google adds post scheduling to Blogger

by Brad Linder Feb 16th 2008

While Google's Blogger service offers just a fraction of the features you'll find from a more robust blog client like WordPress, it looks like Google is playing catch up. Just the other day we reminded you that you can check out draft.blogger.com for a variety of beta features and widgets that aren't available via the regular Blogger site. And now it looks like Google has added a feature do Blogger in Draft that it should have had years ago: the ability to schedule posts.

Previously, once you hit the publish button in Blogger, your post would go live. Even if you set the date for tomorrow or next year, a post would still go live as soon as you hit publish. This comes in handy if you want an easy way to pin a post to the top or bottom of the page (just set the date for the year 3017 or 1999). But if you plan on taking a vacation and you want to schedule a new post every day while you're out, you've had to resort to third party services, like writing blog posts via email and using an email scheduler like LetterMeLater.

But now if you use the Blogger in Draft page, you can schedule posts just by setting the time for a future date and then clicking Publish. A message should pop up telling you that your post is now scheduled. Keep in mind, this only works if you write your posts using draft.blogger.com. If you use the main Blogger page, posts will go live as soon as you hit publish.

[via Google Operating System]

Tags: blogger, blogger-in-draft, schedule, scheduling

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Google, Beta, Search, web 2.0

Pimp your Blogspot blog

by Brad Linder Feb 13th 2008

Yesterday we gave you a few pointers on pimping out your WordPress blog. So today we figured it was time to point out a couple of quick and easy ways to make your Blogspot site look a bit less like you ripped a page out of Blogging for Dummies.

As you may be aware, part of the reason Google's Blogger service is so popular is that it's incredibly easy to use. All files are hosted on Google's server, and all you have to do is pick a template and start writing. You can also add widgets to your site by choosing from a list of options in the layout tab of Blogger. If you really know what you're doing you can customize the HTML for your page layout or add custom widgets to your sidebar.

But even if you don't know a lick about HTML, Blogger has a few hidden tricks up its sleeve. If you go to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com, you can access a bunch of experimental widgets that Google has decided aren't ready for mainstream consumption just yet.

Tags: blogger, blogger-in-draft, blogspot, draft.blogger.com, widgets

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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