Google News Inside

How to Verify Blogger in Google Webmaster Tools

A great tutorial written on the Webmaster Central blog, about how to verify your Blogger blog in the Webmaster Tools. Here are the step-by-step instructions to authenticate your site: In Webmaster Tools Click the “Add a site” button on the Webmaster Tools Home page Enter your blog’s URL (for example, googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) and click the “Continue” [...]

Blogger Hits Some Hard Times, then Recovers

This past week, Blogger has had some hard times. Rick Klau, a friend of mine and the primary Blogger Product Manager — who used to be with Feedburner, writes a lengthy blog post about the issues and what Google has done to recover from it. One very interesting thing I noticed about this blog post [...]

Mobile Posting to Blogger

Blogger announced the graduation of its most recent testing ground product. Mobile posting. The Blogger blog has the full tutorial on how to use it, but something I found of interest was that they were able to claim the text number for BLOGGR (256447). Good for Google on that. Incoming search terms:moblile posting

Can We Continue to Trust Google?

Google offers a wide variety of services. Gmail, Search, online office collaboration, and a number of other services that are commonly used by millions of people around the world. Is it becoming to much for Google to handle? Despite having 20,000+ employees still, even after the “let goes” of 10,000 temporary employees, Google is still [...]

Blogger and Reader Prepare for SXSW

This year will be the first year I am able to attend SXSW in Austin, TX. I am super stoked for it! I am also super stoked to see a number of my friends, including Matt Cutts, Todd Friesen, Tony Adam, Tamar Weingberg, Pete Cashmore and the list goes on. Needless to say, it’s going [...]

Google Integrates Blogger & Google Friend Connect

Today, Google announced the integration between Blogger and Google Friend Connect. Google still has a long way to go before Friend Connect is even close to the usefullness of Facebook Connect, but it’s one step at a time. I’ve been overhearing from Googlers that inside the Googleplex, they call it “Friend Sense” more than they [...]

Adding Your Blog to Facebook

…is a BAD THING! I personally do not recommend adding your blog’s feed to Facebook. Both Typepad and Google suggest otherwise, but let me explain. There is one reason and one reason only why you want to feed your content somewhere else: more revenue. Pros and Cons of Feeding Your Blog to Facebook Pros You [...]

Google Lost Your Revenue

Here’s where you a Google engineer hits his forehead on the table and thinks, “stupid, stupid, stupid.” If you have a Blogger site, some of you may have noticed that your ad units began showing public service announcements (PSAs) in the last nine hours. This was due to a technical issue that we’ve now identified [...]

Blogger Joins Twitter

Recently, Google’s blogging platform, Blogger, joined the Twitter micro-blogging-craze. There’s been rave after rave about Twitter; Twitter-this, Twitter-that. Blogger finally joined Twitter. “We will be posting status updates, major feature announcements, and pointers to cool uses of Blogger will all show up in our Twitter account.” There are already other well-known Googlers on Twitter though, [...]

Google APIs

Google offers a lot of APIs to developers. So what are some of the APIs available to developers right now? Google Apps APIs Google Base Data API Blogger Data API Google Calendar Data API Google Code Search Data API Google Contacts Data API Google Health Data API Google Notebook Data API Google Spreadsheets Data API [...]

Blogger Launches New Blog List Feature

Blogger launched a new page element for Blogger templates yesterday. You can now add a Blog List to your site. Something to note about these new Blog Lists is that they are search engine friendly. The links will pass PageRank to the links in your Blog List and will help attribute their reputation, as PageRank [...]

Yahoo! Uses WordPress, Google Uses Blogger

Something I have noticed more and more lately is what software powers corporate blogs. Sure, I understand that eBay is using WordPress, that CNN is using WordPress, even that the MozillaZine Weblogs are powered by Movable Type. That’s cool, I understand all that. But something I don’t understand is why Yahoo! is using WordPress. Yahoo! [...]

GrandCentral Announces First Google Product Migration

Blogger is announcing the first integration of recently acquired GrandCentral. With this integration, Blogger will let bloggers place a “call me” button on their page. The next question will be, how many bloggers will want their visitors to be able to call them up? I, for one, would be perfectly fine with it. The only [...]

Graham Waldon Joins Team Xoogler

Eric says it the best, that “we’re saying our collective goodbyes to Graham Waldon, one of the longest-serving members of the Blogger team at Google.” It certainly looks like he’ll be keeping busy though. Here are a few of the things he writes that he will be doing in the coming months, posted back in [...]

Javascript Hackers Invited to Hackathon at Google

Yesterday, Google announced the 2008 Hackathon to be held at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. As far as I can tell, it’s not a contest, but just a time to get together. “The event is open to anyone in the community that wants to learn about some Google API’s, do some coding, or ask [...]

