Google Data » Brett Wiltshire

Your images never looked so good

Brett Wiltshire — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Posted by Marcos Almeida, Software Engineer

Updated 09/21/11: After listening to your feedback we've decided to roll back and make improvements to the Lightbox feature. We will update this blog as soon as the feature relaunches.

Introducing Lightbox, the latest in a series of Blogger updates aimed at giving you an improved and modernized blogging experience. Lightbox is a whole new way to interact with photos. When clicked, images now expand into a shiny new overlay that displays them at their full size for optimal viewing.

Once an image is opened in the lightbox view, any other images from the same post will now appear as thumbnails along the bottom, which can be easily browsed by clicking the arrow keys on the left or right side of the lightbox.

If you’ve custom-coded your image HTML so that images function as hyperlinks, then the lightbox view will not display and your original image hyperlink will work as expected.

Your images never looked so good!

Latest updates, August 1st

Brett Wiltshire — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:58:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

Hello Bloggers!

Over the last few days we’ve rolled out a handful of updates, all of which are available to everyone right now. Here’s the rundown:

Favicon graduates from Draft

As we announced on the Blogger in Draft blog earlier this month, we now offer an easy tool for creating custom favicons on your Blogger blog. We’re happy to announce today that this feature is now available to all Blogger users.

Since the initial release to Draft, we’ve added support for all image types (JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc) and will now automatically resize the image to the correct favicon specifications. You can add a custom favicon to your blog right now on the Design | Page Elements tab, via the new favicon element shown below:

Swipe navigation for Mobile views

Adding to the featureset of our new mobile templates, you can now navigate through your mobile view with swipe navigation. This new navigation option lets you swipe through individual blog posts in a way that should feel very familiar for mobile and tablet users.

If you are viewing this post from a mobile device, you can give this a try right now!

Support for +1 on Pages
A few weeks ago we announced the +1 button on Blogger, and now we’re happy to expand coverage to individual pages as well as blog posts. The +1 button will now appear on Pages as an option on the sharing widget just as it has appeared for individual blog posts.

That’s it for now, more to come soon! Happy Blogging.

You can do some amazing things with Blogger

Brett Wiltshire — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:48:00 +0000

Guest post by David Kutcher

Editor’s note: We invited David Kutcher, an innovative web developer from Northampton MA, to write a guest blog post to share how he uses Blogger to create robust, beautiful and easy to use websites for his clients.

Hi, my name is David Kutcher. I own Confluent Forms LLC, a graphic design and custom web-based software development firm in Northampton, MA. We specialize in creating gorgeous and engaging websites with custom content management systems. As curious as it made sound, we’ve found that Blogger can be a great platform for web development when a custom CMS isn’t needed. Blogger provides a ton of functionality and design freedom for our clients, and not just for blogs!

You’re probably thinking: “what? using blog software for a website?”. I know - it sounds a bit unconventional, but it’s true.

I think that most users do not realize the value and flexibility that Blogger offers, including free hosting, complete customization, personalized domain options, WYSIWYG editor and more. Because Blogger is a Google product, you can also easily integrate with other Google services such as: Google Analytics, Google Docs, AdSense, Picasa and more. All of this is available free of charge while providing a simple, easy authoring environment for the small business owner.

As a web development firm, Blogger provides us with a different value proposition. When we pitch a Blogger-based solution to a client we can provide services at a lower price point while still maintaining full creative freedom. I don’t need to set up a paid hosting account for my client, worry about security patches or upgrades, or be concerned about system uptime and availability. Finally, I can easily transfer ownership and management of the site to my client, or, continue to keep us both as co-administrators.

It can be hard to envision a platform’s potential from a list of features so here are a few examples of what we’ve achieved with Blogger.

I hope the examples above have opened your eyes to some of the possibilities of what you can do with your Blogger site, or maybe encourage you to give Blogger a try for your website solution. A longer, more in-depth version of this post is available on our blog. My company is lucky to have an exceptionally talented designer that isn’t afraid to push us, but even if you don’t have the ability to create an entirely new site template, perhaps this will encourage you to explore the underlying code of your site and to customize some of the small details to match your vision for your site.

