The Real Blogger Status

With all of the predefined page elements that Layouts Blogger provides, that fulfill maybe 90% of the need for you to edit the template, there will be the 10% that they don't provide. Services provided by third parties - like guest books , or news feeds , or even visitor meters - won't be provided by Blogger, to everybody's liking. In some cases, Blogger / Google will provide one version of a given service - like Blogger Comments, Blogger Feeds, and Google Analytics - but their versions aren't the most popular in many cases. And some blog owners will develop their own simple applets, like the Cumulus / Google Translation Bar . Bloggers are like any people in any walk of life - they all want something different - better - or new.

Recently, I wrote about Following, and two reasons why it's only available (currently) for bloggers that use the various dialects of English . You'd think that it should be available, immediately, to anybody with a blog that's properly presented in the language of their choice. And that would by preference be the possibility, but reality says not. Today, we see one example why "not" is going to be seen more than "can", as more and more non English bloggers start to envy those of us who have Following. Jane, in Hong Kong, has a blog that (until recently) had a bilingual title Reddie's Page | 鸿屋 This was fine, for the blog, and it was good for her readers - some who prefer to read English, and others to read Chinese. But, she had no Followers for the blog, even though the Following gadget was properly installed. Whenever someone clicked on the link from the Following gadget in her blog Follow this blog (try it!!), instead of the popup window Follow...

IP Networking is how your computer, and millions of other computers worldwide, connect to Blogger and to Blog*Spot, and millions of still more computers. The Internet is based upon IP (" Internet Protocol ") Networking. IP Networking, which uses packet switching technology, was legendarily designed for a military / political need - to survive imminent military action during the United States / Soviet Union Cold War , in the mid 1900s. I'm envisioning a legendary, top secret, conversation: Military Strategist #1: Let's put computers on all of our military bases, and let's connect all of our computers with each other. Colonel Frimmis in Richmond can work better with Colonel Frammis in Dallas, with their computers directly connected. Military Strategist #2: And what happens when the Russians find out? They'll sneak over here, cut the network cable between Dallas and Richmond, and we'll be in deep you know what. The Alpha project will fall behind schedul...