Contribute Gadgets to Blogger

Calling all Developers! We've just launched several extensions to the Gadget API that will enable developers to build more relevant and engaging gadgets for Blogger.

As you may already know, every Blogger blog is a gadget container. What's more, every blog is an OpenSocial gadget container powered by Friend Connect. That means as a gadget developer you can leverage social APIs to build engaging tools for bloggers and their audience.

In addition to leveraging social data, gadgets can now access a blog's post and comment feed via new JSON APIs. For example, with this data you could easily build a map gadget that maps the geo-location of posts, or a "Most Commented On" gadget that ranks posts by the number of comments they've received.

Need to be inspired? Recently we asked our users what gadgets they most wanted to see in Blogger. Hundreds responded and here's their wish list.

When you build a gadget for Blogger, it becomes available to millions of active bloggers. Just submit your gadget to us, and within thirty minutes it will surface in the Blogger gadget directory where users can easily browse, configure, and add your gadget to their blog's sidebar.
So now that you know Blogger is a great distribution platform for your gadget, what are you waiting for? Get started building Gadgets for Blogger now.

Important Note: The APIs and documentation are new, so there may be bugs. Let us know by posting to the Blogger Developer Group if you run into problems developing your gadget.

Better Mobile Posting

Blogger already has several ways to post via a mobile device, but who knew? With our last release to Blogger In Draft, we've made it a lot easier to set up mobile posting to your blog via SMS, MMS, and email.

If you already have a blog on Blogger, you can configure mobile posting by going to your Blogger Dashboard on draft.blogger.com.

Enable SMS or MMS for your mobile device by clicking on the gray phone icon next to your blog name.


We'll show you a claim code that you can send to Blogger via SMS or MMS to register your device and link it to your blog.

Once you've registered your device, you're done! Messages you send to BLOGGR (256447) will be posted to your blog. Note: SMS posting on Blogger currently does not work with T-mobile devices.

To enable Email posting to your blog, return to your Blogger dashboard and click on the gray envelope icon. You'll see a dialog that prompts you to define a secret email address.

Emails you send to this email address will be posted to your blog. Include a photo in your post by sending it as an attachment. Blogger will insert the photo between the title and the body of your post.

To edit your Mobile settings, you can click on the phone or envelope icons on your Blogger Dashboard, or go to the Settings > Email & Mobile tab.

If you are away from your computer, but want to create a blog on-the-go you can also create a blog directly from your mobile device. Follow these instructions to create a blog from your phone and claim it later.

Let us know how the service goes by leaving a comment. If you experience problems please tell us what type of device you're using, your cellular carrier, whether you used SMS, MMS, or Email posting, and your blog URL. Also please note that SMS posting is not yet available for T-mobile devices. Thanks!

Autosave and Automatic Date and Time

We’ve recently added two new features to the post editor on Blogger in draft: autosave and automatic date and time.

Autosave is a feature we’ve had for a while on the old post editor, and it does what you’d expect: automatically save your draft posts when you pause in your typing. We’ve brought the same convenience and safety to the new post editor.

With automatic date and time, your posts will now be timestamped with the date and time that they’re published, not the date and time when you first opened the post editor (as has been the case). You can of course still explicitly set the date and time by opening Post Options and switching to Scheduled at instead. Once a post is published, it will keep its date by default, even if you go back even if you go back to edit the post and re-publish.

New feature: Geotagging

We’ve just added geotagging to the new post editor on Blogger in draft. With geotagging, you can add a location to your each of your blog posts. Just as time stamps help readers find posts from a certain date or time, geotags give your readers a way to browse posts near a specific location.

Adding a geotag to your post is easy. Log into draft.blogger.com, open the post editor, and click the add location link below the main text field.

Use the location editor to search, drag, click and zoom on a map to choose and save a location. We’ll try to label the location you choose using our reverse geocoder, which looks up a name for a point on the map. You can also edit the location name by clicking the blue location name text below the search field.

When you publish your post, the geotag is displayed below your blog post as a link, which will open up Google Maps.

We also include each post’s location in your blog’s RSS and Atom feeds using GeoRSS, a standard for geotagging. This means that feed readers, map applications and search engines can associate your posts with their locations.

We’re still working on other ways to show geotag information on your blog. Brian, the Google engineer who created this feature in his 20% time, has written a gadget that will display your posts on a map. To add it to your blog, click “Add Your Own” on the “Add a Gadget” page and paste in this URL: http://blogmap-gadget.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/blogmap.xml

Geotagging has a few known issues. We'll be addressing them shortly, but here are some suggested workarounds for the near-term:

• The location editor is hidden behind the text field in the Edit HTML tab. Please switch to the Compose tab to view and edit locations.
• A geotag cannot be removed from a post once it has been saved. If you need to remove a geotag, please copy your post content into a new post and delete the geotagged post.
  
• Update 2:33pm: If you have a customized template and you don't see the "Location:" byline, you may need to reset your blog's widget template. Do this by going to the Layout > Edit HTML tab in your dashboard, and then clicking Revert widget templates to default below the main text field.
• Update 2:33 pm: Some users are having issues with the blog post map gadget. Brian is investigating.

What types of posts are you adding a location to? What other functionality would you like to see in this feature? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

Help us test Import and Export

This summer, we launched Import / Export on Blogger in Draft. The feature lets you export all of your posts and comments into a single, Atom-formatted XML file for easy backup. You can then import the posts back into Blogger, either into an existing blog or into a new one.

Over the last few months we've gotten a lot of feedback and made a number of improvements (we now support very large blogs!). We think it's just about ready for prime time.

Please help us out once more by trying Import / Export on Blogger In Draft.

• How to use Import / Export (note: You'll need to export your blog before you import it)
• Report issues with the feature
  

A couple caveats

• Currently we only support importing Blogger blogs. We don't yet support importing from WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal or any other blogging platforms.
  
• Before importing a blog for the first time, we recommend that you create a new, throwaway blog to import into so you get a sense for how the process works. Once you’re comfortable, import into your public blog.

New Feature: Contact Picker

We’re making it easy to use your existing Gmail contacts in Blogger. We’ve added a “Choose from contacts” link below some of your blog’s settings fields, such as Comment > Comment Notification Email and Email > BlogSend Address. Click the link to bring up a window with your Gmail contacts list.

Currently we don’t have the picker built in to the Permissions settings, but we’re working on it.

Finding your contacts ok? Any problems? Let us know in the comments.

Feature Updates and Bug Fixes for September 23rd

We’ve just released a few fixes to some of the features currently here on Blogger in draft.

Reactions gets some visual improvements, including fixes for display in IE 6 and overall spacing fixes. We’ve also tweaked the HTML and images to make it load a bit more quickly.

We’ve fixed an Import / Export bug that was truncating the export of comments. Also, importing scheduled posts will keep them scheduled instead of publishing them immediately.

We’re bringing the Embedded Comment Form closer to feature parity with the full page comment form by adding e-mail subscription for follow up comments. If you’re logged in, you can now also subscribe to comments without posting one of your own. We’ve also added improved color matching in the form for all browsers.