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10 Activation Guide Microsoft’s official Windows

2015-09-29T08:20:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's Windows 10 Activation guide offers detailed information about how activation works on the company's newest operating system.

Activation on Windows 10 is not as straightforward as it has been in previous versions of Windows thanks to the addition of the free upgrade offer.

It comes as no surprise that most questions that users have are about activating free copies of Windows 10.

Microsoft distinguishes between digital entitlement and product key activation methods in Windows 10.

All free Windows 10 upgrade versions, versions of Windows 10 bought from the Windows Store, and Windows Insider versions use the digital entitlement activation method.

Copies of Windows 10 bought from authorized retailers (either digital or physical), that are pre-installed on OEM machines, or provided through volume licensing agreements or MSDN use product keys as the activation method.

What's digital entitlement?

The core differences between product key activation and digital entitlement activation are the following two:

Digital entitlement does not require a product key.
The activation is linked to the device.

Since activation is linked to the device, it is possible to re-install the same version of Windows 10 on the device without entering a product key and have it activated once the installation completes (by skipping the product key step).

Obviously, you need to make sure that Windows 10 has been activated once on the device before you reinstall the operating system on it as you won't be able to do so if it is not fully activated (and thus linked to the device).

The main issue with this type of activation is that you cannot use this activated version of Windows 10 on a new device.

Insider Builds

If you have been running Insider Builds before Windows 10 was officially released by Microsoft, your system will remain activated for as long as you don't revert back to regular builds of Windows.

New users who opt-in to the Insider program need to activate Windows 10 before they can activate the system.

Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview on a device that never had an activated copy of Windows 10 on it will require using a Windows 10 product key or buying genuine Windows from the Windows Store. This also applies if the new installation is for an edition of Windows 10 that wasn’t previously activated on the device.

Windows 10 Activation Troubleshooting

More information and instructions about Windows 10 activation errors here.

This product key didn't work. (Error code: 0xC004C003)

License could not be found or was invalid. (Error code: 0xC004F034)

There are several reasons why these errors may be thrown:

You ran a clean install of Windows instead of upgrading from previous versions of Windows. The fix for this is to go back to the previous version, and run the upgrade from it to get Windows 10 activated properly.
The activation servers may have been busy. Windows will try again or you can try and activate manually under Activation in the Settings.
An invalid product key was used, for instance a Windows 7 product key.

Genuine Validation detected tampered Windows binaries. (Error code: 0xC004C4AE)

This error is thrown if third-party software added display languages to Windows that are not officially supported. To fix it use system restore, restore backups or reset the PC.

The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations. (Error code: 0xC004F061)

This happens when you try to use an upgrade key on a fresh installation of Windows 10 without previous versions of Windows present on the device.

A networking problem has occurred while activating your copy of Windows. (Error code: 0xC004FC03)

If you receive this error, something is blocking Windows 10 from completing the activation process online. Either try to troubleshoot the issue so that the activation can be performed online, or use the phone activation method instead.

The activation server reported that the product key has exceeded its unlock limit. (Error code: 0xC004C008)

The product key is not accepted because its number of activations has been exceeded. This can be the case if Windows 10 has already been installed on another device and activated using this product key. Solution is to buy another product key, or to contact Microsoft Support to sort out the error if it is one.

The activation server reported that the Multiple Activation Key has exceeded its limit. (Error code: 0xC004C020)

This error is similar to the one above. It means that the activation limit for the entered product key has been exceeded.

DNS name does not exist. (Error code: 0x8007232B)

The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. (Error code:

0x8007007B)

This refers to network issues while trying to activate a work PC. These errors may be thrown if you are trying to activate a work PC while not connected to the work network.

The Software Licensing Service reported that the license evaluation failed. (Error code: 0xC004E003)

The error may be thrown if third-party software, corruption or attacks modified system files needed for Windows activation. System Restore, backups, or a reset, may resolve the issue.

A security error occurred. (Error code: 0x80072F8F)

This error may be thrown if the system's date and time are set incorrectly, or if Windows cannot connect to the online activation service.

Unspecified error. (Error code: 0x80004005)

Microsoft recommends to activate Windwos manually if the error is displayed. This is done with a click on Start, and the selection of Settings > Update & Security > Activation > Activate Windows.

data collecting all for the greater good : Windows 10

2015-09-29T08:13:00.001-07:00

When it comes to Windows 10, Microsoft's new operating system, privacy is without doubt a hot topic. Ever since the operating system was released, fears about an all-seeing and reporting operating system were expressed by reviewers and users alike.

One of the core reasons for those fears was that Windows 10 was designed to deliver more data to Microsoft than previous versions of Windows.

The reporting defaults were mostly turned on if express setup was selected during installation, and users who customized privacy settings during setup or afterwards noticed that some options could not be turned off completely.

According to a new post by Terry Myerson, Microsoft's Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, on Microsoft's Blogging Windows site, that's all by design and in the best interest of the user.

Windows 10 was designed with two privacy principles: collecting data to make the product work better for the user, and to put the user in control in regards to the information the operating system collects.

Microsoft divides data into three levels on Windows 10.

Level 1: Safety and reliability data

Data that falls into this group include an anonymous device ID, device type and application crash data. Myerson notes that this does not include files or content, and that Microsoft has implemented safeguards to avoid collecting personally identifiable information such as email addresses or account IDs.

