New Template Widgets: Newsreel and Video Bar

Thanks to our friends from the Ajax Search API team, we now have two more fun and useful widgets you can add to your new Blogger blog: Newsreel and Video Bar:


The Newsreel searches Google News for your chosen keywords and displays an ever-updating list of their search results. The Video Bar does the same for Google Video and YouTube searches, and even lets you play the videos without leaving your blog! Check out Pete's mobile blog for particularly erudite examples of the Newsreel and Video Bar in action.

To use the new widgets, click your blog's Layout link on your Dashboard, then click "Add a Page Element." You'll find the new widgets right at the top. As a bonus, the Newsreel will change from a list of summaries to a scrolling ticker depending on whether it's in the sidebar or the main column, so drag 'em around and see what you like.

Not using the Layouts feature of the new Blogger? We have a help article that explains how to switch your classic template to Layouts.

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Blogger and Picasa Web Albums

Ever wanted to see all the photos you've uploaded to your blog in one place? Head over to Picasa Web Albums and now you can! We've been working closely with the Picasa team on this project - all the photos you've uploaded since December will appear in an album there, and we're working on migrating your older photos as well. (It'll take a while though - there are a lot of them.)

Each of your blogs now has its own album in Picasa Web Albums, which is exciting because you now have a photo management interface for your blog's photos - for example you could order prints, use the fancy email this photo feature, or easily embed the album somewhere else on the web. Be careful when you delete photos though, because deletions will affect both your blog and its album. Lastly, Blogger photos are now part of Picasa Web Albums' 1GB of free quota, which can be upgraded.

Check out Picasa and Picasa Web Albums!

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Blogger SXSW Party, Sunday in Austin, TX

The South by Southwest (SXSW) festival/conference/hipsterstravaganza starts this weekend! If you’re going, or just happen to be around Austin, TX for kicks or livelihood, make sure that you party with us on Sunday.

Drinks are on Blogger (also dancing)
Sunday, 11 March 2007, 6–9PM

Club De Ville
900 Red River St.
Austin, TX
upcoming
map

This is an invitation only event! The only way you can get in is to find someone from Blogger beforehand and get an invitation - we'll be wearing Blogger gear. There are a ton of us hanging around the conference and we’ll be passing out the invitations wherever we go.

Update: Looking for ways to get around Austin? Google Transit just launched service for Austin today. Check it totally out, and use public transportation to join SXSW in being carbon neutral.

“This is Blogger. And we party with scarves on.”

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An Emacs Client For Blogger

Post by T.V. Raman, Google Research Scientist

From The Everything Can Be Done In Emacs Dept...

Blogger exposes a clean API based on Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) and Google Data APIs (GData). This Emacs module leverages this functionality to enable one to blog from within the comfort of a full-featured editing environment.

Where to get it

The Emacs Blogger client is part of g-client, a suite of Emacs clients for accessing Google Services. The current distribution can be downloaded from Google Code and the source code is available via Subversion.

Installation

1. Unpack the tar archive and place the resulting g-client directory on your emacs load-path.
2. Type make to compile the code.
3. In your .emacs, add (load-library "g") to set it up.

Google Blogger gblogger

This client implements posting, editing and deleting of blog entries using the new Blogger API --- it replaces the now obsolete atom-blogger that implemented similar functionality using the old Blogger API. It uses value of customization option g-user-email by default; this can be overridden via option gblogger-user-email. See Blogger GData API for the underlying APIs used. For editing posts, I recommend installing nxml-mode.

• Browse command gblogger-blog brings up the list of blogs owned by the currently authenticated user.
• Posting command gblogger-new-entry takes a post URL and sets up a special buffer where you can compose your article. The post url is obtained from the feed of blogs above; use the post link for the blog to which you wish to post.
• Browsing command gblogger-atom-display displays the atom feed for a specified blog as a browsable HTML page. In addition to reading your blog, this helps you find the edit url for individual posts.
• Editing command gblogger-edit-entry takes the edit url of a previously posted entry. It retrieves the entry, and sets up a special composition buffer where you can edit the entry.
• Submitting - the special composition buffer created by commands gblogger-new-entry and gblogger-edit-entry provide a special command gblogger-publish (bound to C-c C-c) that submits the entry to blogger.
• Deleting Command gblogger-delete-entry deletes an entry specified by its edit url.

The emacspeak blog has further details.

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Blog Search Update

Attention blog searchers: if you use Google Blog Search from within Blogger, you'll notice some slight changes to its look and feel - it was just updated today to be more consistent with the Google styling, and it tested much better in the usability lab.

It also means new functionality for the Blogger look 'n feel, notably the date-restrict options in the sidebar. For example, "earthquake san francisco" restricted to March 1st will tell you about the earthquake that just happened, and "snow south lake tahoe" restricted to Feb18-28 reveals some pretty excited people (myself included ;).

Check it out!

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