Bloggeratto

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Lets hope for 2009 to be great and for use to be better.

Salud!

Blogger is currently doing a general Feedback Survey. so if you have not answered the survey. please do so. you may also have not seen it if you are using Windows Live Writer or Scribefire instead of the Blogger Post Editor. so here i drop the link. tell them what you think and what you want.

There is a cliched phrase that says "The more things change, the more they stay the same". while using such a phrase usually calls for taking the easy road to make up a point. in the case of The State Of Blogger. it does ring true.

How so?. welll, Blogger is getting closer to ten years of being open and while i see how much Wordpress has advanced. it is still a long long long way of being able to trump Blogger of its front mainstream #1 spot. it is not that incredible?. no wonder Google development pace with Blogger has always been abysmal. Blogger is still the biggest and easiest Blog platform anyone can get to use.

Years ago, i remember thinking that Wordpress was not really making much sense in trying to beat Blogger and i stated many times it was almost impossible for Wordpress to archive it. unless Blogger and Google allowed it. While what i said still resonates as 100% true up to now and Wordpress advances continues to have very little effect on Blogger. Changes like Tumblelogging, fastblogging, nanoblogging, microblogging, lifestreaming, social networking and federated identities around the web have forced Google to keep advancing in these areas and improving Blogger along the way with bits taken from Google initives on those matters.

It still leaves much to be desired but it is a start. another thing that truly enabled and enables Blogger based Bloggers to stay current is Widgets and Widgetization. I have came on to become a expert on that subject thanks to my Blogging at Widgets Lab. i have around 800 posts over there already and now i actually know more about Widgets, Widgetization and so on, that i would have ever thought.

But the final thing that has changed Blogger and that is thriving more on Blogger lately is a serious investment of previously Blogger Hackers and Modders into Theming and Templating.

Back in 2006. everything was about the missing features, the mods, the hacks, the tips, the optimization tutorials. this where the things that most worried us because we lacked lots of features. these missing pieces ignted a raw creativity fest that created all the missing features with several versions to choose from for each one of the missing features. To this day, 2 years after most of the coolest hacks and mods created by aditya, ramani, phydeaux3, de wilde, hans, hoctro and many others have not a superior official version. most have a subpar official version or barely equal. this shows how limitations can burst a unique explotion of creativity and how well this was executed by the Bleet from that time. i always found funny that when the change to Blogger v3.0 came to be and took us from Blogger v2.0. we were actually worse off in the new Blogger than in the old one. so true it was that many refused to move to the new blogger to start anew and went elsewhere.

Fast Forward to now and most of these names have moved on to other things out of boredom, lack of thrills, etc. so when i looked for the new Bleet many months ago. i found that most of the new Blogger Modders and hackers were into a Blogger Theming and Templating Frenzy. it did made sense because the most notable advancements in the new Blogger was that it was easier to theme, template and arrange than before.

The frenzy did paid off big time and right now any Wordpress, Tumblr or any other theme in any other Blog Platform can be ported to the new blogger expressing the mere request for it in the Blogger Theming blogs and forums. and theming your BloggerBlog continues to be way way way easier to do in Blogger if you opt for doing it yourself. even by poking around. Blogger Post Editor is no longer a issue either thanks to the advent of Windows Live Writer and Scribefire.

But there still many Blogger Lacks and these are Internal. because of the Dashboard features evolution continues to be slow and clunky. Resources Services Integration is also poor and because most of the Advances i have talked about have been all external from Blogger users and Third parties. and that is why i would like to think that Wordpress advacements on these lacking areas will be enough to make Blogger move faster even if it continues to be #1. unless Google wants to celebrate Ten Years Of Blogger creation being #2 that is.....we will see.