Successful Blogging.com: May 2008

Add a Poll- Spark Interest

Polls are nice because they can inspire reader interest. They can also be a great way to find out what your reader's are into in order to know what topics to write about.
Polls are easy to set up.

Start by going to the Layout | Page Elements tab for your blog:

Click the "Add a Page Element" link that appears in the sidebar for your layout. Click on"Poll" and click on "Add to Blog."

The poll settings let you enter the question you want to ask, and the possible answers you want to allow. You can enter as few or as many possible answers as you like; if you need more than are shown, just click the "add another answer" link.

You can change the time frame of the poll by entering a new date in the settings. You can also check the option to allow people to vote for multiple answers, if appropriate.

You can then go into the edit html link from the layouts tab and customize the poll by adding a background color etc. Scroll through the html and look for the poll or do a command +f (in most browsers) to search and find it.
Here is an example of what you can do.

background:#FFFFFF; = white
border:3px solid #000000;=black
width:200px;
padding:0 10px;
text-align:center;
font-size:16px;
font-color: #FFFFFF= white
font-family:arial;
font-weight:bold;

The Mail-to-Blogger

The Mail-to-Blogger feature turns any email account into a blog-posting application. In Settings | Email you can create a Mail-to-Blogger address which you will use to send posts via email to your blog.

Why would you need this?

If you are away from your computer or if you want to post via cell phone. If you are going on a trip and want to post photos or updates on your journey. If you are someone who likes to blog but, is away from your computer most of the day. Mobile posting has become a popular option.

To post to your blog via email, you need to configure your Mail-to-Blogger email address in Settings | Email:

The format of the email address is username.secretword@blogger.com. Note that this email address must be kept secret. Otherwise, anyone who gets it will be able to post as you.

Once you have saved your Settings, you can send email to your blog. The subjects of your email letters will be the titles of your posts, and the body of the emails will be the posts themselves. To include an image in your post, you can attach an image to you your email.

Notes:

Sometimes email programs append text to the bottom of each sent message; to make sure that the appending doesn't get posted to your blog, put #end at the end of your post.

>So, you want post via your cell phone?
No problem. Just send a message (which can be a photo, some text, or both) to go@blogger.com. Google will take care of the rest.
They will auto-provision a new blog and publish the post. It's that simple.

Here's how to start a mobile blog:

1. Send an MMS to go@blogger.com to create your mobile blog. The text and/or photo in your MMS will be uploaded to that blog right away.They'll message you back with the address, (so you can visit your new blog on the web) and a token (so you can claim your blog and access it from your account).
If you feel like changing anything on your new mobile blog or if you already have a Blogger account and want the posts to go to your existing blog, you can log in to go.blogger.com and enter the token sent to your phone. You'll then have the option to claim your new mobile blog and merge it with your existing blog.

What types of messages can I send to Blogger Mobile from my phone?

MMS or Email - note this doesn't include email sent from a mobile device that actually passes through a webmail gateway (such as mail sent from your stanford.edu account from your phone).

What size photos can I send?

Photos are currently limited to 250K each. If they exceed that size, you’ll receive a bounce message letting you know so you can try again with a smaller picture. Note that your phone (or carrier) might have size limits of its own.

Is there a cost for using Blogger Mobile?

Mobile providers' standard rates for sending and receiving text and photo messages apply. Blogger won’t charge you for any of its services.

Requirements

Text messaging-enabled mobile device with a text messaging plan. This service is free from Google but charges from your carrier for usage may apply.

For more information send the keyword HELP to BLOGGR (256447), you can also text STOP to BLOGGR to cancel text messages.

Google Gears Up MySpace

Google is supplying software technology that will let users of MySpace more quickly search their e-mail. ....

Google released pricing for a new service that gives independent developers access to the same computer infrastructure that the Silicon Valley Internet leader uses to run its own Web services.

These moves mark the push Google is making to turn the Web browser into a full-scale platform for software development that offers many, if not all, the features of computer-based desktop programs. Google says that more than 150,000 developers have joined a waiting list for Google-hosted computer capacity over the past six weeks. The attraction is that the first 500 megabytes of data storage and enough processing and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month — enough to run a small successful start-up — are free. Charges apply as demand grows.

