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Happy Birthday Blogger!

goldman — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:55:00 +0000

On this day in 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger which Ev announced on his own blog. As you can see, Blogger was quite the looker back then.

From those humble roots, a bloggerish forest has grown. And a lot of what we continue to build today is informed by the philosophy of the original Pyra team.

For example, the idea of control. One feature of the new beta is the new photo removal tool. Anytime you go to delete a post with a photo, we'll show you the images associated with that post and ask whether you want to keep or remove them from the web. Handy.

In any case: Happy Birthday, Bloggers! Here's to 7 more.

(Oh, the birthday logo is a dog because of that whole "1 human year = 7 dog year" thing. And there should be more dogs in birthday hats, don'cha think?)

Beta Update!

goldman — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:33:00 +0000

Thanks very much to everyone who has submitted feedback thus far on the new Blogger in beta! I wanted to give an update on: migration, login problems and more features.

1) Migration

The biggest thing we've heard thus far is "When can I get it!" Believe me, we want to let everyone move over to Beta as quickly as possible. While we continue to increase the number of eligible users, we are doing so in an incremental way.

This is important because our highest priority is protecting user data during the migration process. By taking the approach we have, we've been able to fix bugs before they affect larger numbers of users. As it stands now, only a very small percentage of users have been affected by migration issues and we have fixed most of those problems. If you have experienced a problem related to migration, let us know and we will fix it (and don't worry your blog posts are safe!)

2) Login trouble

Rather than migration errors, the biggest problem we've seen thus far is folks who have tried to log into Blogger and are concerned because they see an empty dashboard. In almost all cases, this is because users are unknowingly being logged into the Beta instead of the current version of Blogger. The login box on www.blogger.com now accepts Google Accounts; by using the auto-complete function of your browser's password manager, you may be logged into Beta instead of the current version of Blogger.

It's important to remember, if you get logged in and see an empty dashboard, check the address bar of your browser to see if it says beta.blogger.com. If it does, you'll need to log out and go to www.blogger.com. Be sure to enter your current Blogger username and password at www.blogger.com and you will see your current list of blogs.

If you've forgotten your current Blogger username and password, you can retrieve them using our forgot password page.

3) More features

A lot of folks have been wanting to use new features like Labels but with their existing template. Or there are folks who are looking for more fine-grained control than offered with the new Layouts system.

Fortunately, it's always been part of our plan to introduce a new Edit HTML system for Blogger in beta. This system will not only let folks have the degree of customizability they desire, but it will let you create templates that are customizable with the Layouts system. Right now we are finishing the first version of this system and will be introducing in the "days not weeks" timeframe.

We are also going to be adding FTP support to the new version of Blogger which will allow open up migration to our existing external users. As we've noted in the migration documents, some of the new features rely on the new dynamic serving capabilities of Blog*Spot. We won't be able to support all of those features for our FTP users. We do intend to continue to support FTP and also come up with ways to make it possible and desirable for those folks (which includes me) to come back to Blog*Spot.

Finally, I wanted to point out a feature of the new Blogger in beta that's available today, but hasn't been much remarked on in the many reviews of the new app: updated spellcheck. This is not surprising, as our existing spellcheck is so cumbersome that many folks are probably conditioned not to use it at all. But now our spellcheck is powered by the same great experience users have been enjoying in Gmail. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Blogger in beta

goldman — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:19:00 +0000

Today we're launching a new version of Blogger in beta! You've been asking for ways to do more with your blog, and you can with this new release. With the beta you can:

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

Take a look at the tour to see all the new things you can do (well, a lot of the new things ... they didn't all fit in the tour).

As we release this version, we're limiting the number of people who can switch over. (You'll see a link on your Blogger dashboard when you are able to move.) Eventually, of course, everyone will be able to transition their blogs to the new version. Thanks in advance for your patience as we roll it out.

If you can't wait, you can create a new account on the beta now and make a new blog to test out the new features. Because the new Blogger uses Google Accounts, you can use your existing Google login, or create a new one. (Later, you'll be able to merge your current and beta accounts, and have all your blogs in one place.)

We'll be posting more about the new version in the coming days, but for now, we really want to know what you think. You can post on the Blogger Help Group or via or feedback form.

Go Mobile

goldman — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:56:00 +0000

A while back we mentioned that we've been working with Sony Ericsson to incorporate blogging into their new generation of cameraphones. Well, the k800 has started to hit the market and our friends in Sweden have a helpful graphic to explain how it all works.

