Blogger Play

Blogger recently released a feature called Blogger Play:

Blogger Play will show you a never-ending stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs.

Please note the warning:

A caveat: we use many techniques, including Google’s SafeSearch technology, to keep the images clean. Nevertheless, on rare occasions an image that you may find vulgar or obscene will slip through our algorithmic filters. Google does not pre-screen the images that appear in Blogger Play, nor is it responsible for their content. To report a terms of service violation, you may fill out this contact form.

It's kind of interesting to watch - kind of a social networking voyeur thing. I was thinking it might be an interesting source as a writing prompt (I especially like that you can click through to the post that contains the picture), or as some kind of social research project.

Switch To New Blogger Is Complete

The Fischbowl has now completed the switch to the new version of Blogger. This was supposed to happen about three weeks ago, but Blogger wouldn't let me switch until now (even though it indicated I could).

If you're reading this in your RSS aggregator, then all is good with the old RSS feed. If your aggregator is like mine (I'm still using Bloglines at this point, but thinking of exploring Google Reader and/or Netvibes), then you probably saw about 25 old posts come through again. This is the second post since the switch (the other was the faculty dance video post - in case you missed it mixed in with the 25 older posts). There's nothing wrong with using the old RSS feed, but I did create a FeedBurner Post Feed now that I switched over. And, if you're truly a glutton for all things Fischbowl, the new version of Blogger has comment feeds (yea!) so I created a FeedBurner Comment Feed as well. In addition, Feedburner has e-mail delivery for both of those feeds if you prefer (follow either link and choose e-mail instead of your aggregator, or links to all four variations are on the right side of The Fischbowl). There are even feeds for comments on particular posts with the new Blogger, but it's not particularly obvious what they are. (I believe it involves knowing the POSTID. I think it would be more obvious for readers if I were using the new templates, but I kept the "classic" Blogger template I already had.)

Overall, the switch seemed to go well. The only problem I'm seeing is that quite a few of the existing comments now show as being from "Anonymous," instead of listing the Blogger display name of who made the comment. I'm not sure why that would be so, since all the comments had to have been made with a legitimate Blogger account, but I'm guessing I'll probably just have to live with it. If you've commented previously and notice that your comment has changed to being from Anonymous, I would love feedback if you have any ideas about what might be different about your Blogger account that might be causing this.

Finally, I made a couple of changes to the sidebar for anyone who actually visits the blog. There's still too much stuff in it, but I did reorganize and reprioritize. Most notably I moved the Archives links and the Posts On This Page links up higher so it should be easier for folks to find and/or link to posts.

If anyone has any difficulties with feeds or anything else with the blog, please let me know.