Turnkey Blogging with Google Weblogs

Google Weblogs looks like a giant leap forward in blogging. From the Blogger Dashboard:

Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:

• Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
• No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
• Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
• Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
• Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
• Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!

Excited? So are we! Take a look at this sneak peek of Blogger Buzz, powered by Google Weblogs.

We’ve put together a quick video tour to take you through the highlights of Google Weblogs. Check it out! [This links to a youtube performance of Never Gonna Give You Up Karaoke By Tay Zonday -- PAINFUL Hahaha!]

I'm happy I switched back to Blogger because there's just no telling what they will come up with next! I'm always up for a chance (as my loyal reader has noticed over the months), and this looks to be a very promising one. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" option promises to help with writer's block by bringing up new ideas, and it will even write my post for me. How cool is that?

Positively Forward with Kettle Sales

That last post was a bit negative, so I've decided to be positive from now on. Only good stuff to make people happy, as there's nothing like seeing people smile all day, in spite of the miserable and alarming conditions of our modern society.

But I'm supposed to be positive. So anyway, I just finished changing my blog to 3 columns using one from this wonderful blogger template site, which allows me to place a few sweet ads on either side (I'm sure you won't mind).

I've added the aStore widget from Amazon as well. As you've noticed I'm trying to cash in on the electric kettle theme (no shame). So far I've been very unsuccessful at generating any revenue whatsoever from the web (although I did fairly well on Second Life, more on that some other time). I've changed my meta tags to reflect kettles of all sorts, but it's also important to have matching content, which mean I may have to come up with a few keyword-rich posts in the near future (sorry).

Then I decided to mess around with the header and came up with this cheesy thing, combining the picture from my old blog, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, and the president of nothing at all, yours truly. So there it is, I hope you don't dislike it too much.

Let's see.. what else? I'm trying to get my domain name www.ekettle.com to forward here, but godaddy doesn't seem to be updating it all that fast. I'll give it a day and then contact their customer service people.

While I was at it, I also decided to start a blog about things I dislike but with a humorous spin. 99-reasons. This whole list thing is a bit strange but I suppose if everyone else is doing it, then why not me?

Widgets and things

Blogcatalog is fun and is allowing me to discover some interesting blogs I'd otherwise never come across. I'm going a bit crazy adding friends, but I do check out their blog(s) first to see if it's something I will enjoy following. Most people will reciprocate by visiting mine as well, which is a nice win-win proposition.

I'm considering adding coComment, which is a social tool to track and follow comments with others who are registered. There's also a neat widget to add which shows comments I've made on other people's blogs.

Speaking of comments, one thing that slightly ticks me off is when I write a comment to a WordPress blog, and it gets rejected because comments are only open to WordPress members. Sigh.

A really cool social site for those into genealogy - geni.com - makes it easy to build your family tree, add family members, build profiles, even birthday reminders. I like how intuitive it was to use, and how each member gets invited to add on to the tree.

Electric Kettle

Well it seems that Blogger is not able to import posts from other services. May have to do a bit of research on that just to be sure, but seems I'm starting from scratch yet again - thankfully this is no big loss to the Blogosphere.

I do like how easy it is to add widgets. I can see myself going a bit crazy on the widget thing. The first one I've added is from blogcatalog but more to come in the immediate future.

By the way, I'm not sure why I'm writing all these details about setting up this blog, other than out of sheer joy because it entertains me. Obviously I'm easily entertained.

Interesting to see how AdSense has picked up on the kettle thing, as the ads in the sidebar are for electric kettles, kettle corn equipment, and "need more blog traffic?" - funny - yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Maybe I should also dedicate the entire theme of this blog to tea kettles, electric kettles, and kettle corn equipment, which could also be entertaining as well as lucrative. A thought to ponder.