Check it out!

Blogger in India

goldman — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:43:00 +0000

It has been widely reported that Internet users across India are being blocked from accessing a number of blog hosting sites, including Blog*Spot. We are disappointed and a bit puzzled by these reports. We are also working to understand the situation, and are looking into what we can do to help resolve it.

A big thanks to the many bloggers in India and elsewhere who are investigating, reporting, and working to restore access.

Act break

goldman — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:55:00 +0000

Alex Epstein has a cool blog about screenwriting in which he gives advice, talks about what he's working on and recently tackled the most important question of our time: Why did Serenity fail to succeed in the box office?

Team Blogger has much love for Serenity and ecourages you to check it out. Also, Joss Whedon? You should come to lunch at Google.

Here comes the hammer

goldman — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:35:00 +0000

Congrats to Blogger user F-train for winning the World Poker Blogger Tour 2006 Summer Tournament this past weekend in Vegas. I've been digging on poker blog scene for a while now and was stoked to see the number of folks rocking it on Blog*Spot.

Some recommendations include:

Nice to see folks getting together IRL to play some cards.

Do you know how crazy that sounds?

goldman — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:19:00 +0000

Chelsea Peretti is funny lady who likes pictures of cheese (judging by her blog, anyway). I also recommend her latest video, Roadtrip.

Homeless

goldman — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:56:00 +0000

Great article in Wired News about how homeless folks can use blogging to reach out and express themselves online. I never thought about how important it would be to get homeless people email access, but it makes obvious sense when you realize that they have no fixed address.

There are four lights

goldman — Thu, 18 May 2006 23:42:00 +0000

There should be more fictional blogging. As a guide I suggest you check out Jean-Luc Picard's blog:

A vital part of engineering has broken down on the Enterprise.

It's the laundry machine.

Maybe we should implement a stardate option for date headers ...

I <3 L.A.

goldman — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:32:00 +0000

We're doing some user studies about how folks work with photos online. To participate you must:

live in West Los Angeles, Santa Monica or the surrounding area
post photos online

We are looking for all levels of users to take part in this study and will pay up $150 for your participation.

If interested, please email blog.study.la@gmail.com to learn more.

NYT: Elderbloggers

goldman — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:32:00 +0000

The NYT has a good article about senior citizen bloggers that includes interviews with Blogger users Mort Reichek and Milt Rebmann.

Quoth the Times:

While the 65-plus age range is notoriously tech-shy, many say that the blog-hosting companies make it simple to start and maintain one. Mr. Reichek said that when he went to Blogger.com — which is owned by Google — the site showed him how to set up a blog in easy steps.

"I'm a technophobe," he said. "But 1, 2, 3 and suddenly, I've got a blog."

Nice!

Update from Eric:

Jeff Veen (who recently joined us) also linked to this Times piece, providing a bit more background on the 1-2-3 process:

"Back about two years ago, I got the opportunity to work with Blogger on a redesign. Our goal was to dramatically simplify the "first post scenario" -- that is, how quickly can someone who has never even heard of blogging through a sign up process and writing something?"
"At one of our first meetings with the Blogger team, we agreed on a goal: 3 steps. We didn't know what those steps would be, but we knew we wanted to boil the whole process down to something that sounded really easy. After about two months of intensive design and usability, we ended up with something that both accomplished our goal and resonated with a whole new audience of bloggers."

On Spam Removals

goldman — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:09:00 +0000

As others have noted, we've made good progress in the past six months in reducing the amount of spam on Blog*Spot. One of the tools we're using is an automatic spam classifier. The risk in using a classifier is that we will mistakenly identify good content as spam. This percentage of false positives is both very low and one that we are reducing by further improving our systems.

Because no spam fighting measure is more important to us than protecting the content of our users, we've implemented a number of safeguards to make sure that any mistakes made by the classifier can be corrected. This involves presenting CAPTCHAs or other warnings to the user with instructions on how to contact support to resolve the issue. Our support team usually fixes these problems within one business day.

For certain types of blogs - a fraction of those classified - if we receive no response from the user after a significant period of time, we will mark the site for removal. Even when a blog is in this state, the actual content can still be retrieved and the blog restored for a period of several weeks. We've also put additional warnings in the Dashboard for blogs in this state so that the problem can be corrected quickly.

