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

The creator of BlogPress has just rolled out an update to their universal iPhone/iPad blogging app which now includes support for Squarespace and Tumblr.

However the greatest feature thus far is BlogPress’s inclusion of HTML support, which makes BlogPress the perfect tool for bloggers seeking to create content from their iDevices without firing up the laptop.

For those wondering whether they should consider purchasing BlogPress for $2.99 (especially in the age of free official apps) here is an in depth overview highlight key features (both old and new). read more

The boys and girls at Google have finally provided Blogspot fans with an alternative to fighting comment spam without having to resort to the dreaded CAPTCHA’s (which stopped working many months ago).

Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we’ve integrated Google’s spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. [...]

Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the “false-positives”). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog. (Official Blogger Buzz)

This is a welcome development as CAPTCHA’s have proved to be more of a nuisance for readers of Bloggger blogs, and did little to thwart the rising tide of human spam.

Adopting this anti-spam feature also means that Blogspot fans will no longer have to outsource their comment sections to Intense Debate or Disqus, and instead keep all of their comments “in house.”

Other platforms like OnSugar have also adopted similar measures, and hopefully Google’s entrance can encourage other blog platforms to abandon the silly word puzzles completely (not to mention those silly quizes as well).

Despite the fact that Disqus has one of the best commenting layouts in the blogosphere, installing the commenting platform upon Blogger (aka BlogSpot) was extremely cumbersome (at least when compared to rivals like Intense Debate).

Today Disqus has announced that they are adopting a new method to install their commenting system upon Blogger, which should please users who have no desire to dig through the code.

We’ve made it much easier to integrate Disqus with your Blogger layout. Using the Gadget functionality we’ve been able to improve the time of integration, and now require no patching of your template. Simply authorize Disqus, add a Gadget with your sites Disqus code, and you’re good to go. (Official Disqus Blog)

This should help increase Disqus’s popularity with BlogSpot fans, especially those who loathe all things CAPTCHA (which not only doesn’t work, but marginalizes the visually impaired).

Currently Disqus is available for all major blogging platforms (except for not surprisingly WordPress.com), as well as upon the  iPhone (via an unofficial app), the latter which may help users moderate their comments while they are on the go.

Despite being late to the analytics game, Blogger has recently unveiled live stats for BlogSpot fans in order to help their users attain a greater grasp of where their traffic is coming from.

Although some of you use Google Analytics or other third party tools to track your blog traffic, many of you have requested an easier-to-use, fully-integrated stats feature for Blogger. We heard that, and we are excited to announce that Blogger in Draft now has built-in stats. Just go to Blogger in Draft, and you’ll notice a new “Stats” tab. You don’t have to install or configure anything to start benefitting [sic] from Stats.

The coolest thing about the new Blogger Stats is that it monitors and analyzes your visitor traffic in near-real-time. You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now. (Blogger In Draft)

This latest feature should help put the world’s most popular blogging service on par with WordPress, who also boasts an internal stats service known as WordPress Stats.

Although both WordPress Stats and Blogger Stats have many similarities, there are a few key differences that separate the two services from each other (which might surprise users of both services). read more

A long, long time ago in a place not so far away the Google overlords decided that it wasn’t enough that the BlogSpot faithful could upload text and images to their blogs. Something needed to be done to make their Blogger baby distinct from the masses.

So after much thought they unleashed their geek powers and created AudioBlogger, which allowed BlogSpot disciples to post audio clips from their phones upon their blogs for the low price of free.

Unfortunately the service became “too popular” and thus the Google overlords struck down AudioBlogger to the horror of podcasters everywhere.

Now it seems as if WordPress is helping making audio blogging popular again by introducing the service to their users for free. read more

After taking cues from YouTube, it looks like the boys and girls at Google have decided to update the Blogger video player in order to make it user friendly.

We also introduced a new video player that’s based on the YouTube player. The new Blogger video player allows full-screen viewing — now visitors can watch videos that you published on your blog in full-screen mode. The new player also features a better user interface, such as animated seekbar (the red bar along the bottom of the video) and bigger buttons. You can also right-click on the player to see more information about the video, such as playback performance (“Show Video Info”) or network speed (“Take Speed Test”). Note that despite the new video player, the videos you upload to Blogger are still only visible on your blog, not on YouTube. (Blogger Buzz)

While the video service is still not HTML5 complient, the UI is much more professional than when they first introduced video uploading for Blogspot users in 2007. read more