Subscribe to Comments - by email!

Last night we pushed a small-but-crazy-useful new feature for all Blogger blogs: subscribing to comments via email. This makes it a lot easier to stay in the conversational loop after you’ve commented on a post somewhere. For example, you could follow along with these discussions from some recent Blogs of Note:

• Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: An Astute Mustache Observation
• The Joy of Sox: WS 1: Red Sox 13, Rockies 1
• Wildfires 2007: All homes saved on Santa Ysabel reservation
  

You'll notice the new checkbox at the bottom of the Comment page, in the identity box:
In order to receive follow-ups via email, you’ll need to post your comment using your Google Account. We only send comments to your verified Google Account so that someone else can’t use this feature to send you email you didn’t sign up for.

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Environmental Blog Roundup

In honor of Blog Action Day, we wanted to highlight some of the many Blogger-powered blogs that are focused on the environment, climate change, and sustainability. Want to see more Blog Action Day participants from around the web? Find them on Blog Search.

• Cleantech Blog - Commentary on technologies, news, and issues relating to next generation energy and the environment.
• The Conscious Earth - Earth-centered news for the health of air, water, habitat and the fight against global warming.
• Earth Meanders - Earth essays placing environmental sustainability within the context of other contemporary issues.
• Environmental Action Blog - Current environmental issues and green energy news.
• The Future is Green - Thoughts on the coming of a society that is in balance with nature.
• The Green Skeptic - Devoted to challenging assumptions about how we live on the earth and protect our environment.
• Haute*Nature - Ecologically based creative ideas, art & green products for your children, home and lifestyle, blending style with sustainability.
• The Lazy Environmentalist - Sustainable living made easy.
• Lights Out America - A grassroots community group organizing nationwide energy savings events.
• The Nature Writers of Texas - The best nature writing from the newspaper, magazine, blog and book authors of the Lone Star State.
• Rachel Carson Centennial Book Club - Considering the legacy of Rachel Carson's literary and scientific contributions with a different book each month.
• Sustainablog - News, information and personal meanderings related to environmental and economic sustainability, green and sustainable business, and environmental politics.
• These Come From Trees - An experiment in environmentalism, viral marketing, and user interface design with the goal of reducing consumer waste paper.

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Blogger Play, in Gadget Form

Have you been enjoying Blogger Play? We introduced it here last month and so far it’s been mesmerizing viewers across the Internet with the latest photos as they’re uploaded to Blogger blogs.

Today we’re letting you take Blogger Play with you to your iGoogle homepage with the Blogger Play Google Gadget:

Click the button to get Play on your homepage!

We also took the opportunity to add keyboard control to the big version of Blogger Play: spacebar plays and pauses, and the left and right arrow keys move backwards and forwards.

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PostSecret: A Lifetime of Secrets

Congratulations to Frank Warren, whose 4th PostSecret book, A Lifetime of Secrets, comes out today and is climbing up the Amazon bestseller charts (it’s #50 as of this writing)!

Take a look at its trailer:

PostSecret is by far one of the most interesting blogs, a showcase of tiny, beautifully-presented personal stories. It has become a favorite Sunday read for many of us on the team. Read it!

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Blogging for the Environment

October 15, a week from today, is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is the environment. If you have a blog and want to join in, all you have to do is use that day to post something related to the environment, in whatever way, shape, or form you prefer. You can pick an environmental issue that has meaning for you and let us know why it's important. Organize a beach or neighborhood cleanup and tell us about it. If you're into fiction writing, give us a story with an environmental theme. Have a podcast, videoblog, or photoblog? Join the fun! The idea here is to have a mass effect on public awareness by sharing as many ideas in as many ways as possible.

If you're game for participating, go register your blog with the 7,000+ other blogs (with 5 million readers!) that are already signed up. Also, see the Blog Action Day blog for more on how bloggers can change the world.

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DonorsChoose and your blog

From the Google Blog, a post you should all check out:

When it comes to philanthropy, everyone’s got something different to give – some people have money, others have time, and bloggers have devoted readers. The creative folks at DonorsChoose have a few ideas about how bloggers can help students and teachers.

In case you’re not familiar with DonorsChoose, it’s a site where teachers post needs they have for their classrooms, and donors fund those projects directly. If you’ve got a blog, a website, or even an email account, you can help by creating what’s called a challenge. Just pick some of your favorite projects and challenge your family, friends, and readers to fund them. If you’ve got a Blogger account, it’s easy to add your challenge to your blog in just a few clicks.

To support their recent expansion to schools all across the U.S., the DonorsChoose team is holding a little competition, keeping track of which bloggers and webmasters drive the most funding to schools.

We think this is a cool idea, so we want to help it succeed. We’re going to reward the winning bloggers with exactly what they gave to DonorsChoose, students, and teachers: traffic. The competition will remain open until the end of October - we'll then take a look to see who has helped raise the most money in each of the eight DonorsChoose challenge categories. We’ll post links to the winners’ blogs here, and we’ll also throw in a $500 gift certificate for each winner to spend on DonorsChoose.

So here’s our challenge to you: go create a challenge on DonorsChoose.

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