The steps we've taken have both improved the quality of content on Blog*Spot and improved the Blogger service as a whole. By taking steps like this, we're able to dedicate more storage, bandwidth and engineering resources to our users instead of spammers.

Channel 4′s 121

goldman — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:47:00 +0000

Channel 4 in UK has launched a site called 121 for fostering dialogue between paired sets of folks, one in the UK and one in another country.

It's like a public penpal session written in blog format. For example, their first blog is written by Steve - a bloke from Coventry - and Mr. Behi who lives in Tehran.

Nice lookin' template there, gents!

Search policy

goldman — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:10:00 +0000

Last Friday, Inside Google posted about a Blog*Spot user who had allegedly received an email from Blogger that stated the MSN Search box on his blog constituted a violation of Blogger's Terms of Service. I'd like to clarify a couple of points about this claim:

You have always been able to run non-Google services on your blog. In the same way you can use Yahoo's Flickr to post photos to your blog, you can include an MSN Search box in your template. We consider it a violation of the terms to modify the Blogger navbar, but that's not what was reported to have happened here.

We did not send a request to have the MSN Search box removed. We reviewed the information that's been made available, and we found no such request from our support teams.

We did not delete nor remove the blog in question from Blog*Spot.

Our content policies enable the widest range of expression possible. And we're proud that Blogger users can customize their blogs in the manner that suits them best ... even if that means using another search tool.

SxSW: Blogger wins Best Weblog Tool

goldman — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 23:56:00 +0000

Wow! Thanks very much to everyone who voted for us in the 2006 Weblog Awards. And it wasn't just Blogger picking up the phat lewt at this year's Bloggies. The following Blogger blogs also snagged top prizes:

Tokyo Girl (Best Asian Weblog)
Baghdad Burning (Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog)
My Boyfriend is a ... (Best European Weblog)
Girl with a One-Track Mind (Best British or Irish Weblog)
Vegan Lunch Box (Best Food Weblog)
It's Raining Noodles (Best Teen Weblog)
PostSecret (Best American Weblog, Best Topical Weblog, Best Community Weblog, Best New Weblog AND Weblog of the Year)

Congrats to all the winners and nominees.

SxSW: Blogger Party Tonight

goldman — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:40:00 +0000

If you are in the Austin area this evening, head on down to Club de Ville at 6:30p for the Blogger shindig we're hosting at SxSW.

Come have a drink on us and pick up the latest Blogger wearables.

Our Man in Hannover

goldman — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:17:00 +0000

Last week, we announced with Sony Ericsson that their new generation of camera phones will include integration with Blogger.

This week, Blogger engineer Jussi Myllymaki is on the scene at the CeBIT conference in Germany to help with the public unveiling of these 3.2 megapixel sweethearts.

Naturally, Jussi's got a sweet moblog to share snapshots of the futuristic action in Hannover.

Howdy John K

goldman — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:17:00 +0000

John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren & Stimpy, has a Blog*Spot blog!

Monkeys!

goldman — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:17:00 +0000

The Jane Goodall Institute has started a Gombe Chimpanzee blog for documenting their research in Tanzania.

(photo courtesy of janegoodall.org)

What's especially neat is that they've tied the blog to Google Earth. So you can click on a Google Earth file from the blog and read a detailed description of the ongoing studies in the context of where the research is being conducted. Here's an example kmz file.

Plus, there are pictures of chimps.

Compact

goldman — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 07:32:00 +0000

The SF Chronicle reports on a group of post-consumerists and their vow to "not buy anything new in 2006 -- except food, health and safety items and underwear."

Fortunately, Blog*Spot is free so the group, called Compact, can happily blog away.

Blogger Buzz 2006-02-10 14:09:00

goldman — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:09:00 +0000

BlogHer, the fine folks behind the conference of the same name, now have a community site:

Together we're building a guide to women bloggers. In 20+ popular topics, you'll find lists of blogs by women and constantly updating guides to what's hot, written by our contributing editors.

Additional options for Backlinks

goldman — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:55:00 +0000

Previously, we tied the post-level setting for Backlinks to the Comments setting. Turns out that proved a little limiting for some folks. So we've just pushed additional options that will enable you to control your Backlinks settings separately.

These options can be found in the collapsable section we just added to the bottom of the post composition window. (Yay! I don't need to see the "change date" options all the time anymore.)

