Starting today, Blogger is rolling out the Blogger Template Designer, a tool that will give users much greater control over how their blog looks and operates.

New professional designs, full color control, stock photo backgrounds and HTML/CSS implementation open up the door to the best looking Blogger blogs to date.

The feature can currently be accessed at Blogger’s beta test lab.

Blogger was revolutionary when it launched last century but has failed to win the hearts of many regular bloggers. Miraculously, however, Google claims the number of users has doubled over the past two years. If it weren’t for the strong reaction to Blogger’s recent abandonment of FTP support, I would not have believed them.

This could be the biggest enhancement to Blogger in over a decade, and while it’s an improvement, I would have liked to see the feature released with more than 15 templates.

What’s your take? Is Blogger worth another look?

Blogging saw a busy week to round out the first month of the new decade. Between the announcement of Apple’s “truly magical and revolutionary product,” the first State of the Union address by President Barack Obama, and Pope Benedict XVI’s plea for priests to embrace the Internet to communicate with followers, I think it might be time to ask the question…

Has blogging peaked?

Think about it for a second, a hobby that was once reserved for an 18-year-old tech geek toiling away in his parent’s basement has become a medium – actually, a media – all to itself.

As the number of blogs on the Web grows, and the number of posts they produce multiply, it would appear there is nowhere to go but up. However, doesn’t everything have a saturation point?

Newspapers are crumbling, terrestrial radio has taken a massive ratings tumble, and even television is no longer the entertainment king it once was.

To say that blogging has jumped the shark, is nutty. My gut tells me there’s still plenty of growth left. But when my inbox is filled with e-mails from the White House and His Papelness is making social networking pleas, I think it’s fair to debate the topic.

Citing a drain on their “engineering resources,” the Google-owned platform has made the decision in order to concentrate on new features and improvements in 2010.

According to Blogger Buzz, the official Blogger blog (say that fast three times!), FTP users will not be left flailing in the dark. A migration tool that allows users to shift to a Blogger-managed URL (can be a custom domain or Blogspot URL) will be made available on February 22.

While some users might not be happy about the change, Blogger has been soliciting opinions and advice from their base for quite some time via Twitter.

Are you a Blogger FTP user? If so, please voice your opinion in the comments section below.

The WordPress Foundation has established as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the goal of democratizing publishing through Open Source, GPL software.

Current projects being supported include WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, bbPress and BuddyPress.

Over the next few days donations will be accepted online.

Check out the official WordPress Foundation Website and read a bit more about their thinking:

Philosophy

In order to serve the public good, all of the software and projects we promote should support the following goals:

1. The software should be licensed under the GNU Public License.
2. The software should be freely available to anyone to use for any purpose, and without permission.
3. The software should be open to modifications.
4. Any modifications should be freely distributable at no cost and without permission from its creators.
5. The software should provide a framework for translation to make it globally accessible to speakers of all languages.
6. The software should provide a framework for extensions so modifications and enhancements can be made without modifying core code.

According to founder Matt Mullenweg, the Foundation hopes to gather broad community support. Are you in?

- Mobilize Your Readers. There are dozens of ways people can contribute money.

Musician Wyclef Jean, who’s from Haiti, says you can donate $5 by texting YELE to 501501 and by visiting www.yele.org

You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts. Read more from the Red Cross.

CBS News has a comprehensive list of charities that are offering Haiti aid.

- Keep the Story Alive. After rescue and recover efforts, and the initial Twitter flood, the Haiti story will lose steam. That’s the harsh reality, despite the fact that it will take years for the presidential republic to recover. Do what you can to remind readers that they can help after the initial blow.

- Steer Clear of Politics. We are talking about human lives here, and we should not split hairs over what country is doing what and what different political parties are up to. Let’s just aim to help!

We wish our brothers and sisters in Haiti the very best.

If you know of any additional ways to help, please include them in the comments below.

And like any strong institution, The Loeb Awards are evolving. This year marks the addition of a new category, Online Commentary and Blogging.

According to an e-mail from Loeb Awards Program Manager Jonathan Daillak, “The new Online Commentary and Blogging category was created to specifically recognize the excellence in analysis and commentary that originates online as it contributes to the mission of the Loeb Awards.”

If you know a business blogger who has wowed you, submit an entry here. Hurry! The deadline is February 1, 2010.

The panel of judges doesn’t have a single slouch on the panel; participants include execs from CNN, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and more. So be sure to only enter a blogger who has had “excellence in analysis and commentary that originates online.”

Entries will be based on news value, originality, reportorial quality, writing quality, analytical value and production value/visual impact.

BlogHerald on July 28, 2009

TechCrunch on December 31, 2009

There is some new Wibiya news we would like to bring you. First, if you have already installed the code on your blog, it’s time to update the snippet. There is a new platform that delivers more comprehensive metrics (though the system was not working at press time) and the entire Wibiya infrastructure has been updated. The new code should make the toolbar work more efficiently.

The site is now officially open to the public. However it should be noted that while in Beta, virtually everyone who signed up received an invite within a day or two.

You can read more about Wibiya in our original post. After using the toolbar on my blog for several months, I do have a few favorite features:

- Visitors can interact with Facebook and Twitter without leaving your site

- Translate your site to 11 different languages with a click of a button

- Notifier gives you a slick pop-up messenger if you have important information to share with readers

Two newer features allow you to rearrange the toolbar to your liking and to add additional navigation. The latter could be a UI problem, but we do see the benefit of redirecting folks to an area of your blog on a temporary basis.

