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
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.
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
July 28, 2011 — permalink
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 designerthat 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
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.
- 360 Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark
- Pinch Gallery
- Renew Pilates Studio
- Impish
- Ode Boutique
- Elbow Room Coffee Company
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 designerthat 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
July 25, 2011 — permalink
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.
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:
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.
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.
