Video Direct out of beta (Blogger in Draft

This month marks Blogger's eight birth and a birthday present for bloggers is the release of "Video Direct" which have come out of beta (Blogger in Draft) and bloggers will see a new "Video Upload" icon in the toolbar of their post editor. If functions the same way as the photo upload icon, the only difference will be you will be searching for video files to upload to your post rather than photo.

I will publish this post, then go back to the actual post editor and do a test video upload using this new "Video Upload" icon (I am preparing this post by clicking "Creat a Link" which gives me only a Rich Text post editor minus a lot of the toolbar icon.

Update 28 August 2007, 6.00pm: (see latest update at bottom of post) OK, I have done enough of testing, and sad to say, is mighty disappointed. I made a short .wmv video with the videocam plus Windows Movie Maker. I signed into Blogger, got into the Dashboard and the post editor window for this post, click , browse to the short test video (.wmv) I made, typed in the title, tick [ ] "I agree to the upload Terms and Conditions, then clicked upload. Nothing seem to happen for a long time, excepting I saw "Contacting www.blogger.com" in the taskbar. Finally, I saw "Done" in the taskbar. I could see a script added to the post which I will put below:

<a href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/08/3-2-1-action.html#links" target="new">Blogger Buzz: 3, 2, 1, Action!</a><object id="BLOG_video-aff7a311bff96d1c" class="BLOG_video_class" contentid="aff7a311bff96d1c" height="280" width="320"></object>

Update 28 August 2007 6.15pm: Finally, after some 2 hours, I got to see the video in the post. So the video upload icon in the post editor toolbar does work (I call it Video Direct, but looks like you have to give it time to be displayed in the post. However, where is this video stored/uploaded to the web? Is it in Google Video? There is no link in the script to indicate anything. I checked in "Uploaded video" in Google Video and it is not there. I wonder if it is stored in Blogger servers and if this counts towards our total total storage limit. If this is so, I will be very reluctant to use "Video Direct" (That is what I call this new Blogger feature) as video files can be huge.

Blogger Buzz: 3, 2, 1, Action!

Testing Digg Buttons and Badges

Click on the button and see what happens.

Update: Test successful. Will edit this post later. Bookmark the blog or subscibe to the feed or copy the URL into Notepad file and save it into a "To do" or "to check" folder.

Belated update 11 September 2007: Instructions on how to add the Digg button is at Add Digg button to all posts. I will have to put a link to this post from my main blog Blogger Tips and Tricks

Testing if images can be included in Blogger's comment

This is in response to a blogger query. I have already said that you can't put images in comment as only certain HTML tags are allowed. Anyway I said, come to think of it, I never tried. So as a retired scientist, I will do a test to confirm. I tried to make a comment in a post in this blog. I tried to use <img src="photo URL"> in a comment and back came this error message:

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed: <img src="URL">
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

So test confirmed what I had expected.

Testing "twitter" badge for Blogger

Read in Blogger Buzz: Twitter badge for Blogger and tested it on Blogging Ideas. Currently it is right at the bottom of the second left sidebar. However, as new Page Elements are added/deleted/moved, it may end up somewhere else, but it will still be in the sidebar, and most likely near the bottom as I don't put high priority in it.

Looks like Twitter is founded by Biz Stone. Biz Stone is co-founder also helped make Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Biz sometimes writes books about what people are doing on the Internet. Biz Stone was Senior Specialist for Blogger until he left Blogger, so he should be very familiar with blogging and I believe Twitter will be very good for bloggers to connect with readers, family who may be far away, relatives, friends, etc. I think it is an especially good idea for a family blog.

Testin Poll widget which is just out of beta (Blogger in Draft)

Recently, there were a lot of requests for help and reports of poll not working, etc. So I decided to test it at Good Health Information. The poll is right at the bottom of the left sidebar (position may change as I add/subtract/move Page Elements). The poll is working fine. You can try it yourself. BTW I did it using the Flock browser, not my preferred browser FireFox (also recommended by Blogger), but it has been working OK so far except I can't have my useful Google toolbar with it.

However, some bloggers seem to have genuine problem with Poll, and in fact one reader of Blogger Error Messages requested for help with this particular problem. You can read my response to him in the above post or refer to Problem with Poll widget which is just out of beta (Blogger in Draft).

Testing "job wanted" ad for bloggers

Found out about this site jobs in Edinburgh. Well, I am not an Edinburgh resident, but in this world of Internet, we are world citizens (or residents). Plus people from US and as far away as Argentina have offered me payment for doing work for them (and it was done successfully, all via the Internet. No need to travel to US or Argentina). So I supposed there is no harm in my trying to post a "job wanted" ad for after all, it is free. And now I found out it will be online for 30 days. You can view my test ad at Consultation on Google Blogger, AdSense and others. Well it may be a test blog, but if an offer came along by any chance, and it is within my capacity, I am not going to turn it down. I will have to make a note to edit it before the end of 30 days so as to keep that "job wanted" ad online. If you get a dead link, it means my memory is failing, but me being the hopeful type, I will try my best to keep that link live for it may bring me an opportunity. Plus I wouldn't want the search engine to find a dead link on my blog.

In any case, Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland and according to Wikipedia, has a temperate maritime climate, which is relatively mild. Plus attempts have been made to make Edinburgh more "cycle friendly", particularly by Spokes, the Lothian cycle campaign. Plus I have been told there is Park and Ride, with two new park and ride sites opened in 2005 at Ingliston and Riccarton on the western outskirts of the city, in addition to facilities in Fife and Newcraighall. I like that. It is more environmentally friendly and cycling will be much more pleasant there than here in tropical Asia. Who knows, I might even get an actual job offer to work in Edinburgh!

And if by any miracle, I really do get a job offer from Edinburgh and have to relocate, getting accommodation should be no problem, for there is Flat/House Share.

I have found that Gumtree have more to offer than just free "job wanted" ads in Edinburgh. They have similar sites for other cities in England, Ireland, Wales, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and well, of all places, Asia too. But I think I will stick to Edinburgh. It sounds more attractive.