There are millions of Website widgets in Cyberspace, Wibiya condenses some of the elite and displays them in one neat place.

There are currently 25 different “Apps” (is this word overexposed yet or what!?) to customize your Wibiya toolbar with.

Android lovers rejoice! It looks as if WordPress is finally launching an app for Google’s Android OS, after creating apps for both the iPhone and Blackberry (the latter which has video support! iJealous!).

WordPress has created a special blog at the subdomain Android.wordpress.org (note: they have done something similar with the iPhone and Blackberry), which may hint at a future app coming upon Google’s mobile platform.

While the company has yet to unveil what features the new Android app will contain feature wise, I assume its release is being timed with Google’s launch of Nexus One (which is rumored to be launching on January 5th).

Whether it will be worthy to compare against its iRival and Blackberry buddy, only time tell. However, its entrance upon the Android OS may help inspire Six Apart and *cough* Blogger *cough* to finally enter the world of green robots. :-)

On Saturday Automattic announced the release of WordPress 2.9, the newest version of their popular blogging platform, bringing with it a whole new slate of features, bug fixes and other improvements.

With the update also comes the usual mix of upgrade heartburn including broken plugins, fractured themes and the general time of uploading. However, those issues have already been largely mitigated by previous features, including the automatic upgrade feature, and new ones, including multiple plugin updates and plugin compatibility checks.

So as WordPress users hover their mouse over “Update” buttons, be they in WordPress or their host’s control panel, the question becomes what’s new and is it worthwhile for me?

The answer, from what I’ve seen, seems to be a resounding “Yes!”

What’s New

According to Automattic, the most important new features of WordPress 2.9 (from a user standpoint) include the following;

1. Global Undo/Trash Feature:Deleted posts, comments, etc. no longer simply disappear and instead go into a “trash can” for thirty days where they can be recovered if needed. This works very similar to the trash can or recycle bin on your computer.
2. Built-in Image Editor: Uploaded images can now be cropped, rotated, flipped or scaled using WordPress’ new image editor. The first of several planned media enhancements, this eliminated the need to do all of the editing on an image before uploading.
3. Batch Plugin Update and Compatibility Checking: Now, rather than updating one plugin at a time you can update up to ten at once. This is especially useful for users, such as myself, who have to enter FTP information for each upgrade. Also, plugins are now checked for compatibility using croudsourced information from WordPress’ official plugin directory.
4. Easier Video Embeds: WordPress now supports the Oembed format, which makes it easier to embed content from sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Scribd..

In addition to the “star” features, WordPress has also gained “rel=canonical” support for improved SEO, the ability to repair and optimize tables from within the admin interface (this feature requires an update to wp-config files, and “post thumbnails” for templates, which can be a powerful tool for those with magazine-style templates.

All in all, this is a very robust release and there hasn’t been any significant talk about plugin incompatibility as of yet (likely mitigated by the new compatibility checks that alert users of problems before they spread too wide). There have been some reports that those with PHP 4 may have some problems, but most have likely updated to PHP 5 (Note:WordPress requires at least PHP 4.3).

In short, if you’re hesitating to get this update, it seems to be all systems go at this time. I’ve updated my blog and highly encourage others to do so as well when time allows.

Another Holiday Surprise

The WordPress 2.9 release comes just two days after the release of version 1.6 of the WordPress Stats plugin. The new release is somewhat misleading as the new version doesn’t change anything with the stats themselves, but rather, adds support for Automattic’s URL shortener, Wp.me.

Now, when you’re editing a post, directly underneath the title where the “View Link” is there is a new button that lets you “Get Shortlink” and will shorten your long WordPress URL using Wp.me.

This way, you can get shortlinks for Twitter, Facebook, etc. directly from within your WordPress admin and even before you publish your post.

This can be very handy for people who forward post a lot of content and also future schedule tweets. This way, you can have your Tweets go out with your URL on time. However, if you use FeedBurner, you can achieve something very similar with their “Socialize” feature.

Bottom Line

All in all, it’s a great time to be a WordPress user, a solid new version has been released there’s a bonus surprise hidden in one of the most popular “official” plugins.

WordPress is on a constant path of improvement and though there is disagreement about what features should be next to tackle, it’s clear that the improvements are almost exclusively community-driven.

The question now becomes what will Automattic break out for WordPress 3.0 and how many security or bugfix releases will we see to 2.9 (there were six in 2.8)?

No matter what though, if you’re a WordPress user, it seems like now is a good time to grab a cup of coffee and run the update script.

First broken by Darren (via Problogger), it looks like lovers of Blogger will now be able to easily insert their Amazon affiliate links within their posts–just in time for the holidays!

(Blogger Buzz) With this feature, you can search Amazon directly from the Blogger editor and add pictures and links to Amazon products right into your posts. Your readers will earn you commissions whenever they buy the products you recommend, and if you don’t already have an Amazon Associates account, you can sign up for one for free without leaving Blogger.

If you’ve ever written a blog post about a book, recommended a gadget, or reviewed a toy you bought for your kids, you’ve likely gone through the process of drafting the post, opening up a separate window to go to find a site that sells the product, then going back to Blogger to paste the link to the product into the post editor.

What is surprising about this partnership is that Google is not earning anything by helping BlogSpot fans generate extra cash during this global recession.

It will be interesting to see whether or not Google partners with more affiliates online–not to mention integrate with their own affiliate program (formally known as Double Click) which Google purchased last year.