Happy designing and coding!

David

New tools for handling copyright on Blogger

Brett Wiltshire — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:45:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

In keeping with Google’s public commitment to make copyright work better online, our team has been working on improving the copyright environment for bloggers and copyright owners alike. As access to the web grows, bringing new content and services online, it becomes even more important to ensure the rights of everyone involved are protected and understood. To that end, we’re happy today to announce the release of two significant improvements to Blogger’s copyright handling toolkit:

1.) Streamlined submission tools for rightsholders.

Working alongside industry representatives, we’ve built a better submission and handling system for our high-volume DMCA takedown submitters that simplifies the reporting process and reduces our average response time to less than 24 hours.

2.) Streamlined counter-notice tools for users.

Built right into the dashboard, Blogger now offers a simple way to counter-notify incoming DMCA takedown notices to blog authors who believe their content was improperly targeted for removal. This will initially be available for users receiving notices from our high-volume submitters, though we have plans to expand this to other notices down the road.

In addition, to ensure transparency around the entire system, we’ll continue to forward all DMCA notices (as well as counter-notices) to the Chilling Effects cease & desist clearinghouse where they’ll be available for public searching.

As a refresher, here is a recap of how our DMCA removals procedure works today, factoring in these two updates we’ve just announced:

A blogger (let’s call him Joe Blogger) decides to post a link on his blog to a downloadable copy of Album X.
The rightsholder believes the link leads to an unauthorized, infringing copy of Album X and submits a takedown notice for that specific post.
The DMCA takedown notice is processed by the Blogger Team, and if determined to be a valid complaint, the post in question is reverted to draft, Joe Blogger is notified, and a copy of the complaint is sent to Chilling Effects.
At this point, Joe Blogger has the right to file a counter-notice and request the post be restored if he believes the takedown was improper. He may also edit the post to remove the allegedly infringing content himself.
If Joe Blogger files a counter-notice, notification will be sent to the rightsholder as well as to Chilling Effects, and after ten business days the post will be restored if the rightsholder decides not to pursue further action.
Rightsholders may pursue further legal action if they deem the counter-notice sent by the user to be invalid or erroneous.

These updates are the most recent among the copyright-related improvements our team has implemented over the last two years, all intended to strike a responsible balance between the needs of copyright owners and bloggers.

Update on Browser Support

Brett Wiltshire — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:40:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

Our team has been thinking a lot recently about browser support, and wanted to make you aware of our new plan moving forward. For web applications like Blogger to continue to evolve at a rapid pace, our engineering team needs to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers. For example, Dynamic Views, which we previewed in March, and Web Fonts both require advanced browsers that support HTML5. Older browsers just aren’t able to provide you with the same high-quality experience.

For this reason, starting next month Blogger.com will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Blogger as well as many other Google Apps such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites.

So if it’s been a while since your last update, we encourage you to take advantage of the improved performance and security these modern browsers have to offer by installing the latest version of your preferred browser. There are many to choose from:

As the world moves more to the web, these new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.

Add a virtual tip jar to your blog

Brett Wiltshire — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Posted by Peng Ying, Developer Programs Engineer

Update 6/10: We've updated our gadget's Terms of Service and you will need to agree to these new terms before you can add or continue to use the gadget.

We know that most of you blog for the sake of sharing your thoughts and opinions, however a little side income is like an unexpected gift. Today we’re releasing a new gadget that allows your readers to directly contribute to your blog. The gadget can be added to any part of your page, but we’ve formatted it to fit best in the sidebar.