You Blog, Google Listens

“Two fixes just went live, before we sign off for a brief holiday break:

Unregistered commenters can once again provide an auto-linked URL [Help Group Thread]
Images in the Header page element will no longer be cropped vertically [Help Group thread]

We apologize for having broken these features for you. Your blogs and Help Group posts showed us the true extent to which you used and cared about these features, so please let us know if they’re still being problematic.”
It seems that at least one of the Google teams listens to the public and what we want.

Guest Posting for Google

This one comes directly from the official Google Maps API blog. Joe Monahan writes a guest post as an Orbitz.com employee. But since when has Google allowed guest posters to write, let alone link back to their company site? There is a nice little disclaimer at the end of his article though, “Disclaimer: These views are mine and not the views of OWW or (subsidiary). I am not a spokesperson for OWW or (subsidiary) and neither OWW nor (subsidiary) endorse any material, content and/or links or assume any liability for any of my actions.” Maybe it’s just me, but does anyone else think it’s a little weird that someone is guest posting on an official Google blog?

Blogger Now Accepts OpenID Commenting

Blogger recently did some testing and published the new feature to allow OpenID users to login and comment. This is great for a whole host of reasons. The first being that OpenID is finally getting more recognition. It’s a great concept — but I do have to admit that it still needs more improvements to become universal. The feature announcement gives a great detailed layout of how to use the new functionality and how you can easily integrate it into your Blogger site.

HOWTO: Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

I couldn’t write it any better, especially since I don’t use Blogger myself, but here is an awesome HOWTO guide on migrating from Blogger to Wordpress. http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultim…ger-to-wordpress/

Google Without Freedom of Speech

After having been criticized for hosting a gay and lesbians bashing website, Google was prompted to take some sort of action. As a preliminary action Google put up a banner warning visitors that it could be bad for those faint of heart. “We will act to remove blogs which are in clear breach of our terms and conditions,” Rachel Whetstone, director of corporate communications for Google Europe, told PinkNews.co.uk So what was it? Was it a “breach” of terms and conditions or a breach of the first amendment? A little hard to say at this point, but I’m sure more news will follow this action by Google. It’s not something to take lightly because if it happened to this site, who’s to stop them from doing it to your blog?

HOWTO: Backup Blogger Posts

Ionut has a great tutorial on how to backup your blogger posts on his site. Worth a read if you’re a Blogger blogger and you want to backup your data.

Google Blog Hosting with Custom Domains

There was a recent release of the updated Blogger platform. With that release came a new feature that people have been longing for. Custom domain names for their blog. Now you can. The hosting is free. Google will host your blog for free and allow you to use your own domain name. A simple process of buying your own domain name and then setting up the CNAME to your blog.

New Blogger Release

Blogger announced that it has officially moved out of the beta stage. Here are some of the highlights about the new version of Blogger. Drag-and-drop template editing Post labels Better-designed dashboard Access control Better input fields for posts These are just a few of the new features for the latest Blogger release. See them all for yourself and go sign up to create your own Blogger blog.

Google Sends Apologies Across the Board

Google’s Blogger service had some planned and unplanned outages recently, rendering Blogger pretty useless to everyone in the world. The power outages and fileserver problems were part of the core issues causing the outages. On Tuesday there was a planned outage to repair faulty hardware. On Wednesday another unplanned outage meant Blogger was down “for some time”, leaving users without access to either Blogger or BlogSpot. On Thursday there was a planned outage to replace the piece of network equipment that was causing the outages, according to Blogger Status. Not very happy Bloggers in my opinion. Yet another reason why I host my own blogs and websites, I don’t like trusting other “free” services. ZDnet

Click-to-Call is…Back Up?

From what I’ve been reading around the blogosphere, it seems that the Official Google Blog had been hacked due to a bug in blogger. Click-to-Call has not been cancelled and it is going quite well. Google is going to continue its program with Click-to-Call and hope to make it even more successful than it already is. Here is a reponse that Google has from the hacked entry, A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog claiming that we have discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. Our click-to-call test is progressing on schedule and we are pleased with the results thus far. Google Blog

Flickr Support in Blogger Beta

Blogger is in beta of having Flickr support now. It appears that Google is integrating their Google Accounts into Flickr’s secure authentication system [method].

Blogger Gets a Party Too!

A few days late, I missed this one. Blogger had a birthday on August 23rd. So this is a belated happy birthday to blogger

The New “Cool” Is Back — Blogger Beta

There’s a new beta version of Blogger that Google is releasing that has a ton of new features that users have been asking and waiting for. Categorize your posts with labels Control who can read your blog Change the appearance and content of your blog with your mouse instead of HTML These are some of the new features that that people have been waiting for, so let the testing begin!

Talk About Blogging — seriously

Google has been working with Sony Ericsson and their new mobile phone line that is coming out. The new line-up will allow for people to blog directly from their phone, making publishing even easier than it ever has been before. Take a picture, write a little description, and post it to your blogging account on Blogger.com. With this easy application integrated into phones now (only with Sony Ericsson right now), blogging will become an even larger part of life (is that possible?) But yes, it does seem possible. Blogging is here and not going to go away any time soon.