May 5th is Cinco de Mayo, a day for celebration of independence, democracy, Mexican heritage, and new Blogger updates. Google’s blogging service, Blogger, made some major upgrades on May 5th, and users can take advantage of those features starting immediately. They include bug fixes, geo-location tagging, and a new interface for image and video uploads.
The bug fixes are fairly straightforward. There were two recurring issues. The first was with browsing the archives on a site through older navigation as opposed to newer navigation. The second was caused by non-Google users leaving comments. Both of these issues have now been resolved completely.
The geo-location integrates a Google Map and a new “add location” tag at the bottom of each post. Users can pull up the Google Map and search for their specific region, adding it as a new information tag on the post. The tag can be general (“Utah, United States”) or very specific (“North Business District, Las Vegas, Nevada”). In any case, users will be able to click on the tag to see your specified location. Users who don’t see the possibility for “location: add” at the bottom of their post composition window should go into the blog post widget and ensure that the “location” option is enabled.
The new image and video interface allows users to drag and drop the window around the screen, allowing them to view their blog to get a better view of where the media will go or even continue proofing or otherwise working on the blog entry while the media is uploading. Additionally, the overall look of the interface has been streamlined for users.
Big updates like these don’t happen often, but they happen more frequently and are more substantial for Blogger than for other blogging services. Maybe that’s why Blogger remains the number one blogging service, with nearly ten times as many users as WordPress.