Sausage bloggin’

goldman — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:01:00 +0000

Hot Dog Spot "is the weblog of a crack team of 'dogophiles' who are hot on the trail of the best dog in Los Angeles!"

Godspeed, dogophiles. I wish someone would do this for San Francisco. My vote is for Rosamunde Sausage in lower Haight.

Ageless

goldman — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:23:00 +0000

Carla Johnson for AP on rise of blogging by senior citizens:

Joe Jenett, a Detroit-area Web designer who has been tracking the age of bloggers for a personal project called the Ageless Project, said he has noticed more older bloggers in the past two years.

"Isn't that phenomenal? And their writing is vibrant," Jenett said. He noted that sites such as Blogger.com give step-by-step instructions and free hosting, making it simpler to self-publish on the Web.

Comment Moderation

goldman — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:29:00 +0000

We've just introduced a frequently-asked for feature, comment moderation. By using this feature, you can approve or reject what would-be commenters are looking to post before it goes live on your blog.

This is useful in situations where you're looking for a bit more control over the conversation hosted on your blog. Additionally, comment moderation will prevent unwanted comment spam if previous deterrants like word verification and rel="nofollow" have proven insufficient.

You can choose to moderate your comments via either email or from blogger.com. To enable the feature go to the Settings | Comment tab of your blog. As always, more information on how to use this feature can be in the help.

Counting Heads

goldman — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:38:00 +0000

A couple days ago, I picked up David Marusek's novel, Counting Heads, based on Cory Doctorow's ecstatic review over on BoingBoing.

Last night I finished it, after a week of franticly reading it in every spare second - unable to stop because on each page it seemed there was a new thumbnail of an idea or invention that would tease me along to the next chapter. Counting Heads has that remarkable quality of great science fiction - totally absorbing the reader in the intracies of complete world.

Just now I went to see what Blog Search would tell me about what others were saying about Counting Heads. And I realized that Dave Marusek has a Blog*Spot blog he started to talk about the release of his book.

Sweet!

(Interestingly, whenever authors start blogs people from both the publishing industry and bloggers themselves are, generally, excited. There's none of the "how do these two media relate to one another" angst that's been the central conversation around blogs and journalism for lo, these many years. Hmmm.)

Unreliable Narrator

goldman — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:51:00 +0000

I remember the first time I read Tony Pierce's blog because I'd only been working on Blogger for a short time, and the fact that I hadn't heard of him was pretty bad from a first impressions standpoint.

But my fellow Pyrate (Sutter) tipped me off, and the first post I read was about how the newspaper in Hell is so bad. When I realized that for several weeks Tony had been writing his whole blog from Hell after having been escorted there by the spectre of Kurt Cobain, I was floored. From a "getting what this whole blogging thing can really be" perspective, it was a big moment for me.

Tony's got a new book out called Stiff which collects all of his infernal posts into a choice of awesome covers. I just finished re-reading them this weekend and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

If you can’t say something nice …

goldman — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:54:00 +0000

As a good number of folks have noted, the cover story of next month's Forbes magazine features an article titled "Attack of the Blogs."

Seeing as how the article is already being picked apart by the web at large for saying things like "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob," I thought I'd take the opportunity to say a couple nice things about the piece:

The article points out that all kinds of blogs are being created each day and in amazing numbers. Of course, this point is made in the very last paragraph, but still. Forbes readers now know, for example, that hundreds of thousands of new blogs are created each day across the web and that this service gets more visitors "than each of the Web sites of the New York Times, USAToday and the Washington Post." Neat!

A lot of folks have taken issue with a sidebar to the article that includes tips for how companies can Fight Back against the bloggers. But one of the tips is Start Your Own Blog. A fine idea, really. Lots of companies are already doing this as a way to have an authentic voice on the web and to better connect with their users. It'd be a shame if the thought only seemed appealing as a way of Getting Even ... but whatever it takes.

The publication of the article serves as an opporunity to remind everyone of the excellent work done by the fine people at the EFF in putting together their Legal Guide for Bloggers.

And with that I must return to clubbing baby seals so that I might use their skins to publish my slanders.

Spam, APIs and Whitelisting

goldman — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 23:17:00 +0000

We've pushed some additional changes this week to make it more difficult for spam to be created using our API and other tools (this includes Hello/Picasa, Flickr, w.bloggar, ecto and many others).

