Google Inc. on Monday removed content from various blogger specific domains in India after the countries leaders warned a “China type response” if the company didn’t better censor content deemed “religiously inappropriate.”

The request comes one week after Google announced plans to censor blogger platform content in certain countries through specific URL domain protocols. For example a post may be banned in India but still show up in a country where freedom of speech is available.

Speaking about the request Google representative Paroma Roy Chowdhury  noted:

“(Our) review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of (Google) search, Youtube and Blogger.” read more

Less then a week after Twitter announced the censorship of Tweets in certain parts of the world search giant Google has announced a similar program targeted at the company’s blogger platform.

To reach the company’s new censorship goal GOogle will begin redirecting Blogger users to country-specific URLs for example instead of a Google.com blog in France the content would direct the users to Google.fr.

By adding country specific URLs Google can censor a blog post in one country but leave it untouched for example in the United States. read more

Currently, there at least some 22 countries that block some websites, even more that block VOIP services. China alone represents a block that can restrict access to your site to over 1 billion people.

Though there are ways around most of these Internet blocks, few within the countries impacted have the means and ability to do so, making those blocks, for the most part, at least somewhat effective at limiting communication.

The sad truth is that, though some strides have been made in promoting freedom of access online, many countries are tightening their grip. Recent news from Iran indicates the country tightening its grip and increasing its filtering. Turkey has also seen a similar tightening of Internet restrictions.

But blocking goes well beyond countries. Though less nefarious in nature, many companies and households also use blocking technology to restrict who can access certain sites. Whether the goal is to increase employee productivity or prevent minors from access adult content, the results are often the same.

So is your site being blocked? Are people who might want to visit your site barred from accessing it and, if so, what can be done about it? Here’s a quick look at the current web filtering landscape and what it means for your site. read more

Google on Wednesday revealed massive changes to their Blogger system, including a new design and a much improved editing system. The announcement marks the first time in years that the company has released a major update to their blogging system.

Users willing to try out the new system should receive a pop-up announcement starting today when they log into their blogger accounts.

According to the company the new system is meant to look more like Google’s current aesthetic, while providing a simplified post editor that offers more features to keep users posting on the rather archaic blog platform.

The company has also announced a new “Overview” section which allows users to view recent traffic and blog comments for their Blogger based accounts.

According to Blogger Product Manager Chang Kim: read more

It looks like BlogSpot fans will have something extra to boast about (aside from Blogger’s perfect uptime record) as the search engine giant has just blessed Blogger users with 77 total fonts for their blogs.

A couple of months back we introduced Web Fonts to Blogger in Draft. Today we’re excited to not only launch Web Fonts to ALL Blogger users, but also announce we’ve added an additional 35 fonts to the mix, for a grand total of 77 fonts! [...]

Web Fonts, brought to you by our good friends at Google Fonts, let you spice up and further personalize your blog. Just have a look at what we’ve done with the post titles and text of this blog! And for those of you interested in fonts for non-latin alphabets such as Cyrillic, Greek and Khmer, we have those too! (Blogger Buzz)

At first glance the additional fonts seems trivial, although after messing around with the settings within my Blogger account the additional fonts does help spice up the appearance of ones BlogSpot blog.

The additional change should also help maintain the platform’s dominance as the king of publishing platforms especially in light of the ever popular Tumblr.

For those of you not upon Blogger, Google Fonts is fortunately available as a plugin, module or extension for WordPress, Drupal or Joomla fans, respectively (note: if anyone can locate a plugin for Movable Type fans, feel free to let us know below).

Regardless of whether you love Google’s publishing platform or prefer another service, the results apparently speak for themselves.

After testing 5 major blogging services, Blogger not only defeated rivals like WP.com, Typepad and the ever popular Tumblr, but also was the only service to boast a perfect uptime.

The winner was without a doubt Google’s Blogger. The Blogger blogs didn’t have any downtime whatsoever during the two months we monitored them, followed by WordPress.com which had very little downtime. Typepad deserves an honorable mention here as well. Posterous had somewhat mixed results, but overall receives a passing grade. Tumblr was the only service in the test that truly failed. (Royal Pingdom)

WordPress.com came in second, followed by Typepad, Posterous and Tumblr (the latter who received a failing grade due to their recent downtime).

According to Pingdom tests, Posterous apparently is having trouble with fans using custom domains, as the those blogs not only loaded much slower than sites underneath the corporate sub-domain, but also timed out much more frequently.

The perfect uptime of Blogger is a testament to the engineers behind Blogspot, who have in the past fought against DDoS attacks as well trying to provide enough resources to scale the platform (as Blogger has yet to be dethroned by rivals like WordPress.com and Tumblr).

Google is already celebrating the news which could help the company convince Google App users to adopt Blogger as their preferred publishing platform instead of choosing to self host their blog (or even select one of their competitors).

In a move that will bring them up to par with their WP.com rival, Blogger (aka blog*spot) is beta testing mobile layouts which should help the platform appeal more to those sporting a smartphone.

[W]e are excited to announce our first launch of mobile templates! Initially available as opt-in functionality on Blogger in Draft, mobile templates will re-format your blogs for smartphones to enhance your readers’ viewing experience. In order to activate mobile templates, simply go to Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab, enable the mobile template option and then save settings. [...]

We are initially supporting 6 variants of the Simple template and 6 variants of the Awesome template. If you have used one of these 12 templates through our Template Designer, your mobile view will be rendered in the same style as your desktop view (other template variants will be rendered as Simple). (Blogger In Draft Blog) read more

When Microsoft announced that it was transitioning 30 million active users to WordPress, it looked like Automattic (the company behind WP.com) would finally be able to surpass Blogger after years of maintaining a distant second to Google’s favorite publishing platform.

Apparently it seems that Blogger’s embrace of Google Apps could help the platform maintain its enormous lead by tapping into an audience just as large.

Google Apps users have been asking for Blogger and now, with out recently launched infrastructure improvement, they can use Blogger for free with their Google Apps accounts. We’re excited to provide Apps users with this great tool to have their voices heard on the web.

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration web apps use by more than 30 million users in small businesses, large enterprises, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. (Blogger Buzz)

Note: Emphasis mine. read more

After beta testing Blogger Live Stats upon Blogger in Draft (Google’s eternal testing ground), the search engine giant has given the feature its seal of approval by launching it towards the public.

Last month we released two new stats gadgets to the Blogger in Draft testing ground; after hearing your feedback and making a few tweaks, we’re happy to announce that they are both now ready for the main stage. The new-and-improved Popular Posts and Blog’s Statsgadgets can be added to your blog right now from the Gadget Directory by clicking Add a gadget from the Design | Page Elements tab.

Both of these gadgets take advantage of the traffic data that is being collected by Blogger Stats and provide an easy way for you to pass that info on to the readers of your blog. (Blogger Buzz) read more

A 11 years ago on this day a man named Evan Williams set out on a quest to make blogging easier. After much thought, sweat and hard work he introduced the world to Blogger, which was later on assimilated by Google.

Fast forward to today and Blogger is the number one platform in the world (according to Quantcast) and despite the rise of Tumblr as well as WordPress, Google’s favorite child still holds the crown as king of the blogging platforms.

While Blogger is celebrating the occasion by encouraging blogspot fans to hold blogger fiesta’s around the world, here are 11 reasons why many users love Blogger, and why they continue to use Google’s blogging platform over its rivals. read more