As a big fan of Google Blogger, one of the free blog hosting services and publishing technology for bloggers, where is published this blog, I'm very glad at any new feature implemented by Blogger development team. In the last weeks there were published many new enhancements as it was initially mentioned in "Blogger is turning 10".
Thank you Google for all new improvements!


Last new Blogger features now available in Setting / Layout menu:

- Label Cloud - in the "Label" gadget enhancement is now possible to set the display format as a "cloud" instead of as a list, and only "Selected labels" can be displayed;

- Jump Breaks - finally, the "Read more" functionality has been implemented in the Settings menu and there is not required now to edit HTML of the template manually.

(We don't have to forget all new third-party gadgets which are available in "Layout" menu - "Add a Gadget".)


Google Usability Study!

Just now, Google Blogger team is looking for participants willing to document their blogging practices - see more in Bloggers wanted! So, if you use Blogger.com and would like to help Google to improve Blogger and share your opinions about this service then you can fill the short form linked in the original post.

(The study will take place between September 28 and October 20, 2009 in Mountain View, CA or remotely from your location.)

I think it is a great idea and I will try to participate as well when I'm selected by the Blogger team of course :-)

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Do you want to know what VCs are doing and thinking? What they’re actually looking for? You can see many of the startup world’s top funders on the World map below.

The list of Twitter accounts was published in "Are You Following the Funds?" on the Innovation 2.0 blog and there is used Yahoo! Pipe "Twitter Friends on a Map". Thanks for this great pipe!



Other excellent list of contacts: Global VC Blog Directory (Larry Cheng).

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Something for free download with many clever ideas about money, time management, personal development, "Getting Things Done" and Blogger settings.

Thriving on Less - Simplifying in a Tough Economy
(Leo Babauta):

"The recent economic recession has a lot of people worried, about their jobs, their businesses, their homes and their bills. When your income is dropping or in jeopardy and you still have a mountain of bills to pay, things can get pretty scary."

Who knows principles of GTD (Getting Things Done) then surely heard about ZTD (Zen To Done), you can found more on Zen Habits, which is one of the most popular Top 100 blogs on the Internet related to the personal development and work productivity with more then 100,000 subscribers. One free ebook is available for free download.

Next two links are for bloggers on Blogger.com, and in the interesting free eBooks below can be found anything related to the manual changes of Blogger.com templates:


The Cheats' Guide to Customizing Blogger templates
(Amanda Fazani):

"This eBook will offer you many options and examples to customize your existing Blogger template quickly and easily, whichever style of template you are using..."

This guide should be a mandatory manual for each blogger who has a need to correct or customize his / her blog, and would like to understand how works the template code on Blogger.com and how is it possible to manually correct the XHTML code and change the design of the blog in the template.


The Woork Handbook (Antonio Lupetti):

"The Woork Handbook is a free eBook about CSS, HTML, Ajax, Web Programming, Mootools, Scriptaculous and other topics about Web Design..."

There are many examples of the basic blog structure of blogs on Blogger.com in the first part of this guide, which is related to the CSS code, with detailed explanation of all main elements used in the blog templates. Really, worth reading!

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Some time ago I was asked which Technology News sites I read regularly. Finally, here is my short list of selected Web sites I've been following for couple of years.

My whole list of Technology Blogs & Resources has now +500 sites including +200 personal blogs from other areas of my interest (Business, Marketing, Ideas, Creativity & Innovation, Personal Development, Productivity, Time Management, Entrepreneur Life).

My suggested Technology News Sites (in alphabetical order):

BBC Technology News - World and UK News, Business & Science, Feature Stories

Business Week - Technology News about Computers, Software, Electronics,...

DailyTech - Technology and Science News

DigiTimes - Daily News about Asia's IT industry

Discover Magazine - Science and Technology News, Science Articles

Channel Insider - Value-Added Reseller and Technology Channel Partners News

Information Week - Business Technology News, Reviews and Blogs

Insight for IT leaders - Business Technology News & Analysis

International Herald Tribune - Technology & Media Daily Newspaper

Mashable! - Social Networking and Social Media News Blog

Mass High Tech Business News - Massachusetts Technology & Business News

New York Times - Technology News

Read-Write Web - Technology News, Reviews and Analysis

Silicon Valley Watcher - Reporting on the Business of Technology and Media

Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters

Smashing Magazine - Blog dedicated to Web Developers and Designers

Techcrunch - Startup & Tech News, Reviews of new products and companies

TechnoBuzz - Indias Technology News, Software Reviews, Blog Tips

TechRepublic - One of the Top Resources for IT Professionals

ValleyWag - Silicon Valley's Tech Gossip Rag

VNUnet - Technology News, HW & SW Reviews, Free downloads

Wall Street Journal - Technology & High Tech News, Online Media

WebGuild Silicon Valley - Forum for IT Professionals, Webmasters, Internet Marketers

Wired News - Trends in Technology, Business, Communications, Science

ZDNet News - Tech & Business News, Resources, White Papers for IT Professionals

In the "Technology News" section on the right side of this blog you can see links to the last posts published on those sites.

