Tony Ruscoe's Beta Blog

It’s been a while since my last post because there’s not been anything worthwhile to report on. I wouldn’t really say that this was even worthwhile to report on either, but it’s something new that I found so I thought I’d share it with you... Cast your minds back to the 20th December 2005, when Google’s Time Warner’s AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance press release mentioned something called AOL Marketplace (the emphasis being mine): Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said: “ [...] Today’s agreement leverages technologies from both companies to connect Google users worldwide to a wealth of new content. We’ve also created a simple way for AOL Marketplace advertisers to buy and place search-related advertising across the AOL network. [...] ” ... The agreement’s broad range of new features for users and advertisers include: Creating an AOL Marketplace through white labeling of Google’s adver...

Last Tuesday , I said: Just when I was starting to actually believe that Google had abandoned all development on Blogger, I noticed something that could possibly mean that they haven’t forgotten about their free blogging service after all... On Friday, I suggested that Blogger was going to be migrating to Google Accounts . And today they’ve launched Blogger Beta ! As well as migrating Blogger to use Google Accounts, they’ve also (finally) added loads more features: Customize your template by dragging and dropping page elements; there are also new templates from which to choose). Create a private blog by editing your permissions to control who can view and contribute to your blog. Add category labels to your posts – at long last! More feed options are now available, including RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 (instead of just Atom 0.3) – and also feeds for your blog comments, even on a per-post basis! Updated Dashboard to check our blog’s activity and make ma...