Setup is only five simple steps and should only take a few minutes of your time; just follow the steps below:

Sign up for a Google Checkout Merchant account at checkout.google.com/sell
Be sure to enable the HTML API by going to the Settings tab, clicking the integration link and unchecking the “My company will only post digitally signed carts” checkbox. Also, copy the Merchant Id for use in step 5.
Back in Blogger, on the Design | Page Elements tab click “add a gadget” where you wish to place the Support gadget.
Add the "Support My Blog" gadget from the gadget gallery.
Customize your support button settings. The Checkout Merchant Id is the one you copied down in step two. Save and you’re done!

Your supporters can now contribute to your blog. Clicking on the support button will direct your supporters to Checkout to complete the transaction. For an example of the support button in action, please visit the following blog:

http://bloggercheckout.blogspot.com/

Updates and Fixes, May 5th

Brett Wiltshire — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:20:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

April showers bring May flowers, and updates to Blogger! Here's the run down of the latest changes available to everyone right now:

Add location info to your posts with geotagging

Geotagging has been available for a while on Blogger in Draft, but is now available to all users with today’s release. To add location information to your blog posts, simply click the Add Location button in the bottom right of the new post editor. This will bring up a new window that displays the familiar Google Maps interface and you can search, drag, zoom, and drop markers for the location of your choice.

Once you’ve settled on the location you want to add to the blog post, just click Save and the information will automatically be added to the footer section of your published post (if you don't see it, you'll probably have to enable the Location option in the Blog Post widget which is normally defaulted to 'on'.)

We’ve made a few small updates and bug fixes since the original Draft release, most notably the ability to remove location information after publishing and the addition of a placemarker for pinpointing location info.

Refreshed interface for image and video upload

Clicking the “photo” or “video” upload buttons will now display a sleeker, updated picker. We’ve also made it draggable so you can look back at the post editor if you need to.

A pair of Known Issues are now fixed

Users posting comments from non-Google accounts should no longer see the intermittent bX errors that occurred last week.
The intermittent errors which were preventing the browsing of archives via Newer / Older navigation links has been fixed.

An important note about legacy accounts

Brett Wiltshire — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:30:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

(This message only applies to a tiny fraction of users who haven’t logged in to Blogger since 2007. If you’ve logged in to Blogger at least one time since 2007, you won’t be affected and can disregard this message.)

There was a time early on in Blogger’s life where we had our own, custom account system for handling login authentication. Starting in 2006 all new Blogger accounts were created using the official Google accounts system, and then in 2007 we started the process of moving all of our legacy users over to the Google accounts system. Now, four years later, we’re finally at the home stretch of the transition. For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs after September 30th, 2011. So if you have a Blogger account and haven’t logged in since 2007, you will lose access to the account and associated content permanently unless you update to the Google Account system before September 30th.

Updating to the new account system is easy and should take just a few minutes. We really do value all of the content that has been created on Blogger and we hope that as many people as possible will reclaim their blogs. If you’ve been avoiding this task for a while, we encourage you to head over to the Legacy migration page and update your account.

We’ll be sending a similar notice later this week via email to all of the email addresses associated with the legacy accounts we have in our database. In a few weeks we’ll also make another announcement here on Buzz, with more specific updates on the transition.

If you have any other questions about this process, please let us know by posting your issue in the Login section of our Help Forum.

Update, 7/31: We've pushed back the cut-off date for supporting legacy migration from June 25th to September 30th.

YouTube Us!

Brett Wiltshire — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:51:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations

If it’s been a while since you’ve checked out the Blogger YouTube channel, you may want to head over and have a look around as we’ve given the whole site a facelift. Beyond our shiny new theme and graphics, we’ve added thirteen hot-off-the-press videos that cover a wide range of feature walk-throughs, handy tips, and other fun stuff that the team has come up with. And this is just the beginning!

We had so much fun putting these videos together that you can be sure to see a lot more uploads in the future, as we want this channel to be an ever-evolving source of Blogger information.

The Blogger team would love to hear your feedback on the new YouTube page, and we’ve created a form where you can pass along your ideas for further videos and other ways we can improve our channel. Of course, you can always send us a quick tweet or drop us a line in the Feedback section of our Help Forum as well.

Either way, we hope you enjoy our revamped channel and we look forward to expanding it over time.

