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'Blogger' is a blog publishing system. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003.

Contents

History

Features

Redesign

Integration

Criticisms

References

See also

External links

History

★ On August 23 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format.

★ In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features that Pyra charged for to be free. About a year later, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google.

★ In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hello into Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs.

★ On May 9 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features including CSS-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email.

★ On 14 August 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed ''Invader'', alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers, as well including some new features.

★ In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta.

★ As of May 2007, Blogger has completely moved over to Google operated servers.

★ It currently hosts a huge number of blogs, ranging from the personal to those used purely for business.

Features

Blogs can either be hosted internally by Blogger on the ''blogspot.com'' Internet domain or on a user's own domain, or externally on the user's own server (through FTP or SFTP). Once a blog name has been reserved, the name assignment and any contents are retained for an indefinite time -- there is no need to login periodically or take any action to keep the blog active.

Redesign

As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account are located on Google servers. The service is now claimed to be more reliable, due to the quality of the servers.^[1]
Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.

Integration

★ The Google Toolbar has a feature called "BlogThis!" which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to their blogs.

★ "Blogger for Word" is a free add-in for Microsoft Word. This add-in allows users to save a Microsoft Word Document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger for Word is not currently compatible with the new version of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger.^[2]. However, Microsoft Office 2007 adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger.

★ Blogger supports Google's AdSense service as a simple way of generating revenue from running a blog.

★ Blogger offers multiple author support, making it possible to establish group blogs.

Criticisms

In order to upgrade to the new Blogger service (which has new features and more reliability), a user would have to create a Google Account.
There is also a petition to change the abandoned blog policy, which does not allow blogspot.com addresses to expire, preventing new users from taking abandoned addresses.^[3]
Even though Blogger is owned by Google, which is primarily a search engine, the contents of the blogs are mostly not indexed by the main search engine, but only by the more specialized "Blog Search" feature.

References

1. http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/12/new-version-of-blogger.html
2. http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42497&topic=8931
3. http://chrisjf.blogspot.com/2007/03/petition-bloggercom.html

See also

★ List of Google services and tools

★ Blog Templates

External links

★ Blogger website

★ Blogger list of third-party Apps (includes posting clients)

★ How to Backup or Export Blogger Entry

★ Meg Hourihan interview (in MP3 format), summarized here, from IT Conversations

★ Evan Williams interview (in MP3 format), summarized here, from Venture Voice

★ Summary of 2004 redesign, from the Blogger website