New Blogger Widgets!

The new Blogger video and news widgets are cool! Read more about them in this post at BBD.

Blog News

I just posted these at Big Blog Directory:

Blogger Provides Custom Domains

2007 Weblog Awards

A Present From Blogger

You may have noticed some changes in this blog recently. I have upgraded to the new version of Blogger and things are going smoothly.

It took about 40 minutes to transfer my account but Blogger did all of the work. I did notice a few things:

• My old profile overwrote my new one but that was easy to fix.
• All of the group blogs I belong to but don't own were transfered - even the ones I don't want. I would like to see a 'resign from blog' button implemented at some point. Currently only administrators can remove members (guests) from blogs.
• There are new cookies being used and I accidentally blocked Firefox from accepting one. Once I got into Blogger I got signed in my browser ended up in an endless loop. I re-added the cookie and things returned to normal.

I am adding labels to my old posts as time permits. Labels are one of the nicest of the new features. They are like Flickr tags or Wordpress categories and allow searches using specific words or phrases. They can also be found by search engines. Technorati detects them as tags.

I have also upgraded 2 Lazy 4 Video. You can use labels to search for specific bands/musicians.

I will be doing some more work on the blog in the next few days.

Testing

I just upgraded my account to the new blogger and I am testing the new features.

I Was (NOT) A Teenage Spamblog

Yay!!, Firemind has been cleared. I think the problem arose because I posted several times in a row to BBD. There is another directory online with a similar name and it accepts anonymous automated listings. It may have been getting spammed a lot. In any case I don't have to use word verification EVERY time I save during editing.

Here is the email from Blogger:

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

Deleting Some Blogs And Reviving Others

I am cleaning out blogs tonight. I was admin in blogs owned by other people until I removed myself. I also deleted one of my test blogs.

Blogging is never simple for me. I wanted to keep a record of the blogs I had worked on so I wrote several posts at Roar. I will continue to document "my old blogs" and delete some of them before I transfer my account to the new version of Blogger. I don't see any point in transferring dead blogs that are not useful. Some of my old blogs may be saved.

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I am adding labels (blogger's version of tags) to my new posts. When I switch to beta-blogger I will copy them to the proper spot and delete the text versions.

Blogger Irritations

Today was busy but nothing irritated me. My only irritation right now is with Blogger. For some reason it decided Firemind is a spam blog and now forces me to use word verification EVERY time I post or save as draft. I sent an email to Blogger but have yet to hear from them.