Dynamic Views, the Chrome Extension

Brett Wiltshire — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Posted by Mike Lawther, Chrome Engineer

Last week we announced five exciting new ways to view your blog content, which take advantage of the latest web technologies to provide a richer experience for your readers. You can already see these views in action by appending /view to the end of any Blogger URL, but today we’re happy to announce another way to experience these views via the Blogger Dynamic Views Chrome extension.

Once installed, the extension will automatically detect when you are viewing a Blogger blog, and then display a Blogger icon (the orange ‘B’!) in your address bar which lets you select and view the blog in one of the five new dynamic views. It’s that simple.

Of course, you can always disable the extension whenever you want from the Extensions section of the Tools menu. Try it out today, and please feel free to leave a rating or review on the extension page.

Google to Acquire Blogger

Brett Wiltshire — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:15:00 +0000

Update: This was an April Fool's post. The acquisition was in 2003 :-)
--
Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Blogger CEO
[Cross-post from google.blogspot.com]

This morning we’re beyond thrilled to announce that Blogger has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google, the Internet search company. This is exciting news not only for all of us on the Blogger team, but for our users, our partners, and most importantly -- the blogosphere itself.

Understandably, you probably have lots of questions about what this means for Blogger and Blogger users. Below, we've put together some initial answers to many of the biggest questions. More info will be available as we figure it out. Thanks for your support as we transfer into this next exciting phase.

Q: Why did Blogger sell to Google?
A: Well, on the surface, it may look obvious: A company of Google's size could give Blogger the resources we needed to do things better, faster, bigger. It's been a long eleven+ years since we started the company, and not all of them were very fun. We had been making serious progress over the last year or so, but bootstrapping (growing without funding) is always a slow process, and we were a long way from where we wanted to be. We wanted to offer a better service. And with Google, it wasn't just their size, of course. They had clearly done an incredible job building their technology and business, and we'd been big fans.

However, that doesn't mean it was an easy decision. We'd seen many small companies doing interesting things die (or at least become uninteresting) after getting acquired. It was only after becoming convinced that: a) There were sensible, cool, powerful things we could do on the technology/product side with Google that we couldn't do otherwise; and b) It was a good company, run by people we liked, who wanted the same things we did (i.e., they wouldn't screw up Blogger or make our lives miserable).

We became convinced both of these were the case rather quickly after thinking about the product side and talking to lots of Googlers. Also, Google liked our logo. And we liked their food.

Q: Will Blogger go away?
A: Nope. Blogger is going to maintain its branding and services. While we may integrate with Google in certain areas there will always be a Blogger.

Q: What does the acquisition mean to Blogger users?
A: Greater reliability, new innovative products and a whole lot more that we aren't ready to share quite yet (truth is, we're still figuring a lot of it out). Right now, we're mostly bolstering up our hardware -- making things faster and more reliable -- and getting settled. Next, we're going to be working on some killer ideas we've been wanting to implement for years. It'll be fun.

Q: Will there be any changes to my account?
A: Not right now but if anything does change we will notify you ahead of time, as we've done in the past.

Q: Will there be any changes to the Blogger products?
A: We will be making some changes in our product line. We've been working on a new version of Blogger for some time now that will be coming out soon. We'll tell you more as soon as we know.

Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We are building a nuclear powered... Wait, you almost had us. We aren't telling, yet! But we will have more in a few weeks.

Q: Does this mean my blog will rank higher in Google search results?
A: Nope. It does mean your blog might be stored physically closer to Google but that's about it. The people at Google have done a great job over the years making sure their search results are honest and objective and there's no reason they would change that policy for Blogger or anyone else.

Q: What will happen to all the nice kids that work on Blogger?
A: We’ll still be working on Blogger and making it better.

Q: Are you still as handsome as ever?
A:

Spare two cents?

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:08:00 +0000

Published by Brett Wiltshire

We had a fantastic week in Austin during SXSW, and it was a pleasure getting to talk to so many of you who dropped by our booth and party. We always learn a lot when we get to speak with our users and it makes a big difference when we're thinking about the next exciting things to work on.

