WordPress Plugin - First Time Visitors

Yes, I know I use Blogger and not WordPress. No, I don't know when (or if) I'll make the switch but I must give it to the WordPressers...they sure come up with some good ideas. If you're on WordPress you may like the "What Would Seth Godin Do?" plugin to give new visitors a unique experience the first few times they come to your blog. Any Bloggies got something like this for me?

New look for the new year

I've been waiting to transfer MicroExplosion over to the new Blogger template system for a while now and finally started playing around with it the other day. Aside from losing my stat tools in the switch, everything transferred nicely. The new customization system Blogger built is pretty handy. I used to have to get into the HTML code to make customizations but now they've created some very easy tools to keep me from doing that.

I've come to like Blogger and even though I've considered switching in the past I think I'm going to stay with it for a while. My biggest beef with Blogger is that it doesn't take full advantage of being owned by Google. There are so many great Google tools available, it's a shame they're not more fully implemented into Blogger. If I could change three things about Blogger's it would be:

• The ability to remove the Blogger toolbar at the top of the blog. I know many people who specifically don't use Blogger for this reason. More than anything their concern is that when someone comes to their blog and hits the "next blog" link you never know where they're going to end up. I think most people are smart enough to understand that a blogger has no control over where that link will take you, but it's enough of a concern to some people I know that they chose Wordpress or Typepad instead.
• Custom header. Blogger's taken customization to a new level for them with their new template features but the one thing they're missing is the ability to let a user create a custom header image. Right now the only header customization you get is in the form of the text changes. I know Wordpress, for instance, has an easy header image customization tool. I hope Blogger's working on making this change. Heck, they could even tie it into Blogger's Picasa software to pull the image. Picasa's already got a Blogger tie-in anyway, so why not?
  
• Stats. Blogger still doesn't have its own stat tracking built in. I hope it won't be long before they build Google Analytics into the system. It would really strengthen Blogger as a whole.
  

By and large the blogging community seems to view Blogger as an entry level blog tool which is kind of ironic if you think about it because Google's such a respected entity by the blog community as a whole, yet their blog tool seems to be looked upon as inferior to "serious blog tools." If Blogger could begin to roll in more Google applications it could really become a contender among the other free tools available today.

3 Things That Make Video a Blog

Today I had the chance to talk with some church staff guys about web 2.0 strategy...specifically online video and blogging (and the resulting combination of the two...video blogging). This church already spends significant effort on video work and weekly communications to their church members and community. Many churches these days are spending more time with video production but might not be thinking through making the most use of their efforts. The guys I spoke to today now realize that with a little more planning and about ten more minutes of video shooting each week they've got all the pieces for a video blog for extended outreach. I informed them about three things they'll need to make sure are included to make it a full fledged blog:

• RSS feed to let people subscribe to the video blog
• Permanent link so it can be referred to by itself and referenced directly in the future
• Comments to get feedback from viewers

I recommended they set up a free blog on Blogger or Wordpress (both of which automatically give you the above components) and load their video to Vimeo as it's done. The code provided Vimeo can be quickly loaded into either blog tool and they have an instant video blog!

Vimeo Makes Video Integration on Blogs a Snap

A friend asked me today to recommend a video hosting website to him to use for a family blog he keeps. The first one I suggested was Vimeo.com because I've heard some good things about it. He reported that it was easy to load the video onto Vimeo but wasn't sure how to get the video onto his Blogger blog. Vimeo provided him with a video embed link and he sent it to me to get onto his blog. At first I wasn't sure how difficult this was going to be because I had a terrible time getting a You Tube video to work for me a few months ago. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the link Vimeo provided just had to be plugged into Blogger's new post field and it published to the blog without a hitch or glitch. I spent at least 30 minutes the day I tried to get You Tube video on this blog so the 30 seconds it took to get the Vimeo video on my friend's site today was a breeze. I know where I'll go when I have a choice for video from now on. Also, if I ever start a video blog, Vimeo will be my first option to host the video...it was just that easy!