Google Gears will store e-mail data on a MySpace member's local computer, which then speeds the process of searching messages by name, subject, content, date or other attributes.
MySpace counted 110 million users earlier this year. Google Gears gives MySpace e-mail users search features that even Google's own Gmail users do not now enjoy. The deal is part of a growing partnership between the two companies: Google has a three-year, $900 million deal to supply advertisements to MySpace.

Add AOL to the mix.
AOL will open up its myAOL service to the use of Google Gadgets to allow users to add the web-based applications to myAOL pages.

Webmaster Toolkit

The webmaster toolkit is a hidden secret for webmasters. This free site came into existence as a collection of webmaster tools developed to help myself and a few other webmasters with our daily webmaster chores.

They offer free services to help webmasters with their daily web design chores. Many of these are useful for bloggers as blogs are basically websites. Check out a few goodies.

Want to see where a computer is located? Type in the ip address on this page and find out.

Ping Utility- ends echo requests to the address you specify and lists the responses received and their round trip time. When the utility is terminated it summarizes the results, giving the average round trip time and the percent packet loss. This utility can be used to determine whether there is a problem with the network connection between two hosts.

Meta Tag Generator- will read the page you specify, remove common words from it, and pick the most used words on the page. It will then generate a Meta Keywords tag using the words it has found. Extra weight will be given to words in a heading tag

Domain Name Checker will help you find the domain you've been looking for, or check the details of an existing domain. Simply input the domain you're after, and select what TLDs (top level domains) you want to search for, and click the button.

Search Engine Spider Simulator strips out the HTML tags from the page you specify and shows you how the page would look to search engine spiders.

Facebook Gets a Facechange

Facebook is getting re-design. Starting in June, Facebook will look a bit different. The goal of the transformation is to clean up the look. The goal behind the update is to reduce profile clutter. Facebook is known for it's clean layout, which many of its members value over the often cluttered MySpace profile pages.

Facebook has grown to about 70 million members and developers have created over 25,000 applications for the site. Member profiles have become very busy with comments, graphics, lists, alerts and the like. And this even though Facebook members have limited ability to alter things like fonts and colors.

The redesign will attempt to unclutter the profiles by redistributing their components to different tabs. The new plan calls for four main tabs—for the activity feed, basic member information, photos and applications. Members will be able to add more application tabs.

The activity feed tab will feature a new authoring control panel, called the Publisher Box, for creating and posting content. Meanwhile, the profile will have at the top a new horizontal navigation line with drop-down menus for its core features.

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
All that's needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.

Permissions

It's a little used tab on your settings tab. What's so good about this?
Permissions allows for multiple authors or restricted view.
I am going to focus on the multiple authors right not. Restricted views speaks for itself.

Multiple authors is an excellent idea for groups, such as nonprofits and clubs. You can keep your postings private by setting the readers to authors only or only people you choose. Businesses can benefit too.

You can set the author to 100 people.
To get each author's post to their own page, simply label the post with the author's name. Then on your main page, you can display the gadget for labels (Blogger in draft- layout- add gadget). Your main page should be post dated (click on post options, set the date for 2011). By postdating, you can be assured that this is the page that always appears first- a landing page.

Here is an example of a sample blog that I made. Click on it to make it larger.

Notice how my "post date post" show up first?
Because after I posted it I edited it and changed the date in the options below the post.

Notice the "labels" gadget. It lists the 'sample ofr permissions" post that I made and labeled. You can do this with names and when users click on the name, they will be directed to all of the postings with that label or name.

Also, go to your setting tab, click on 'formatting' and you can set your main page to load only one post- the one you made for your landing page.
WOW!m

Google Sites makes creating and sharing a group website easy.

Google has just released "Google Sites". Essentially free webspace with easy to use wysiwyg set-up.

This service is intended for groups, rather than a website to sell items.
Google says that it's new service offers;

Single-click page creation
No HTML required
Customizable look and feel
Settings for accessing and sharing information
And it's free!

......

Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer.
...