In that spirit, we thought we'd give those of you whom we weren't able to talk in person a chance to pass along your input on Blogger and the way you publish content online. So for those with a few thoughts to share and an extra few minutes lying around, please check out our quick survey.

Thanks, and we really do appreciate it!

Engage your audience with Follow by Email

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Posted by Ben Eitzen, Software Engineer

Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog. Our team is always thinking of new ways to connect users with the freshest content across Blogger, and today we’re happy to offer a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email.

The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox. When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.

To enable Follow by Email, click the Add a Gadget link from the Design | Page Elements tab, and then select the Follow by Email gadget which should be at the top of the list. Once you add the gadget, readers visiting your blog can then just enter their email address and click Submit.

Taking advantage of Feedburner technology, Follow by Email will also track your subscription information, such as the number of subscribers and daily views. To view these stats, log into Feedburner.com, and select the appropriate blog feed from your list.

Blogger in the Down Under

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire

click for the larger version!

Last week was special for all of us who work on Blogger. For the first time, our entire team came together from around the globe to sit down in one room and talk about our vision for Blogger in 2011 and beyond. We came from five different Google offices spanning four continents, many of us meeting team members in person for the first time. And since we've come to truly appreciate the value of face-to-face time with each other, we also wanted to share a photo of the team behind Blogger.

While many of us were meeting in Sydney for the first time, we left as a family closer than ever, excited about the year to come and fueled by all of the engaging conversations and innovative ideas exchanged. The future of Blogger is bright, and it has been an exercise in willpower trying to keep from spilling the beans too early on what we have in store. The good news for you and all of us though is that with SXSW on the horizon, we'll soon be making some very exciting announcements. So please stay tuned, and once again thanks for using Blogger!

Hang with Blogger @ SXSW2011

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:05:00 +0000

Posted by Brett Wiltshire

The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas is just around the corner, and once again Team Blogger will be on the scene and hoping to mingle with as many of you as we possibly can. We’ll have a booth set up on the tradeshow floor where we’ll be showing off some exciting new things we’ve been working on, so please come find us at booth 1322 under the giant orange ‘B.’

We’re also throwing our annual SXSW bash at Six Lounge on Monday, March 14th. We’ll have great local music, some goodies to give away, and of course, free booze. And if you come visit us at the tradeshow, we just might have some VIP invites lying around if you mention this post. Doors open at 7 p.m., so come early and avoid the lines.

Please spread the word, and we’ll see you in Austin!

Take a Survey, Win a Blogger shirt, Be Fashionable

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:23:00 +0000

Our ears are always open to your feedback, whether it's a request for a new feature you'd like to see, a suggested improvement to the latest release from Draft, or input during a usability study.

In that spirit, we're hoping that you'll once again help us out us by taking a quick survey about our existing monetization features. And to make it a little more fun, we'll be sending out a handful of shiny new Blogger T-shirts to a lucky bunch of survey-filler-outers (chosen at random of course!).

Thanks for the help in advance! And for those who don't win a shirt, keep an eye out for other ways to get your hands on one in the future.

Updates and Fixes for November 22nd

Brett Wiltshire — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:17:00 +0000

Besides an exciting update to the Blogger in Draft testing ground, we’ve also made a few updates to the rest of Blogger. Here’s a quick summary of the latest changes, hot off the press:

Comment Notifications enabled by default on new blogs

We think it’s important to stay in touch with the activity on your blog, so we’ve turned on the comment notification setting by default for all new bogs. We’ll send an email to the address associated with your Blogger account with each new comment from your readers.

Your old blogs won’t be affected at all, and if you’d like to enable or disable comment notification at any point, you can easily do so from the Settings | Comments tab.

Picasa albums created automatically (if needed)

We hope you are already aware that when you upload an image from Blogger, it gets added automatically your Picasa Web Albums account in an album dedicated to your blog. This means that any image you upload from Blogger will be available to view, edit, and share when you login to Picasa.

