Google App Engine

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was developed by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain ofblogspot.com. Blogs can also be hosted in the registered custom domain of the blogger (like www.example.com). Soblogspot.com domain publishings will be redirected to the custom domain. A user can have up to 100 blogs per account.

Up until May 1, 2010, Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, via FTP. All such blogs had (or still have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other than blogspot.com allowed via custom URLs. UnlikeWordPress.com, Blogger allows its users to use their own domain free of charge, while WordPress.com charges around $13 to use a custom domain. Blogger cannot be installed on a web server. One has to use DNS facilities to redirect a custom URL to a blogspot domain.

Redesign

As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims that the service is now more reliable because of the quality of the servers.

Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.

In a version of the service called Blogger in Draft, new features are tested before being released to all users. New features are discussed in the service's official blog. In September 2009, Google introduced new features into Blogger as part of its tenth anniversary celebration. The features included a new interface for post editing, improved image handling, Raw HTML Conversion, and other Google Docs-based implementations, including:

• Adding location to posts via geotagging.
• Post time-stamping at publication, not at original creation.
• Vertical re-sizing of the post editor. The size is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.
• Link editing in compose mode.
• Full Safari 3 support and fidelity on both Windows and Mac OS.
• New Preview dialog that shows posts in a width and font size approximating what is seen in the published view.
• Placeholder image for tags so that embeds are movable in compose mode.
• New toolbar with Google aesthetics, faster loading time, and "undo" and "redo" buttons. Also added was the full justification button, a strike-through button, and an expanded color palette.

In 2010, Blogger introduced new templates and redesigned its website. The new post editor was criticized for being less reliable than its predecessor.

Available languages

Blogger is available in these languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu Vietnamese. Nepali, Farashi.Bemba,Tonga,Tumbuka and Cewa.

Country-specific blogger addresses

Starting in February 2013, Blogger began integrating user blogs with multiple country-specific URLs. For example, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.com would be automatically redirected to exampleuserblogname.blogspot.ca in Canada, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.co.uk in the United Kingdom. Blogger explained that by doing this they could manage the blog content more locally so if there was any objectionable material that violated a particular country's laws they could remove and block access to that blog for that country through the assigned ccTLD while retaining access through other ccTLD addresses and the default Blogspot.com URL. However it should be noted that if a blog using a country-specific URL was removed it is still technically possible to still access the blog through Google's No Country Redirect override by entering the URL using the regular Blogspot.com address and adding /ncr after the .com.

Available designs

Blogger allows its users to choose from various templates and then customize them. Users may also choose to create their own templates using CSS. The new design template, known as "Dynamic View", was introduced on 31 August 2011 with Dynamic Views being introduced on 27 September 2011. It is built withAJAX, HTML5, and CSS3. The time for loading is 40 percent shorter than traditional templates, and allows user to present blog in seven different ways: classic, flipcard, magazine, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot, and timeslide. Readers still have the option to choose preferable views when the blog owner has set a default view. Some of the widgets (e.g., Labels, Profile, Link List, Subscription Links, Followers and Blog Archive etc.) are available for Dynamic Views; other templates are chosen by the blogger.

In April 2013, Blogger updated its HTML template editor that has some improvements to make it easy for the users to edit the blog's source code. The editor was updated with syntax highlight, number line and jump-to-widget button for ease of editing the code.

For over half a year dynamic views users were suffering from a bug causing custom CSS and page navigation often not to load properly. This happened because aJavaScript routine rendered the page before it was loaded. A blogger user fixed the template and published the fix.

Integration

• The Google Toolbar has a feature called "BlogThis!" which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to their blogs.
• "Blogger for Word" is an add-in for Microsoft Word which allows users to save a Microsoft Word document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger for Word is not currently compatible with the new version of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger. However, Microsoft Office 2007 adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger.
• Blogger supports Google's AdSense service as a way of generating revenue from running a blog.
• Blogger also started integration with Amazon Associates in December 2009, as a service to generate revenue. It was not publicly announced, but by September 2011 it appeared that all integration options had been removed and that the partnership had ended.
• Windows Live Writer, a standalone app of the Windows Live suite, publishes directly to Blogger.
• Blogger can be optionally integrated with Google+.
• Google+ comments can be integrated with blogger comments.
• The Campaigns tab in Blogger dashboard links to Adwords making it easier to create ads .
• You may create and add HTML site map static page  to your blogger BlogSpot blogs using Blogger JSON Feed API which helps both website live visitors as well as Search Engine bots.

Blogger on mobile devices

Blogger has launched mobile applications for users with mobile devices. Users can post and edit blogs, and also share photos and links on Blogger through their mobile devices. Not only advanced mobile devices, such as smartphones, are being considered, since users can also post blogs via traditional cell phones by SMS and MMS.

Screenshot of Blogger app on iOS

The major two mobile operating systems that Blogger focuses on are Android and iOS. Blogger allow users to edit blogs anywhere through the app and either publish the blogs or save them as drafts. Quick navigation from posts and drafts is accessible from a list. Users can attach photos by taking a picture with a Blogger app or selecting pictures from their photo galleries. Sharing current locations on posts is also possible by tabbing My Location bar and adding locations. Users can also share photos and links directly to Blogger.

