I am voting republican

test post (safely ignore)

I have a problem with Blogger's pingback/trackback functionality. The problem is simple: it usually doesn't work. Now that's a big trouble when you want to use pingbacks and trackbacks for promotional purposes.

Last time, I blogged about a post from a reputable blogger. My post was fairly important and I've linked to his one of posts. It has been more than a week and the link still didn't come up in his post's trackbacks.

This leads me to use wordpress to test things out and look for personal notes, especially about self-development.

I really need to test whether this is a problem with Blogger or is it just something related to akismet's policy on trackbacks. This is an important need. This is what made the web more social.

Anyway, let's see if Blogger has any bugs on it's trackback, pingback system.

Just a quick post to test paragraphs without line breaks.

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

Adsense now in feeds (not over feedburner but over adsense control panel)

I made screenshots of how feed controls look like in adsense but before that I'd like to post this immediately. I setup adsense for this blog's feed, it didn't appear yet (it has been more than an hour). There are also no additional instructions. That looks like very new.

And feedburner now has a google domain that you can sign in with your google account:
http://feedburner.google.com

This blog's feed address is now http://feedproxy.google.com/utmostpractice

Things began changing. I added feedflare into this feed, check it. It didn't appear in the blog yet. Probably feedflare code needs to be placed manually in the layout. I am not sure. No instructions or a help page about that either.

Nevertheless, it's sure that google finally started handling this adsense in feed issue. I'll update this post if I see anything new.

Blogger silently made a change in the layout section

Edit: Everything turned back to normal a while ago. Don't know when, just checked it.

Today, I tried to make some changes on one of my blog's layout on blogspot. I noticed that it was not possible to put something under the header. First, I thought that this was a weakness in my hand-brain coordination. Only a couple of seconds later I realized that I am healthy but there was a change in the layout drag and drop functionality.

I am trying to guess the reasons for that change. Maybe this functionality is abused by some bloggers, who knows? Being able to put something under the header is a good way to bring a different aura to your blog. You could add additional navigation, flickr streams, etc.

On the other hand, when you do this, your blog looks like different than a blog on the first look. Let's confess, blogs do not aim to replace websites. They simply are weblogs.

Anyway, I am not going to defend this decline in functionality. This is a downgrade, a step back in blogger layouts. Maybe this is something temporary. We'll see.

Google is going to revolutionize adsense

Yesterday, there was a post on Google Adsense blog titled On your frequency.

It outlines as:

• Frequency capping, which prevents users from repeatedly seeing the same ads on your pages.
  
• Improved attribution, to help advertisers identify the best performing sites in the network based on post-impression activity.
  
• Improved ads quality, as we're able to improve ad performance within the Google content network.

You can read about these in more detail on our official Google blog. To enable these features, we'll be implementing a DoubleClick ad serving cookie on the content network. We now have a program policy that covers data usage related to the launch of these new features.

Now what I can get from these posts is that Google is going to revolutionize its Adsense program step by step. By revolutionizing, I mean I think in the future, ads displayed on a certain page will be less keyword related. Most probably this is what cookies will be used for. Of course there are going to be more javascript behind.

Why a less keyword related adsense?

I think Google wants to concentrate more on content quality and felt like content quality is decreasing because of keyword stuffing.

I guess Adsense going to be less keyword related. The ads will be placed according to the actual visitor's interests. That's where new cookies and scripts fit.

Which means, a logged in website visitor is doing searches around the web and visits certain websites according to their interest. Then Google is going to capture the visitor's "frequencies" and will place ads accordingly. So, when a visitor comes to your site, ads displayed will not be based your content. Instead, they will be based on the visitor's interests.

This will prevent keyword stuffing on most websites because it will render keyword seo irrelevant and obsolete. People trying to make money from adsense are forced to concentrate more on traffic instead of a highly niche website or blog.

Since this will also affect visitors coming from search engines in terms of relevancy of the ads, all that is left from this story is more quality content and more willing visitors to click ads.

I think the advantage of this is going to be higher adsense revenues wherever bounce rates are low and the site has a loyal visitor profile. For instance, Dooce.com is going to make more money in comparison to a website which is organized for being a niche with a small amount of visitors and stuffed with highly paid keywords. While such a niche could make $25 to $50 per click, after this revolution, it is going to make much less than that. At the same time, a website which makes 1 to 3 cents per click is going to make much higher.