Should you delete the album associated with your blog for any reason, we’ve made an update which will now create a new album automatically so you can continue to upload images to Picasa.

Upload Image button added to Edit HTML mode
(Blogger in Draft only)

We heard lots of feedback recently about how you’d like to be able to upload an image in the post editor’s Edit HTML mode, so we’ve added it into the new post editor’s toolbar with today’s release. You’ll see it right now if you go into the post editor. Hopefully this saves you a few extra clicks next time you need to add images to your posts.

And lastly, a bug fix

Many of you let us know via the forum that tags for images uploaded in the new post editor weren’t closing correctly, which was causing formatting problems in your post. We’ve corrected that problem in this release, and now tags are closing as they should.

Thanks for letting us know!

Safe Browsing on Blogger

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:10:00 +0000

National Cyber-Security Awareness Month is here once again. In that spirit we wanted to share a bit about what we are doing on Blogger to help fight malicious content, along with some tips for a safer browsing experience online. While spammers are always coming up with new tricks, the combination of Blogger’s abuse-fighting systems and the security features of modern browsers helps ensure that you’ll be able to browse through your favorite blog content with confidence.

We’ve partnered with other abuse-fighting teams within Google to develop sophisticated systems for automatically detecting and quarantining nefarious content on Blogspot. Over the years, our teams have analyzed the patterns and behavior of malicious blogs and code, and with each new detection our existing algorithms are trained for better coverage in the future. As a result, we are able to catch and quarantine thousands of malicious blogs each year, and are happy to say that our overall spam levels are at an all-time low across our service.

Of course, while our automated systems provide great coverage for a wide variety of abuse types, you can always let us know about suspicious blogs by reporting them directly to us via our online form. We’re also looking to you, the users, to be our eyes on the web and let us know anything that may have escaped our existing systems.

Beyond partnering with us on the detection process, you can also make a difference in your own online security by taking advantage of your browser’s built-in security. Modern browsers have powerful security features that can detect potentially malicious sites and alert you should you stumble upon them. Using technology like Google’s Safe Browsing tools, users of many browsers see warning screens when attempting to visit sites that automated systems have determined to contain suspicious content. To make sure you have the latest and most secure browser version, please check out the following browser sites:

Google Chrome

We also recommend using one of the following tools to keep your browser plug-ins up to date: Google-developed SecBrowsing; Mozilla Plugin Check.

For more tips on safe browsing and security on the web, check out the home of Cyber Security Awareness Month at the http://staysafeonline.org/.

Back from BlogWorld

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:46:00 +0000

Sometimes returning to a nice, quiet office can be just what the doctor ordered after an exhausting trip away. And for the handful of us on the Blogger Team who just returned from BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, this was definitely the case.

For the first time since the convention’s debut four years ago, we set up shop on the tradeshow floor with our very own Blogger-themed exhibit. Armed with demo stations, Blogger t-shirts and chip clips, and our very own bright red marshmallow couch, we spent our time showing off the latest features and talking to literally hundreds of folks about their experiences with Blogger. And we learned a lot.

shaun, vardhman, chang, antin, brett, and tina on the marshmallow couch.

The feedback that we got was both encouraging and enlightening, and we’re still in the process of digesting everything. First, we want to thank everyone who came by the booth to say hello, test out the new features, spend a few minutes getting interviewed, or to tell us what we could be doing better. Having so many passionate bloggers in one place to interact with was an incredible resource, from the gentleman we spoke with who has been blogging since 1995 to the fitness blogger who set up her first Blogger blog right in front of us. So once again, thanks for sharing!

demoing with the guys from vanilla. photo credit: brendan sera-shriar

We’re excited about what’s in store for Blogger in the coming months, and after this trip we’re even more committed to delivering the best blog service possible. In the spirit of keeping the conversations going, feel free to send us a tweet or post on our wall if something’s on your mind. Or, if you want to give us some more detailed feedback, please let us know on our Product Ideas page.