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Google Sites

Google Sites is a structured wiki- and Web page-creation tool offered by Google as part of the Google Apps for Workproductivity suite. The goal of Google Sites is for anyone to be able to create a team-oriented site where multiple people can collaborate and share files.

History

Google Sites started out as JotSpot, the name and sole product of a software company that offered enterprise social software. It was targeted mainly at small-sized and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, co-founders of Excite.

In February 2006, JotSpot was named part of Business 2.0, "Next Net 25", and in May 2006, it was honored as one of InfoWorld's "15 Start-ups to Watch". In October 2006, JotSpot was acquired by Google. Google announced a prolonged data transition of webpages created using Google Page Creator (also known as "Google Pages") to Google Sites servers in 2007. On February 28, 2008, Google Sites was unveiled using the JotSpot technology. The service was free, but users needed a domain name, which Google offered for $10. However, as of May 21, 2008, Google Sites became available for free, separately from Google Apps, and without the need for a domain.

Features

• Custom Domain Name Mapping — Owners of both personal Google accounts and Google Apps for Business accounts are allowed to map their Google Site to a custom domain name.

• Multi-tier Permissions and Accessibility — There are three levels of permissions within Google Sites: Owner, Editor and Viewer. Owners have full permissions to modify design and content of the entire Google Site, whereas editors cannot change the design of the site. Viewers can only view the site and are not permitted to make any changes to text or otherwise.

Extension

• Gadgets — XML modules that can be embedded in a Site and may contain custom CSS and JavaScript. Gadgets achieve two purposes:

1. Separation or Abstraction — the custom code can be abstracted to a distinct file
2. Reuse — the same gadget can be reused by multiple sites as it is published publicly

• HTML Box — allows embedding custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but with following limitations:

1. one HTML Box cannot interact or refer to code outside including other HTML Boxes
2. Script cannot create another script, image or link tags

Limitations

• 100 MB of storage (for free account) and 10 GB of storage for Google Apps users
• No open use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript. JavaScript can be used within the confines of an embedded gadget or the HTML box. Inline CSS can be used within the webpage content area.
• Limited e-store capabilities, have to use the Google i-store gadget to add a shopping cart, iframe a third-party e-store provider such as Amazon, or use a Google Buy Now button.
• A site can also be displayed on a custom domain (e.g. www.example.com, wiki.example.com, support.example.com), but one must own the domain and have access to change the CNAME records.
• Limited use of HTML coding. HTML is checked and modified when saved, Javascript is made safe with Caja. CSS cannot be incorporated in the theme templates; however, inline CSS can be used within the webpage content area.
• No longer serves .html/.htm Web pages, like Google Pages did. All static HTML Web pages previously hosted on Google Pages can be migrated to Google Sites, but users later attempting to access them, as well as Portable Document Format (PDF) or other migrated files, must download those files in order to view them.
• Sites that are hosted in Google Sites are not available to residents of countries where Google Services are blocked.

Censorship

• Following a regional Turkish court ruling in 2009, all pages hosted on Google Sites had been blocked. It was done after one of the pages contained an alleged insult of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 2012 the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ruled this a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Yildirim v Turkey, 2012). However, as of October 2013, Google Sites remained fully blocked to users in Turkey

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Google Web Designer

Google Web Designer is a program for Windows, Mac and Linux from Google for creating interactive HTML5 ads and other HTML5 content. It offers a GUI with common design tools, such as a Text tool that integrates with Google Web Fonts, a Shapes tool, a Pen tool, and 3D tools. The advertising feature set is more complete with components to addGoogle Maps, YouTube videos and more, as well as automatically including the tracking code events for DoubleClickand AdMob.

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Microsoft Dynamics Software

There are six separate products that make up the Microsoft Dynamics family: Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL are enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions; Microsoft Dynamics CRM is Microsoft’s customer relationship management offering; Microsoft Dynamics RMS - short for retail management system - is Microsoft’s retail business software offering.

In general, Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV and SL are intended for small and medium enterprises, and Microsoft Dynamics AX is best suited for larger enterprises. This is not to say, however, that a small organization should not use Microsoft Dynamics AX or a large organization should not use one of the other three. All four have been implemented in all sizes - and types - of organizations.

Microsoft Dynamics AX is a good option for companies with multi-site and/or multi-country operations. It is known for having strong functional support for manufacturers and distributors. Microsoft Dynamics NAV also offers strong functional support for manufacturing and distributing, though it’s highly configurable and has many vertical partners that offer market solutions. Microsoft Dynamics GP, meanwhile, offers strong financial management and human resources capabilities. It is popular in professional services, finance and the public sector. Finally, Microsoft Dynamics SL is good for project-based businesses such as construction. Click on any of the links below to learn more about a specific product.

Products

Dynamics AX

Dynamics CRM

Dynamics GP

Dynamics NAV

Dynamics SL

Dynamics RMS

About Microsoft Dynamics

The Microsoft Dynamics portfolio first started with Microsoft’s acquisition of Great Plains Software in 2001. During the acquisition, Microsoft also gained Solomon, which was previously acquired by Great Plains Software. In 2002, Microsoft acquired the Danish software company Navision and at the same time picked up the Axapta product. Combined, these four products made up Microsoft’s Business Solutions Group, which was later renamed Microsoft Dynamics. To further unify the brand, the four products were renamed to Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics AX.

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