The downside to the API changes is that those users whose blogs have been improperly classified as spammy have been unable to post outside of the blogger.com interface. For these users, we've pushed a change so that posts will be set to draft if created through the API. This way no content will be lost and users can go to blogger.com to solve the CAPTCHA and post their content.

We've also introduced a way for users who have been improperly classified to let us know that their blog is in need of manual review. More information on that can be found in the Help.

Spam Barriers (Redux)

goldman — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:09:00 +0000

Today we are posting a revised version of the word verification system we released yesterday. With this version we have resolved a number of the problems from the initial launch - the most important of which was the inability of some users to solve the CAPTCHAs presented.

There should also be fewer false positives. However, as I mentioned earlier, with any automatic classification of spam there will be some legitimate content that gets classified incorrectly.

It's important to know that if you are prompted to solve the CAPTCHA, it doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with your blog. Because of the number of variables our classifier uses, there's no easy way for us to pinpoint why your blog may have tripped the word verification (publicizing this information also serves to defeat the classifier).

The number of false positives will affect only a small percentage of the overall Blogger community. However, I know that for those of you asked to answer the word verification that this is a true inconvenience and for that I apologize.

We will be continually improving the classifier to reduce the number of false positives. We're also working on ways so that once a blog with word verification has been established as legitimate, the blogger will no longer need to solve the CAPTCHA.

It's important that we find ways to put reasonable barriers in place to further prevent the automated creation of spam content. This is not just to prevent the contamination of search indexes with spammy search results, but to ensure the quality of Blogger's service for everyone.

Spam Barriers

goldman — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 23:02:00 +0000

One of the ideas I mentioned yesterday was making it more difficult for would-be spammers to post. Earlier today we pushed out a change that will prompt some users to solve a CAPTCHA if our spam classifier identifies the blog as spammy.

We plan to quickly iterate on this approach a bit (as well as extend it to posts created via the API). So far, we have observed a slight decrease in the amount spam being created. There's clearly more to do.

Update: Some users are having trouble solving the new CAPTCHAs and are seeing CAPTCHAs when they shouldn't be. We'll be pushing out a fix for that shortly.

Update: This should now be resolved.

On Spam

goldman — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:44:00 +0000

Spam is a tricky problem. Or as Matt Haughey says "spam bloggers sure are resourceful little bastards."

For a while now, the Blogger team has been contending with spam on Blog*Spot through mechanisms like Flag as Objectionable and comment/blog creation CAPTCHAs. The spam classifier that Pal described has also dramatically reduced the amount of spam that folks experience when browsing NextBlog.

However, spam is still being created and, as was widely noted, Blogger was especially targeted this weekend.

One group of folks who are particularly affected by blog spam are those who use blog search services and those who subscribe to feeds of results from those services. When spam goes up, it directly affects the quality of those results. I'm exceedingly sympathetic with these folks because, well, we run one of those services ourselves.

So given that the problems is hard, what more are we doing? One thing we can do is improve the quality of the Recently Updated information we publish.

Recently Updated lists like the one Blogger publishes are used by search services to determine what to crawl and index. A big goal in deploying the filtered NextBlog and Flag as Objectionable was to improve our spam classifiers. As we improve these algorithms, we plan to pass the filtered information along automatically. Just as a first step, we're publishing a list of deleted subdomains that were created this weekend during the spamalanche.

Greg from Blogdigger (one of the folks who consumes blog data) points out that "ultimately the responsibility for providing a quality service rests on the shoulders of the individual services themselves, not Google and/or Blogger." However, we think by sharing what we've learned about spam on Blogger we can hopefully improve the situation for everyone.

We can also make it more difficult for suspected spammers to create content. This includes placing challenges in front of would-be spammers to deter automation.

Of course, false positives are an unavoidable risk with automatic classifiers. And it's important to remember that the majority of content being posted on Blog*Spot is not spam (we know this from the ongoing manual reviews used to train the spam classifier).

Some have suggested that we go a step farther and place CAPTCHA challenges in front of all users before posting. I don't believe this is an acceptable solution.

First off, CAPTCHAs represent a burden for all users (the majority of whom are legit), an impossible barrier for some, and are incompatible with API access to Blogger.

