The latest tips and news from the Blogger team
Blogger Play: Watch the blogs go by
September 14, 2007
Today we’re pleased to launch
Blogger Play
, a neat little toy we’ve cooked up to show you photos and blog posts as you’ve never seen them before.
Image credit:
kiwisweden
Shortly after Blogger launched photo uploading two years ago, one of our engineers whipped up a web page that would show us
the pictures that were being uploaded in real time
. The result was fun, often beautiful, but above all, compelling.
We couldn’t stop watching
.
Over the years we’ve kept this photo scroller as part of the Blogger offices, on a monitor or projector, as an interesting (distracting?) slideshow, and a reminder of the diversity and vivaciousness of Blogger blogs. The fame of the scroller spread within Google, until one day we were asked, “so,
when
are you launching this?”
“Um...,” we replied. But we knew a good idea when we heard one. We got our UI people to come up with buttons and fadey effects and we got our engineers to make the whole thing fast and robust. A bit of work later, and now we can share it with all of you:
http://play.blogger.com/
Blogger Play
will show you a never-ending stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs.
You can click the image to be taken directly to the blog post it was uploaded to, or click “show info” to see an overlay with the post title, a snippet of the body, and some profile information about the blogger who uploaded it. We also wrote a
Blogger Play FAQ
with more information.
A caveat: we use many techniques, including Google’s
SafeSearch
technology, to keep the images clean. Nevertheless,
on rare occasions an image that you may find vulgar or obscene will slip through our algorithmic filters
. Google does not pre-screen the images that appear in Blogger Play, nor is it responsible for their content. To report a terms of service violation, you may fill out
this contact form
.
FoxyTunes adds Blogger support
September 13, 2007
Hey
Firefox
users! The folks at
FoxyTunes
just added Blogger support to their
Firefox plugin
, which you can use to do a
number of things
, such as:
Control your favorite music-playing app from your browser
See what you’re currently listening to
Append your current song to the bottom of new blog posts
Check it out
!
Blogger and malware
August 31, 2007
You may have seen stories in the news recently about malware on Blogger, such has
this one
from the BBC or
this one
from Committee to Protect Bloggers. Blogger was not compromised. Instead, the blog posts are from bloggers whose machines were compromised by a
Trojan horse
. These bloggers had their
mail2blogger
email addresses in their computers' address books (a perfectly legitimate use case), so when the malicious software spammed every address in their address book with its content, a copy of that email was posted to their blog.
We are in the process of notifying impacted bloggers and recommending that they scan their computers and run current anti-virus software, available in the
Google Pack
. This is also good advice for all computer users, especially those who may have clicked the links in the emails sent by the virus. For more information about computer security, check out
upenn.edu
and
us-cert.gov
.
AdSense update: Inline Ads
August 28, 2007
Just wanted to bring your attention to a small yet nifty (and long-requested!) feature we recently added to Blogger's
AdSense integration
: inline ads
You can now show AdSense ads inside your block of blog posts, up to 3 times on your main blog page. This should definitely improve monetization for those of you using AdSense on your blogs, as this places the ads inline with your blogs' actual content. The AdSense blog
shows how it works
, and here are a few example blogs using the feature:
Dummies' Guide to Blogger
Movie Theatre Reviews
3, 2, 1, Action!
August 24, 2007
Today we are releasing video uploading to Blogger! This feature allows you to upload videos and create a video podcast with the same ease that we currently provide with photo uploading.
When you go to the Blogger post editor, you'll see a new button (
) next to the image uploading one. Just select a video from your computer, wait a few minutes for the upload and processing to occur, and
voila
! Now when you visit your blog, you will see something like this (of course without Tomo, the Blogger Akita):
To learn more about video uploading and see an instructional video on how to create a video podcast, go
here
.
Happy Eighth Birthday!
August 23, 2007
Today marks Blogger’s eighth birthday! A time for reflection, a time to catch our breath from yesterday morning, and a time to break out the baby picture.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past four-fifths of a decade, and thanks especially to you for all the blogs.
In honor of our birthday, we have a small present in the form of an iGoogle gadget for Blogs of Note. Click the “Add to Google” button below to put the day’s Blog of Note on your iGoogle homepage.
Browse Profiles! Find new blogs to read!
August 07, 2007
Say you live in
Albuquerque
, count the
Smashing Pumpkins
among your favorite bands, and like
sushi
. Starting today, we’re making it easy for you to find other bloggers who share your interests.
Now you can go to any Blogger profile page (start with
your own
, or perhaps
another popular blogger’s
) and follow any of the links on the page to get a list of other bloggers with the same industry, occupation, location, interest, or favorite book, movie, or music.
The Browse Profile results are tuned to show you people who have recently updated their blogs at the top, so you can find blogs with fresh posts.
If you haven’t filled out your profile, do it now to help people find your blog.
Here’s how
.
Don’t want to be found? Just edit your profile and uncheck the “Share my profile” box, and your profile won’t show up when other people browse.
Still curious about Blogger profiles?
Read our FAQ
.
Attention FeedBurner Fans
July 11, 2007
FeedBurner
users - we just added a feature for you. Matt's
post on the FeedBurner blog
explains it more fully, but in short, you can now specify a URL to which Blogger will redirect your feed's traffic. This means you'll no longer have some subscribers getting your Blogger-hosted feed while others get your FeedBurner feed, and your subscriber count should (as a result) be more accurate.
To enable this functionality, visit your blog's Settings | Site Feed page, and enter your feed's address in the "Post Feed Redirect URL" field.
Enjoy!
Note: this feature isn't limited to FeedBurner alone - you can use any feed-mashing service (like
Pipes
) with it.
Polls: out of draft!
July 11, 2007
As of today, the Polls feature has graduated from
Blogger in Draft
, and is now an official Page Element on www.blogger.com! Polls lets you add a poll to your blog's sidebar, which your visitors can vote on and see results. This video shows how to create a poll:
For more information about the Polls feature, see
these posts on the Draft blog
.
Twitter badge for Blogger
July 09, 2007
Our friends at
Twitter
just released a nifty new
web badge
, which you can use to easily display your Twitter updates in your blog's sidebar:
http://twitter.com/badges/blogger
(if you're unfamiliar with Twitter, its
FAQ
states that, "Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the
API
to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!")
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