[blog] Feed My Ego, Please?

2915.For a little while now, Google has provided me and all Blogger users with the nifty +1 button so we can get some social media heft.

Might I humbly request that, if you stumbled this way (research suggests that few come here on purpose) you kick me a +1? Two reasons.

1. By giving me a +1 you tell me what stuff people who come here actually find interesting. That'll help me to keep active here and craft entries addressing what people would actually want to read.
2. By giving me a +1 you are also helping me to realize a lifelong goal … world domination, as well as the crushing of my enemies. And who doesn't want to crush their enemies?

There are two way to +1 here. You can +1 the individual post (the button's at the bottom, next to the other share buttons (incidentally, please share my stuff! I'm soooooo loooonely!) or +1 the entire blog with a button at the very top bar or at the top of the sidebar.

Anyway, help me help you help me. Just takes a 'sec.

This has been a me-service message. Back to your regular, needy, distracted blog. 

[blog] Sitemeter Ist Gefloogle

2914.Sitemeter.com. Yesterday:

And, today:

And, this:

Whois info shows the domain name sitemeter.com was due to expire 03-April-2013, looks like someone else registered it.

Could be time to change all my counters since this kind of thing can take years to sort out if ever.

Well, we have also had Google toting up the stats on this blog for a while, and we like it, since it counts pageviews it seems to go up faster, making our ego very happy indeed.

Renewing your domain name; it's not just a good idea, it's the … well, it ain't the law. But it's still a damned good idea.

For now, we must consider Sitemeter in a state of gefloogle until further notice.

Further Notice: As of some time Saturday (4/6/13) Sitemeter seems to be back on line.

[bloggage] Blogger Template Designer – Template Design for You, Me, and Everyone We Know At Last?

2344.

Well, that's what I certainly hope.

While most of my friends and the cool kids find themselves blogging on WordPress and suchlike, with all thier awesome cusomizability, I've stayed with Blogger because it's comfortable, forgiving, and familiar. I customize the front page of this blog to the limit I feel comfortable doing so.

The problem with taking it to the next level with Blogger is the template code. I've programmed in Pascal, Euphoria, even Lisp, but this is what I call abstruse! No insult intended to the Blogger developers, of course, it works and I don't have to fret about it and that's what I want. But what I also wanted is a way to take my customization even further, to bring this to some level where it's completely different.

Well, Blogger in Draft (which I've made my dashboard home in order so as not to keep missing the nifty as it happens) has a new thing – Blogger Template Designer, which looks like it will abstract the Blogger template design process to a new, more friendly level. Right up my street, I'd say:

We’ve added a fair bit to Blogger over the years, but one thing that’s been constant for some time has been our collection of templates. While a number of talented designers around the web have offered their own fresh and interesting designs that you can apply to your Blogger blog, our stock set has grown a bit stale, and you’ve noticed. You let us know — in the forums, on Twitter, sitting next to us on airplanes, even from across the counter at a Harvard Square stationary store, and we’ve been listening.

Today we’re taking a big first step in improving not just our template designs, but all the ways that you can customize the look and layout of your blog.

So a lot of us, myself included, are going to be poking around in Template Designer over the near term and seeing what we can come up with. The possiblities certainly seem exciting, and an amazing, visually exciting browserscape just might happen.

Or maybe everything will start to look like MySpace. I sure hope not, that!

Oh, I'm just woolgatherthing – this is some pretty nifty stuff, and I'm going in there with the big crayon to be sure.

One other thing: if you create a new template, tweet about it with the hashtag #newbloggertemplate, and Blogger might feature yours some time.

• Visit: http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogger-template-designer.html at the Blogger in Draft blog to get the whole rundown and skinny and slim shady and all that thing there.

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