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"Poster Boy is a New York City based street artist. By using a razor, Poster Boy slices up advertisements in the subway system to create completely original works of art. Due to the illegal nature of his work, Poster Boy remains anonymous."

Is this what we call "Art"? Really, I don't know because his "work" is still vandalism. Partially, I like it because this video makes you think... About what?

Spending Time With Poster Boy:



From the discussion on YouTube:

- "This clown is a vandal and he's being glorified. Whether you like subway advertising or not, this a-hole is defacing property that doesn't belong to him..."

- "But art is not vandalism just as much as vandalism is not art. Art is a creative statement that adds to the richness and cultivation of society. Vandalism is a destructive action that harms society..."

Note: The "Poster Boy" was arrested as I've seen in NYT, but then released on bail. You can find pictures of his work on Flickr.

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When I started this blog on Blogger.com (Blogspot), as described in the previous post - Free Blog Hosting Services, I have changed my default Web template from Google. If you have downloaded any Free Template for your blog then it's a good idea to test basic settings defined in the CSS section of your new template.


How to Test template design of various HTML tags?

The following quick HTML Test can be downloaded and you can create your own blog post on your blog to have displayed all main HTML tags. The HTML test file contains HTML code, so just copy all rows and insert to your new blog post as HTML (create New Post - don't use Compose mode but switch to Edit Html).

START of the test...

Some of selected HTML elements are tested in this post with current (default) CSS definition in the XHTML template on Blogger.com (it can be used on other platform or blogging systems as well):

<H1> header

<H2> header

<H3> header

<H4> header

<H5> header

<H6> header

---

<P>

Tested a short paragraph
aligned on the left side
of the blog page.

Tested a short paragraph
aligned on the right side
of the blog page.

---

<A>

Here's a test link to this blog My Technology Tips.

---

<BIG>

The text size is increasing :
+1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6

---

<BLINK>

Text with a blinking part can be used.

---

<BLOCKQUOTE>

Start with Normal text.

Here can be included Quote inside the blockquote element, to
show you what this element actually does and how is configured.

Rest of the Normal text.

---

<CODE>

A "Hello, world" program in Pascal would be:

program Hello;
begin
write('Hello, world');
end.


---

<PRE>

Filename Size Date Description
------------------------------
FILE_ID.DIZ 470 15-03-08 01:00 The latest in software design.
README 1604 17-03-08 15:43
PROGRAM.ZIP 247531 15-03-08 01:00
INSTALL.EXE 19440 15-03-08 01:00

---

<DIV>

align="left"

This is just test text to see how the alignment of text inside a
DIV tag looks like. The "width" is 200px; defined in the tag.

---

<FONT>


Lets change
the
size
of
the font.



Or
give
the
font
a
nice
color.

---

<HR>

---

---

---

---

<MARQUEE>

My Technology Tips

---

<NOBR>


Cu²⁺ + 2 IO₃^- +
12 H⁺ + 12 I^-
-> CuI_(s) + 6.5 I₂ +
6 H₂O

---

<OL>

1. The first item of the list.
   
2. The second item of the list.
   

---

<SUB>

The element lets you specify glucose as C₆H₁₂O₆.

---

<SUP>

The element lets you specify a trademark ^(TM) correctly.

---

<UL>

Nested unordered lists with assigned types :

• The first item of the list.
  
• The second item of the list.
  
  
  
  • The first item of the nested list.
    
  • The second item of the nested list.
    

---

Special CHARs:

&
¶
™
©
®
€
£
∞

---

...END of the test.

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"We had an idea. Go to a place. Ask fifty people the same question. Film their responses. Brought to you by Crush & Lovely Moving Pictures in partnership with Deltree."

I like this kind of inspiring projects because it "opens eyes" and it's very interesting to see responses from people around the world.

Maybe they will visit other cities or countries as well and there will be more questions in the future :-)

What about to help them in other countries because anyone can send a short video response (10-20 sec.) to the same question, and then authors of this project can create a compilation of some selected responses from other cities in the world?

Fifty People, One Question in New York:




Fifty People, One Question in London:

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Some friends have asked how I'm satisfied with the Free hosting of my blog on Blogger.com, where is hosted this blog and if there are available any other free sites for bloggers. Yes, there are hundreds of excellent services and here is the short list of portals I have tested some time ago.