Of course this will not change immediately and completely. There is going to be a balance between the use of more cookies and scripts and the old (recent) system.

Of course I am in no way affiliated with Google and not an expert on the issue, this is just my two cents about this move.

What blogspot lacks

There has been now nearly one month that I am using blogspot as my primary blogging software and I have a couple of ideas that I would like to share.

The page layout system is nice and very usable. It is so easy and usable that I try not to mess with my template and make too much changes to it. Just because I don't want to get very far away from the layout functionality of blogger.

Issues of the layout system is that it is not conditional. There are no conditional controls over the layout. By conditional control, I mean options of page items about whether they are to be shown on front page or item pages, archive pages etc. This is important and very usable functionality.

By the way, like there was in the old blogger, new blogger also have conditional tags for templates. So, you can still choose what to show and what not to show on your blog's different pages. You can do many variations, you can be very creative with tags. However the essence of what I say here is plain usability. Usability for people who are not coders and who are not familiar with conditional logic, html or xhtml or any simple scripting at all.

There is one conditional function in the layout though. It is in the blog section. When you select to add adsense into your blog posts, there is a control about how to show it, like: every post, every two post, every three post etc.

However, the exact placement of the ad unit is still not selectable. People who get the hang of proper ad placement would understand what I mean. It is determinant on click through rates.

Apart from those, blogspot made a long way. It is developing new functionality step by step. This is why I am now here and not on WordPress as a primary blogging software.

Placing adsense code manually into new blogger layout

There is a problem with placing some third party code into the new blogger layout. If your adsense code doesn't look right when you place it manually, then you have to use escape characters to make it right.

Here is how it is done:

Trick to Add AdSense, AdBrite and Other JavaScript Ad Code Directly to Blogger HTML Template

Edit: Another Link which is more useful. A small online application to convert your code: http://www.eblogtemplates.com/blogger-ad-code-converter/

When Internet Explorer cannot open the internet site, the cause might be sitemeter

If you suddenly see this error when you want to reach your blog on blogspot, the first thing you have to check is whether you use sitemeter site statistics service on your blog.

This is what happened to my other blog moodr yesterday. I googled about it and I saw a post on Google Groups (about blogspot issues help group) and there was this suggestion. I removed sitemeter immediately and voila! My blog was back on Internet Explorer too.

Since you cannot reach your blog when using Internet Explorer, you have to either go to your dashboard which is blogger.com or to take the long way home, you can download and install Firefox. The second option will be a new era in your life if you haven't used Firefox before.

Anyway, now I don't use sitemeter on any of my blogs and I hope they will pay attention to solve this problem.

Anonymous blogging on blogspot with your current Google / Blogger account

Edit: I investigated the issue a little more further and found out that there is no way anybody can identify you with this method. You can stay truly anonymous. Of course Google will know who you are since Blogspot is their business but anyway, this is no problem unless you publish anything illegal.

Edit 2: Problem with feeds... The publishers e-mail address can still be seen in the feed. However, I have also checked another Google account with no e-mail address in the feed. That's interesting but it renders my trick useless. That means no 100% anonymity.

I wonder if there is a way to do just that. I don't think that you can be fully anonymous unless you sign-up for a different Google account and blog with that account.

However, there are some other options for being at least virtually anonymous. Go to the Layout section under your control panel. Then go to blog posts section and click on edit. Next, untick the box near "posted by Your_Name" and save.

Next, on the left, you will see a box named "About Me". Here is a link to your blogger profile. Click on edit on this box and then click on remove in the pop-up window that will be opened. After you click remove, you will then have the About Me section of the blog removed.

You are now virtually anonymous. This can never provide you a full anonymity but it will prevent everyday people (who are not paranoid enough to find who you are) from understanding that this is your blog.

If you will use this, one thing would stop your game, this thing is commenting. You cannot comment without displaying a link to your blogger profile. To prevent this, you can also go sign-up for an open-id and use that to comment instead of your usual blogger account.

I don't know why anyone would need all this but anyway, this is a nice way to learn about what you can do with blogger and not. You are also learning about customization of this.

Why?

I need a blog where I can test the latest developments in blogspot as well as any property of it that can be customized.

I know that there are tons of blogs on the web about the same subject. However the difference here will be that I will test anything that comes to my mind here and will immediately blog about it.

For instance, I wonder if it is possible to blog with a different author name than you normally use in blogger. I'll start with that.