But, most importantly, wrong-doers are already breaking CAPTCHAs on a daily basis. And not through clever algorithmic means but via the old-fashioned human-powered way. We've actually been able to observe when human-powered CAPTCHA solvers come on-line by analyzing our logs. You can even use the timestamps to determine from whence this CAPTCHA-solving originates.

One thing we've learned from Blog Search, is that even if spam were completely solved on Blog*Spot, there would still be a problem. As others have concluded, we've realized that this is going to be an on-going challenge for Blogger, Google and all of us who are interested in making it easier for people to create and share content online.

Introducing Backlinks

goldman — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 22:40:00 +0000

Interested in finding out who's linking to your posts? We've just introduced a new feature called Backlinks that makes it easy to find out.

By turning on Backlinks, we include a "Links to this post" section on your post pages. This section is populated by links to that post that have been made from other blogs across the web. For example, check out this post from Blogger Buzz a couple days ago.

Also, as the author of the blog, you have the ability to hide any links to your posts that you might not want to display. You can turn on Backlinks by going to the Settings | Comments tab for your blog. More information can be found in the help article.

Beep Beep

goldman — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:47:00 +0000

If you don't yet have a song stuck in your head, be sure to check out Rocketboom today for the remedy.

At the ole (kick)ball game

goldman — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:36:00 +0000

On Saturday, the Blogger team squared off against our good friends from Flickr in the sport of kings ... kickball. (Well, it's the sport kings played when they were in grade school).

We're happy to report that the Blogger side emerged victorious with a score of 24 to 17.

Pictured here: Chris Wetherell records the final out while Eric Case gloats over our fallen foes (Cal being one of them)

Photo credit:Jason Sutter.

Get Rich Quick(er)

goldman — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 23:12:00 +0000

We've just made it a lot easier for Blogger users to make money using their blogs.

Our new integration with AdSense lets you signup from within Blogger. And we've added a tool for inserting the ads in your blog (so you don't have to mess around with the HTML).

There's even built-in options that will analyze the colors on your blog and choose a recommended color scheme. Check out the mad science, why don'cha.

Webzine 2005

goldman — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:02:00 +0000

A bunch of us Bloggerfolk will be at Webzine 2005 this weekend in San Francisco. If you're in town, please come by and check us/it out.

Judging by their commercial it should be an unmitigated hoot.

Blog Search: Quick update

goldman — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:59:00 +0000

Both of the Blog Search issues mentioned the other day have been resolved.

(Also did you know we had advanced operators? It's true.)

Blog Search: Redirects and Indexing

goldman — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 22:41:00 +0000

The great thing about launching Blog Search is that it's very easy to find out what people are saying about the product. And the feedback has been great. Plus, it means that we find out about potential issues right away.

Here are a couple questions we've seen:

"After clicking on a result in Blog Search, I'm being passed through a redirect. Why?"

"I included a robots.txt or tag to prevent the indexing of my blog. Why does it appear in Blog Search?"

FAQ

robots.txt

NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW

Daily Scare

goldman — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:04:00 +0000

Eugene Smith is posting a monster a day over on his new blog, Monstercake.

Spooky.

Eine Kleine Nacht Blog

goldman — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:27:00 +0000

One night the gifted young pianist Jeremy Denk accompanied Emma Bell in Mozart and Debussey songs, and also played Bach's Third English Suite. He's a powerful, intelligent musician, as severe in Bach as he is sensuous in Debussey. He is also a blogger, of all things.

- Alex Ross, The New Yorker, August 29, 2005

Heck yeah, he is.

Not automatic for the people

goldman — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:45:00 +0000

There have been some good questions sent in about the new Flag feature. One thing we've seen is the worry that blogs could be removed because of accidental or repeated voting. Or even just because some people considered a blog to be distasteful. There a couple reasons why this won't happen.

From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing.

But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable.

In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to "delist" the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted.

To clarify, our primary concern is to avoid promoting objectionable content in places like NextBlog or the Dashboard. In no way are we automatically removing such content.

Word Verification for Comments

goldman — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 00:49:00 +0000

We've just introduced the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to prevent the automatic creation of comments by nefarious ne'er-do-wells (e.g. spammers).

Features like comment captcha and flag as objectionable are not complete solutions to the problem of spam. But they are additional tools that can help address it.

Mailbox

goldman — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:21:00 +0000

Lucas writes in to say:

I hate your Blogger Mobile Jingle!!! It's SO catchy that I haven't been able to get it out of my head!!! Who makes these things?!