Free Web Blog Publishing Sites:

Blogger.com - Create your Free Blog
"Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video onto your personal or team blog."

LiveJournal.com - Start a Free Blog
"LiveJournal.com is a free service for all your journaling and blogging needs, offering privacy controls, photo storage, publishing tools, style templates, and online communities for just about every interest imaginable."

TypePad.com - Blogging Software & Blog Services
"TypePad is the premier blogging service for professionals and small businesses. TypePad hosts many popular blogs and small business websites. The service is easy to use and enables you to create a blog in minutes."

WordPress.com - Get a Free WordPress Blog
"You’ll get your own WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection of great free and customizable designs for your blog, 3 gigabytes of file storage and all the other great features."

There are many other similar services for bloggers where a free blog can be created, e.g. Yahoo! 360, or Windows Live Spaces (MSN.com), and if you have your own Web hosting you can download and install some of the free publishing blog tools from B2Evolution.net, MovableType.org, or WordPress.org portals.

Why have I chosen Blogger.com for this blog? That's a question...


What is the best Blog technology for bloggers?

Really, I don't know because all sites mentioned above offer similar good services and it depends only on your specific needs why you need to create a blog, what are your priorities, if you need a personal blog or business blog for your company. Many professional blogs are based on WordPress publishing software, most of bloggers prefer their own hosting space with installation of any publishing software because it can be fully maintained and customized.

I don't seem to remember why I've started with Blogger.com but probably it was because many of my friends and favourite technology blogs I read every day are hosted on Blogger.com platform, some of them looks really good, with fully customized design and with a Custom Domain Name configured.

(By default your new blog on Blogger.com has a domain in format xyz.blogspot.com, but you can change it and forward the long name to your own specific domain. So, you need register and pay only the domain name but not any hosting fees.)


Free Web Templates for Blogger.com (Blogspot.com):

When I started this blog on Blogger.com portal I first registered my custom domain MyTechnologyTips.com and then have tried to find a new design template for this blog because the integrated list of templates seems to me very limited. Fortunately, there are many excellent Free Templates available for download and the integration with Blogger.com is very simple (menu Layout - Pick New Template).

See the examples below of some nice Free Web templates with links to external sites:

Blogger Buster - Free Blogger Templates




eBlog Templates - Free Blogger Templates




GeckoandFly - Template Free Blogspot Templates



Nice, isn't it? Is there a need to hire an external Web designer or are you able to customize the free Web templates yourself? Some tips how to improve the free templates on Blogger.com will follow...

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Maybe the following description will be helpful to all readers who need to download video from YouTube portal and convert it to other formats, e.g. from .FLV format to .AVI, .AMV or .WMV formats, which can be used in MP4 players or other devices.

(Note: Don't forget you can download only your own videos or free public videos available for public download.)


How to download video from YouTube?

There are available many helpful freeware utilities or extensions for Firefox, but sometimes they doesn't work properly, so one of my favourites is VDownloader, which is able to download video as well as to convert it to .AVI or .MPG formats:

- VDownloader
"VDownloader can download and convert videos from Youtube, Google Video, Metacafe, MySpace, DailyMotion, Yuvutu, and many other similar sites, saving them in AVI or MPG."


If you don't want to download and install the local application then you can try one of the following Web services where the video from YouTube can be downloaded via Web portal. The only problem is that all Web services are overloaded and they don't have very good response time:

- Online FLV Converter
This online service allows you to convert a Flash Video file (.FLV) from YouTube to MPEG4 or other formats (AVI, MOV, MP4, MP3, 3GP).

- VideoDL.org - Download Online Video
"VideoDL is a quick AJAX application which allows you to download online video into your computer. It supports top 3 video sites - YouTube, Google Video, and Break.com."


How to convert YouTube video from .FLV format?

This step could be skipped if the previously mentioned online video downloaders & convertors would be functioning properly or wouldn't be overloaded every day. Otherwise we have only downloaded video file from YouTube in .FLV format, which can be used only by a FLV Player.

The following FLV Converter can be used if you want to convert .FLV video to .AVI or other formats:

- FLV Converter (BitComet)
"BitComet FLV Converter is a small tool to convert between FLV and other media format, such as AVI, WMV, MP4, iPod, PSP, Mobile."



How to Convert other Media Files?

If you are looking for a complex solution how to convert video or audio files, how to convert video files to FLV, AVI or WMV, create MP3 files from videos, how to rip and burn DVD discs, then my suggestion is to use Replay Converter which is the easiest way with the highest quality output.

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Very nice video! Don't forget we only have one planet Earth...

"The hand that can destroy
is the same hand that can help."

World Wildlife Fund:



"WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature."

Read more...