Google has updated their mobile apps for the iPhone again. The first time wasn’t that bad of an update, and this time is even better. The new UI has a much cleaner and crisp appearance. Additionally you can customize what tabs are displayed (up to three). By default you have GMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and of course the main Google page. A more button will give you access to Google Docs, Picasa Web, Blogger, Google Notebook, GOOG-411, and Google Search SMS.

Also, I don’t know if i it’s just the Google stuff or if it is related the the 1.1.3 update, but the new sites are going much, much faster for me.

As many of you know, I got tired of the lack of features in Blogger.com a while back, so I switched my personal site from Blogger to e107 CMS. For me, a CMS was just the better option as it offered more flexibility and more options. That isn’t to say it is a bad service or unpopular. Actually it is a nice service, and highly popular. It just isn’t for everyone.

Anyway, Blogger.com has added a new feature that allows blogs to show “backlinks” or who linked to a particular entry.

It’s not a bad feature, but harldy anything new. Other services have had trackbacks and similar items for a long time. I hope they have a method in place to prevent “backlink spam” or I could see this feature being abused pretty badly.

Google’s free blogging site, Blogger.com has started up a new service. Blogger Mobile, which allows bloggers to post via email or MMS. Pretty cool.

Well, right now I’ve moved my site completely over to Google’s Blogger.com service. Rather than mess with the headache of keeping my Blogger blog integrated into my site, it’ll rest here.

I plan on redoing my site with a CMS (most likely e107) over the next week or so. Maybe as soon as tomorrow… we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve decided that I’ll leave my site here intact, and will continue to update it. This should be that hard to post to the main site, and have it filter back to Blogger. This will allow people to comment one whatever I may post by either registering at my site, or by registering with Blogger.com. Two for the price of one, or something like that.

Stay tuned, I’ll have more updates on this in the next few days. Now, I’m going to go see if I can get back into the Bleeding Hollow server on World of Warcraft.

First off, I’d like to thank the owner of OverclockersClub.com, LinuXProX, for hosting my personal site for the longest time. He provided me with space, email, a database, and more all at no cost! It doesn’t get any better than that.

Despite all of that, I felt as if I was somewhat taking advantage of LinuXProX. My personal site was slowly starting to take up more space, more bandwidth, and more resources on the server. That server happened to be the exact same one as the main OverclockersClub.com server.

I’m sure some of you remember the days that I overloaded the server. That happened more than once as I experimented with some PHP and MySQL stuff. While it hasn’t happened that often, it did directly impact LinuXProX as well as all OCC members.

All of that, combined with some new issues with Blogger.com (which I am still considering leaving) forced me to consider other options. After considering cost, features, and a number of other things I’ve selected a new host and actually already moved things over. That’s right, if you are reading this message, you’re seeing the new site. It should be faster, and allow me to do a hell of a lot more. What exactly does that mean? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see. :p

Anyway, it’s back to work now. Just wanted to let everyone know what was up.

Oh, and one other thing. My wife has finally updated her blog. :p

When I first posted my letter to Google about Blogger.com, it was in the Google News news group. According to the description of that group it is to discuss all things Google! Orkut, Google Groups, Blogger.com, Atom, Gmail. Looked like the perfect place to post, right? Wrong. Though, I’ll take blame for that. I should have looked at where I was posting to begin with.

Determined to get some feedback from the rest of the Google community, I’ve reposted the message, this time to the google.public.support.general group. It may not have been seen by anyone getting a paycheck from Google, but at least I’ve gotten a response to this one.

If anyone else has any feedback on the subject, please reply to it. I’m not just looking for people who agree. I’d love to see feedback from both sides.

Not heard a single word from the mysterious nascarblue about my reply to him as seen here. Guess he figured out that I wasn’t hacking him. lol

Speaking of not getting a reply, I haven’t heard back from Google in regards to my comments about Blogger. Though they did reply to another message that I sent them to inform them that their copyright information on most of Blogger.com still said 2004. Oh well.

Below is a copy of an email sent to Google/Blogger.com. Let’s see if it does anything. I’ve also posted on Google Groups.

