Blogger
Blogger is a service created by Pyra
Labs that provides Web-based
tools used by
individuals to publish to the Web. Pyra Labs
is now owned by Google.
The tool Blogger is a service to make weblog publishing easier. The user
does not have to write any code or to worry about installing server
software or scripts. Nevertheless, the user can influence the design of
his or her blog freely.
Blogger allows for the hosting of the blogs on its own Blogspot or on
the server of the blogger's choosing (via FTP or SFTP). While most web
browsers are supported, Mozilla Firefox is used internally by all
Blogger staff. Blogger advises its users, especially AOL users, to
switch to Mozilla Firefox in order to have the best possible experience
using Blogger.
History
Launched in August 1999, it is one of the first dedicated blog-publishing
tools and is
credited for helping popularize the form. More specifically, instead of
hand-coding posts in HTML and frequently uploading new posts, the user can
make posts to the weblog by submitting a form on the Blogger web site. This
is possible with any web browser and the results immediately show up on the
site.
Blogger was started by Pyra Labs. In 2003, the
search engine company Google, Inc. acquired
Pyra Labs and in doing so, Blogger. Google
provided the resources that Pyra needed. Furthermore, formerly premium
features that
needed to be paid for were made available for free with Google’s help. About
a year later, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan
Williams, left Google.
Google purchased Picasa (an image software maker)
in 2004 and its photo sharing utility Hello,
integrating the latter with Blogger, thus allowing users to post photos to
their blogs. Thus photoblogging became a reality with the integration of
Blogger and Hello.
On May 9, 2004, Blogger relaunched with a redesign in collaboration between
web design firms Adaptive Path and Stopdesign, adding
features
including CSS-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts,
comments, and posting by e-mail.
Google launched a section called BlogThis! on their Google toolbar and
added a link for non-supported computers to use the BlogThis! tool. BlogThis!
is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you
add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap.
Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger
prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any
text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and
then publish or post from within BlogThis!
On August 16, 2005, Google launched Blogger for Word, a free add-in for
Microsoft Word. This add-in allows users to save a Microsoft Word Document
directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and
offline.
Recently, Biz Stone, another well-known member of the Blogger team left the
company.
BlogThis! Window
See also
External links
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