Quick facts

Single-click page creation Creating a new page for your Google Site just takes the click of a button.

No HTML required Creating a Google Site is as easy as editing a document, which means there's no markup language for you to learn -- just get started.

Templates- -- web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard and list -- to help you get started with your Google Sites pages.

Upload files and attachments Use the file cabinet to upload files up to 10MB in size. Each Google Apps account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites. Google Apps Premier and Education editions get an additional 500MB for each user account.

Embed rich content Google Sites is integrated with other Google products, so you can insert videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars directly onto your Google Sites pages.

Work together and share Our permission settings let you designate owners, viewers and collaborators (meaning they can edit pages) for your site. And you can make your Google Sites available to just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Search with Google You can search across Google Sites pages and content using powerful Google search technology. You'll find specific pages and documents instantly, the same way you would on Google.com.

Is it better than putting together a blogger account with multiple authors?
You be the judge.

Feedburner; Checking out your stats

If you curious to see how things are going with your new feed or to see how to edit your feed settings you can do so by visiting Feedburner.com. You will need to log back in and click on your feed's name. When you do this you will be guided to a tabbed page. This page contains information on your feed stats. There are also tabs for Optimize, Publicize, Monetize, and "Troubleshootize" (cute). If you have an adsence account, you can easily put ads in your feeds here.

The most likely tab that you will use the most it the one that greets you for statistics. All of FeedBurner's Statistics are now free!
StandardStats

* Uncommon Uses: This is a new concept they're introducing that really begins to leverage the critical mass of feed readers, bots, search engines, news filters, and other common feed sources that we observe. Uncommon Uses identifies and highlights places where your feed content is referenced or clicked that FeedBurner does not recognize as a common feed service. Uncommon uses includes contact with your feed by non-subscribers.
* Podcasts: They've added the ability to track the number of downloads of rich media enclosures within a feed, including audio and video, in addition to the number of subscriptions.

TotalStats is their Premium Service which offers more information, for a fee.

Publicize with Feedburner

Feedburner gives you so much more that just a feed burn. They combine the services of what 3 other sites would provide. It's all free. I'll examine some of the ways Feedburner can help you publicize your blog. Many of these items I have activated and are present on my site.

A few of the extras thanks to Feedburner

Awareness API

The Awareness API allows developers to build applications that can display, analyze and promote your feed's traffic data outside of FeedBurner. Awareness API access for your feed is disabled by default, but you can toggle its activation status here.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright. With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here. This service attaches the appropriate Creative Commons license in your feed's XML.

Headline Animator

Create and customize an animated banner that cycles through your feed's five most recent items. It's an easy way to promote your content anywhere you can place a snippet of HTML.

NoIndex

State your preference that your feed not be indexed by search engines by activating this service.

BuzzBoost

Have feed, will travel. BuzzBoost republishes your burned feed's content as go-anywhere HTML. Want to promote your blog on another site you manage? BuzzBoost gives you a snippet of JavaScript you can paste into your page templates.

SpringWidgets Skin

The SpringWidgets platform allows your feed content to go anywhere on the web you or others may put a snippet of HTML, such as blogs, MySpace pages, message boards, and more. Using a SpringWidget is a cool way to promote and share your work. This FeedBurner service, TheSpringWidget Skin, makes sure your logo or favorite image will appear in any SpringWidget using your feed as its content source.

Email Subscriptions

Give your biggest fans another way to keep up with your blog or podcast feed by placing an email subscription form on your site.

PingShot

Most web-based feed reading services will check for updates on their own time. Give 'em a push with PingShot. Choose the services you want to ping, and we'll notify them when you publish new content.

Feedburner Chicklet

I am going to take advantage of Feedburner's ability to create chicklets. Chicklets are those little pictures, which ironically kind of resemble 'Chicklets' gum. The make it easy for people to subscribe to your posts. So...let's do it.
Feedburner makes it easy to publicize your blog.

Chicklet Chooser

Promote your FeedBurner feed directly on your website! Place HTML that Chicklet Chooser automatically generates for you in your site templates to help users easily subscribe to your feed.