Finally, we want to thank Rick Calvert for reaching out and encouraging us to be a part of BlogWorld Expo. We hope to see you all next year!

Help Us Make Blogger Better (again)

Brett Wiltshire — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:21:00 +0000

A little over a year ago, we asked all of you to speak your mind and let us know what we could do to make Blogger better. Two thousand ideas and seventy-five thousand votes later, we had quite the laundry list of feature requests and feedback to dig through. Our team took a long, hard look at the data and spent the last year cranking out as many of these features and fixes as humanly possible.

To date, we’re happy to say that we’ve been able to launch most of the top-requested features from the list. Here are just a handful of the features you asked for which are now live:

...and that’s just the beginning of the list. We’re also working on a few big improvements that we’re pretty excited about, so stay tuned as we continue to roll things out of the oven in the near future.

Just as we did last year, we’re asking for your input on our Product Ideas page. As always, our ears are open to your feedback and your input has been invaluable over the years in helping us figure out where to put our time and energy.

Please take a moment to vote on and submit ideas, whether specific feature requests or general service improvements. Think about new features that would make you use Blogger more, the things from other services which may be missing, and even the things which may be frustrating at times. We promise to once again take a long look at the feedback, and hope to tackle many of the top issues just as we did last time around.

Thanks again in advance for all your help making Blogger the best service it can be!

Stats Gadgets Graduate from Draft

Brett Wiltshire — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:09:00 +0000

Last month we released two new stats gadgets to the Blogger in Draft testing ground; after hearing your feedback and making a few tweaks, we’re happy to announce that they are both now ready for the main stage. The new-and-improved Popular Posts and Blog’s Stats gadgets can be added to your blog right now from the Gadget Directory by clicking Add a gadget from the Design | Page Elements tab.

Both of these gadgets take advantage of the traffic data that is being collected by Blogger Stats and provide an easy way for you to pass that info on to the readers of your blog.

The Popular Posts gadget will automatically find and display your blog’s posts that have the most pageviews. You can choose whether to display image thumbnails or post snippets in addition to the post title. You can also choose the time window to be used for calculating pageviews and the number of posts you’d like to display.

The Blog’s Stats gadget lets you show off pageview data for your blog, with a handful of configuration options that are easily controlled. You can choose from a variety of styles and display options to suit your blog. We also provide an option to let you select the time window to be used for calculating pageviews.

We hope you enjoy these new gadgets and want to thank you again for your feedback as we fine-tuned them to their current state.

Super Simple: Your Creative Canvas

Brett Wiltshire — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:50:00 +0000

When it comes to design, sometimes less can be more. This is the mantra behind our newest variant Super Simple, freshly-released to the Template Designer this week. We’ve taken the original Simple variant and stripped it down to the bare essentials, putting your actual blog content front and center on the page.

As with all of our variants, you are free to tweak all of the individual elements and styles to your liking. And if you are looking to design a fancy blog template from scratch, the Super Simple variant is also a great frame to build upon.

You can check out the new variant right now in the Template Designer, under the Simple category. As always, our ears are open to your feedback, so please feel free to let us know what you think.

Improvements to Realtime Search

Brett Wiltshire — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:08:00 +0000

The blogosphere is a dynamic environment that changes almost as quickly as the world that we live in. And as access to information becomes more widespread and more immediate, the blogosphere is steadily closing that gap. That’s why the Blogger Team is excited to spread the word about Google’s new improvements to Realtime Search, which provide richer and fresher results than ever before.

From the new Realtime Search homepage, you can search live updates, recently-published blog posts, and news from around the web in brand new ways. Now you can restrict your search to include just updates from a specific geographic region or just nearby you. You can also check out complete conversations from Twitter. You can also now set up custom alerts for Realtime updates to be sent directly to your inbox once a day or week, or as soon as the happen for instant blog post fodder.

For more information about Realtime’s new features, please visit www.google.com/landing/realtime.