The parties to blame are Biz Stone (lyrics) and Grant Shellen (music). If you haven't heard the song of the year, check it out at go.blogger.com. (You've been warned.)

And Cruz asks:

I recently read and article on opportunities on how bloggers can make money. I was wondering if I created a blog through your web site if that will prevent me from benefitting financially?

Heck no! In fact, all Blogger users are eligible to sign up with Google's AdSense program - an easy way to add content targeted ads to your blog. Check it out.

We are widening the corridors

goldman — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:45:00 +0000

From CNET's latest top 10 list: "Whether it was dancing hamsters, a kid enjoying his day as a Jedi Knight, or the sudden ability to publish your thoughts online with just a few simple clicks, the following 10 Web fads still make us laugh, make us wonder, or make us feel guilty enough to update our blogs."

At #9, it's neat that Blogger is both on this list of memes as well as the means by which such memes are propagated. Take that Kiss Me Mahir!

Also, it reminds me that we should make some new t-shirts.

And oh how they danced

goldman — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:15:00 +0000

photo credit: Graham Waldon (who also writes our Blogger Hacks articles)

Got a photo of Blogger cavorting in an exotic locale? Let us know.

Dashboard Stats

goldman — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 22:11:00 +0000

We've re-enabled post counts on the dashboard. But remember, it's quality not quantity.

Alive, king, and 25 all at once

goldman — Tue, 31 May 2005 22:23:00 +0000

Congrats to Blogger-user HM King Nicholas I. As if being King weren't enough, he has a new book coming out this week! Here's the description from his site:

What would you do if you were twenty-five, unemployed, still living with your parents and had absolutely nothing to move on to in life? Nick Copeman's answer was to change his name by deed poll to HM King Nicholas and found an empire from his royal seat - a caravan just outside Sheringham, Norfolk.

Blogging: the golden pathway to both royalties and royalty.

No wrong answers

goldman — Thu, 19 May 2005 21:25:00 +0000

We're gearing up for another round of usability testing over here at BloggerHQ and could really use your help. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested, please see these details.

Blogger Buzz 2005-05-18 16:43:00

goldman — Wed, 18 May 2005 20:43:00 +0000

We've not yet translated the Blogger into Swedish, but Aktuellt has helpfully explained the whole signup process - complete with screenshots. (Tack så mycket, Martin!)

Metaphor

goldman — Thu, 12 May 2005 05:24:00 +0000

And so the sun sets on my time in New Zealand (and with it my moblogged vacation slideshow). May a new day dawn on ... something awesome.

Embassy Theatre – Wellington

goldman — Wed, 11 May 2005 11:23:00 +0000

This is pretty sweet - plush leather seats, a giant screen, and you should see the bathroom! I know you're not supposed to use phones at the theater, but there should be an exception for blogging.

I’m lost – don’t send help

goldman — Sat, 07 May 2005 05:10:00 +0000

Driving on the left side is easier than I imagined. But it's done nothing to improve my sense of direction. I'm sure things will work out.

Iron mushrooms in Auckland

goldman — Fri, 06 May 2005 03:04:00 +0000

Conveniently I'm in New Zealand on the day Blogger Mobile launches. Hope to share more on-the-go slices of my trip this way.

Hi Tech

goldman — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:00:00 +0000

We're testing out some new, advanced blogging devices over here at GoogleHQ.

FeedMeshin’

goldman — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:34:00 +0000

FeedMesh is a project that aims to share sources of feeds (like the ones Blogger produces). The folks over at PubSub are gathering support behind the project so that products which rely on feeds can "focus more on service rather than competing for the number of tracked feeds."

Seems like a good goal.

Evan Williams hates the elderly

goldman — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 22:47:00 +0000

Or at least that's what I took away from the NYT's piece on the evolving relationship between gossip blogs and gossip columnists.

Since you can't fill 40 columns with "These are different formats doing different things" why not conjure up a new v. old media smackdown! In one corner, we have octogenarian gossip Liz Smith. In the other, the Blogs That Dish.

Gone are the days when FDR used to dish dirt with Walter Winchell. Sadder still is the loss of all those fabulous hats the pro-gossips used to wear.

It's all been washed away by a tide of anti-hat, anti-old-lady bloggery. Ev - how could you be so cruel.