A few days ago Google announced Blogger for Word, an add-in that lets you post directly from Microsoft Word to your Blogger Account.

Blogger for Word installs as a simple toolbar that lets you open an existing post, and save or publish your current document. After typing out a post, Blogger for Word prompts for your account and password and then loads the post quickly and correctly. If you’re a Blogger user and you own a copy of Microsoft Word, you might want to look into this free download. Blogger for Word is compatible with versions of Windows XP/2000 and Microsoft Word 2000 and up.

Link via LifeHacker.

Blogger.com have decided to take a stand against splog, blogs that are simply promoting spam, considered illegal, objectionable or downright offensive. People browsing blogs over at blogger.com will have the option to report blogs with the blogger bar flag button.

This feature is called “Flag As Objectionable” and it’s accessible via the Blogger Navbar. The “Flag?” button allows the blogging community to easily note questionable content, which in turn helps us take action when needed. So we’re relying on you, the users, to be our eyes on the web, and to let us know of potential issues that are important to you.

Well done blogger.com, we salute you in your fight against splog!

Users of Wordpress version 1.5.1.3 should upgrade to version 1.5.2 as soon as possible. A security exploit exists on servers with register_globals=on set in their php configuration, the exploit may allow an attacker to execute code on the victims account.

If you are using a version below 1.5.1.3, then upgrade to this version before patching it with Wordpress version 1.5.2 which also fixes other bugs and adds a few enhancements.

One thing that most blogging software lacks the most is an in-built spellchecker. I for one admit to not being a great speller, especially when typing quicker than my brain can keep up with. So you can imagine my sheer delight when I discovered the SpellCheck feature that comes with Google Toolbar. Type any text into any form then click the SpellCheck icon to correct all those (if any) embarrassing spelling mistakes. Other cool features available in Google Toolbar are: Word translator, popup blocker, auto-fill (for forms) and much more.

Bloggers beware. Poor spelling and grammar in your blog entries puts people off from visiting regularly. So get yourself a copy of Google Toolbar or consider using wBlogger reviewed in an earlier post by Bes.

If you write content regularly for any site, you may already be aware of how important a writing tool is for you. Whether you use Notepad to write your articles or something else, you know that revising your content and analyzing it a few times before publishing it is better than writing it directly into a page and then publishing it without any revisions. If have a blog, sometimes you may need something more advanced than simply typing your content. Sometimes you may need an editor designed specifically for blogging. One of the most popular blog post editors out there is wBloggar, available in many different languages.

wBloggar comes with many useful features, such as font changing capabilities, preview option to preview your final content before publishing it, a spell checker, and more. It is compatible with dozens of CMS [Content Management Systems] systems out there, including WordPress. You can post new articles, save drafts, or edit already existing articles on your site. The tool offers the options to upload your post along with images, so that you don’t have to upload the images related to your articles separately.

The tool is also a WYSIWYG [What You See Is What You Get] editor, so working with or without the knowledge of html is almost the same, and you can achieve the same results in both cases for your articles. On top of that, the program allows you to ping weblogs.com anytime you post or update an article. The program is free to download and use, and currently runs on all Windows platforms.

A blogging tool for blogger.com members with a mobile device.

AvantBlog is a very simple tool that allows you to post to your blog from your Palm or WinCE device. This version of AvantBlog only works with Blogger.com, the author says that future versions will have support for other blogging systems. We’ll hold him to his word for you

If anyone else knows of any other Palm based blogging utilities please drop me an email with details.

Keeping track of your AdSense revenue hast just got easier with the public release open source php AdSense tracker from Adsenselogger.com.

In short, the purpose of AdsenseLogger is to track the owners clicks and impressions on Adsense Ads across multiple domains. The Adsense ad tracking registers amongst others : Adsense ad colours, referrers, details about ad clicked, ad size, ad type and much more data that will assist in optimizing Adsense earnings.

A Wordpress plugin for the AdSenes logger is available for download over at kloeschen.com.

Steve Smith of Ordered List felt the WP Administration area needed a little ‘freshening up’ and wanted the utility to feel more like an application, and less like a traditional website. So he went ahead and took some time off his busy schedule to design a new look, codenamed Tiger following the Macintosh-esque design in its OSX Tiger.

So folks just to showcase the difference here’s what out admin interface looked like pre-Tiger:

and here’s what it looks like now with the awesome Tiger extension:

Sweet yes? You can download Tiger from Steve’s beautiful webblog here.

The purpose of majority of the web sites is to keep the visitor happy. Once online, your visitors cannot see you face to face immediately, nor can they talk to you. The only way they can interact with you at the moment is to browse your site, and read what you have to say. Imagine being at a local store, where you see no workers, but machines everywhere. You scan your items, you pay, and you leave. No one offers you any discount, no one offers you any smile, and no one greets you or says goodbye to you. That would feel weird, wouldn’t it?

In the same way, the days are gone when internet users came to a site that offered no way to contact the author, and even more strange, no way to let the user offer any suggestion or advice related to the content posted on the site. Today, a successful site should work just like a retail store, or even a local coffee shop. You should do the following three things to make sure your visitor has a good experience at your site:

1. Enable your visitors to interact with you via email
2. Allow them to leave comments
3. Let them interact with other visitors and users on the site.

Read the rest of this entry »

So you want to start a blog but you haven’t got the technical know-how or patience to set-up something like Wordpress. Or maybe you’re simply looking for something simple, easy and ready to go, straight from the bag so to speak.

Then Blogger is the ‘just-add-water to go’* solution you’ve been looking for. Get your own blog up and running within 10-15minutes tops with Blogger. No downloading, no techie tweaky thingymajig to deal with, just fill out a quick online registration form, choose your theme, add a blog description, create yourself an optional profile and you’re ready to start blogging.

Blogger hosts your blog for you, so no need to worry about those pesky hosting costs either. Your blog will have all the features that a major blogging title should, like blogger comments (let visitors leave comments on your posts), upload photos directly to your blog (you can also email photos and blog entries using your special mail-to-blog email address), there is also a mobile to blog feature and group blogging options.

Did I forget to mention it’s FREE. That’s just blog-tastic mate!

* Metaphorically speaking that is. We strongly advise against literally adding water to your blog.