##########################

I was wondering what future plans you have for Blogger.com. It seams that nothing has really been done to it in sometime. There are a lot of features that I see people want, however they are always referred to third parties (e.g. Chatterbox, Quizzilla, Haloscan, or BraveNet).

While all of these third parties offer nice services, it is impossible to really integrate it into a person’s site/blog. For example, I cannot use Chatterbox, and limit it to only register blogger members.

I see sites like TypePad, Xanga, Live Journal, and MSN Spaces offering members all sorts of features that Blogger.com doesn’t. Some are simple, while some are not. Heck, I wouldn’t mind paying a small fee for some of the better features that the other services offer.

Now, I know that in reference to the Blogger*Plus, your site states:

“… we’re working as hard as we can to build fun, new stuff into Blogger!”

What is coming? When is it coming? That statement was there before I joined Blogger. It’d be nice to know what to expect to see in the future. I know, I know, Google doesn’t like to comment on future plans.

Personally, I’d love to see Blogger.com start to offer a full flavored CMS system (e.g 107, PHP-Nuke, Post Nuke, etc) to their customers. Make it so that when logged into Blogger.com people can reply to my topics, vote/comment in polls, or add me to their blogroll, or maybe even be greeted by a personal welcome message on my site. Even if this kind of setup were only for paying customers, it, IMO, would be an awesome thing. I know you’d make at least one sale.

Adding the ability for members to join a blog ring or two would be another nice feature. In addition, it would help with Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I guess that’s enough for now. I could continue on all day, but rather I’ll sum it up by saying I’d just like to see Blogger offer more to it’s members.

Thanks,
Bryan

A year or so ago, I decided to give Google’s Blogger.com service a try. I didn’t want to use the standard blog formats that they had, since I’ve got a lot of personal content; OCC Work, Family Photos, Linux Notes, and so on. Blogger.com’s simple layout just wasn’t going to work for me as a full, personal website. - Not that it was ever intended to.

After a month or two of hacking, testing, cussing, and playing around with stuff I managed to finally get the Blogger.com code to integrate into my website pretty well. Though, some stuff would remain near impossible.

While the Blogger.com service has worked well, there is no doubt that I’m trying to make it do things that it just cannot do. Because of that, and a few other reasons (like the ban on Blogger.com access here at work, which for some reason isn’t working ATM) I’ve almost decided that I’m going to let Blogger.com die, at least for my site. Since I’ve managed to get my wife into Blogger.com as well as many other people, I’ll defiantly still be around.

Right now, I’m still looking at the pros and cons to keeping my site on Blogger.com or moving elsewhere. I’m sure it’s safe to say that if I do leave Blogger.com, that it won’t be for another blogging service. From what I’ve seen out of all the other free services, they don’t offer much more.

More than likely what I’ll do is switch over to some form of CMS, like e107, PHP-Nuke, Post Nuke, or something like that. I’ve used e107 in the past, and may go with that… again, this is all should I leave.

Anyone out there have some thoughts on the matter? I’d sure like to hear some feedback. Anyone know what Google has planned for Blogger.com? Features? Improvements? Toys?

Well, it looks as if my time as the primary news poster for OverclockersClub.com may have come to an end. Recently, they have implemented a new web content filter at work that blocks out a lot of things, including the OCC Email system that I used to view submitted news items. Since I cannot post the daily news during the early AM anymore, I’ve told Matt that he might want to try and find someone else to help update this.

I’ll stick around and post news for other items, such as Opera and IM2 release information, gaming news and other items I come across during the day. Though Matt hasn’t said much about it, I’m sure he’d be happy to have someone around to help post news. If you’d be interested in posting news @ OCC, I’d suggest contacting Matt and letting him know.

Don’t worry.. the forums for some reason aren’t blocked by the new filter, so I’ll still be there day and night to kick people around. :p Yes, this means you.

On a related note, they’ve also blocked access to Blogger.com, which means I wont be able to blog until after work. Hmm… probably should be working during that time anyway, eh? :p