Been busy spending the past week telling the press about your extramarital affairs, history of drug use, and misuse of campaign funds? Here are a few stories you might have been too busy to read. Adobe Photoshop Express Beta launches
After months of hype, the big day finally arrived. Adobe launched a free, online version of Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing. You won't find all the bells and whistles that come with the desktop version of Photoshop. After all, Adobe does still want to sell you software. But Photoshop Express will definitely give existing online image editors like Picnik and FotoFlexer a run for their money. 8 steps to a more professional Blogspot blog
Look, we know that most folks think it's blasphemy to use the words "professional" and "blogspot" in the same sentence. But hear us out. Google's blogging service offers free web hosting, unlimited bandwidth, and a surprisingly tweakable template. We've gathered 8 or so of our favorite tips for making your Blogspot site look as good as good as any WordPress blog.
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.
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.
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.
If your blog client of choice is Google's Blogger, odds are you've banged your head against a wall at least a few times wondering why Blogger can't be a bit more like WordPress or TypePad. While Blogger is incredibly easy to use, it's a bit more difficult to customize. But with a bit of work, you can tweak your Blogger site to near-perfection.
For example, while Google doesn't offer a "recent comments" widget, Blogger buster has created a simple widget generator that lets you build and add a recent comments section to your sidebar. You can customize how comments appear by choosing how many comments to display, whether to show the date or post titles, and how many characters to include in the preview.
It's a weekday, so we probably shouldn't be surprised to see a couple of updates from the Google camp. There are two new features in Google Reader. One could make your life a bit easier, while the other could do the same -- or it could become a huge time sink.
The first new feature is drag and drop feed organization. In other words, you don't need to use drop down menus to place feeds in a new folder, just click and drag it into the folder where it belongs.
The second feature is personalized feed recommendations. Google takes a look at your subscribed feeds and web search history and tries to find feeds that match your tastes. While this is great if you're always looking for new blogs to add to your feed list, if you're someone who already spends way too much of your day sifting through feeds in Google Reader, this feature could keep you from ever turning your computer off. Ever. Not that we speak from experience.
Google has also rolled out one significant update to Blogger today: you can now leave comments on blogs using OpenID. Up until now you needed a Blogger or Google account if you didn't want to leave an anonymous post.
But wait, you say, couldn't we always use FeedBurner to spruce up boring Blogger/Blogspot feeds? Right you are. But you had to jump through so many hurdles to change the auto-discovery preferences for your blog that you never really knew if subscribers were signing up through FeedBurner or Google's automatically generated feed.
Now there's a nice new setting conveniently located under Settings/Site Feed that lets you redirect your site feed. That's it. Type in your FeedBurner address and you're all set. In fact, there's nothing stopping you from entering any feed redirecting service.
Of course, true integration would mean not having to redirect anything at all. Perhaps sometime down the line we'll see Google make FeedBurner the default feed service for Blogspot.
Given how Google doesn't have a perfect record of you know, not accidentally disabling accounts, you might be looking for a good way to backup data you've got stored on Google servers. For Gmail, the simplest method is probably to save your messages to Outlook or Thunderbird.
But backing up your blog using Google's Blogger isn't quite as straightforward. A few months ago we told you about BlogBackupOnline, a service that lets you make backup copies of blogs posts, whether you're using Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad or most other popular services.
If you're using Blogger, and you'd rather save your data on your desktop, you might want to check out Blogger Backup. There's no support for saving images, (something BlogBackupOnline recently added), but Blogger Backup is extraordinarily quick and easy to use.
On your first run, you can save all of your posts, or just your last 10, 25, 50, or 100. You can also set it to perform full backups or incremental backups, and to save each post as a separate file or every post as one XML file. Future releases will let you save posts as HTML or PDF files.
Been busy spending the past week telling the press about your extramarital affairs, history of drug use, and misuse of campaign funds? Here are a few stories you might have been too busy to read.