A great example of how this data was used effectively was just last month, when aggregate data showed us that a particular version of a graphics driver was crashing on some Windows 10 PCs, which then caused a reboot. This driver was not widely used, but still the issue was impacting customers. We immediately contacted the partner who builds the driver and worked with them to turn around a fix to Windows Insiders within 24 hours. We used the data on Insiders’ devices to confirm that the problem was resolved, and then rolled out the fix to the broad public via an update the next day – all-in-all, this data helped us find, fix and resolve a significant problem within 48 hours.

Level 2: Personalization data

In order to deliver a personalized Windows experience, Microsoft needs to know you better so that Windows can provide you with information and data that you consider useful.

..such as knowing whether you are a Seattle Seahawks fan or Real Madrid fan, in order to give you updates on game scores or recommend apps you might enjoy– or remembering the common words you type in text messaging conversations to provide you convenient text completion suggestions.

Level 3: Advertising data Microsoft's does not collect

Level 3 data is data that Microsoft does not collect. Myerson mentions email content, communication data or files.

Closing Words

Fact is, data collection cannot be turned off fully on all but Enterprise editions of Windows 10. This refutes the second privacy principle (You are in control with the ability to determine what information is collected) as controls are not provided to block all data collecting.

The only options home users and businesses get are to block level 2 data from being collected, and to reduce the amount of level 1 data that the operating system collects.

Now You: Would you give Windows 10 a chance if you could turn off all data collecting systems?

What is Blogger in draft?

2015-01-07T05:58:00.003-08:00

Blogger in draft is a special version of Blogger where we try out new features before releasing them to everyone. Think of it as our sandbox, or laboratory, or just “Blogger + new things.” By taking your feedback and looking at what works and what doesn’t, we’ll be able to make features that much better when releasing them to everyone.

How can I use Blogger in draft? How can I stop using Blogger in draft?
To try out Blogger in draft, just go to http://draft.blogger.com/ and log in. If you want to stop using it and go back to “normal” Blogger, simply log in tohttp://www.blogger.com/ instead. Your blogs and posts are the same regardless of whether you use Blogger in draft or regular Blogger. The only difference is what you see in the interface.

What do I get on Blogger in draft?
Access to new features, functionality, and interfaces we’re trying out. To see what’s currently available on Blogger in draft, read the blog athttp://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/.

How do I let you know my opinion about something on Blogger in draft?
The Blogger in draft blog has comments enabled. Just find a post about the feature you want to talk about, and leave a comment!

Hey! Something changed completely or disappeared! What’s going on?
Features on Blogger in draft may be updated, changed, re-imagined, transmogrified, or removed at any time. Draft gives us the freedom to see what works and what doesn’t before we turn a feature on for everyone, so expect us to make changes — hopefully you’ll think they’re for the better!

If I’m logged in to Blogger in draft, will all my posts be saved as draft?
No, you can publish normally from Blogger in draft. We’re just being playful with the name; it has nothing specifically to do with posts that are saved as drafts. It’s the features that are “in draft,” not (necessarily) your posts.

Video Upload FAQ

2015-01-07T05:56:00.002-08:00

Why can’t I see the video upload icon?
The icon will only be visible in browsers that support the Compose mode editor (Firefox and Internet Explorer) and only when you’re logged in todraft.blogger.com.

Where are my videos hosted?
Videos uploaded through Blogger are hosted on Google Video.

Are my videos indexed or searchable?
No, your videos are kept private and will not be included in Google Video search.

How long does it take to upload and process a video?
Uploading a video may take a while, since videos tend to be very large files. However, the exact amount of time required will depend on the size of your specific video and the speed of your internet connection. The processing stage usually takes about five minutes. Blogger will display a status message below the post editor to let you know how this is going, and there will be a placeholder icon in your post to show where the video will appear.

Can I upload videos with spaces in the file name?
Not right now. Spaces in the video file name will cause an error during processing. Make sure to remove spaces before uploading.
Yes! (Updated 6/20)

Do uploaded videos count against my 1gig photo quota?
Nope! Upload as many videos as you like for now.

Introducing Blogger in draft and video upload

2015-01-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

Today we're announcing an exciting new feature, video upload, and an exciting new place to use it: Blogger in draft. We’re excited.

You can think of draft as Blogger’s laboratory: it has features that we’re playing around with, trying out, and aren’t ready to “publish” to the main site.

Our first drafted feature is video upload. We’ve added a new button to the post editor () that pops up a dialog you can use to upload a video right into your blog post. If you have an Akita and a hat, you could make something that looks like this:

The comments are open, so let us know what you think! Also read the video upload FAQ for even more information.

Curious about Blogger in draft? We wrote a FAQ about that, too.

Update, 6/20: Read the latest blog post for responses to your feedback.
Update, 6/22: Share your videos in the comments for this blog post.

Updates about Video Upload

2015-01-07T05:52:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who commented about Blogger in draft’s video upload feature! It’s been almost a week now, so here are some responses:

Bugs: Autoplay on IE6, spaces in filenamesWe fixed the autoplay problem with Internet Explorer, so now videos will only play when your visitors click on them. We also fixed the error that occurs when you upload a video with spaces in the filename.

Unable to see the video upload icon
Make sure that you’re logging in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and using either Firefox or Internet Explorer. Because video upload is tied to Blogger’s “Compose mode” rich text editor, it is not supported in Safari or Opera.

MP3 / Audio uploading
Thanks for the inquiries about this, but it’s not in scope for the video uploading feature.

Video podcasting
Stay tuned.

Bring out your vids Bring out your vids

2015-01-07T05:49:00.003-08:00

What have you been posting with our new video upload feature? Leave a link to your blog or blog post in the comments so we can all see your videos!

I’ll start: I uploaded a video I took of some friends of mine singing me sea songs.

Enclosures and Video Podcasting

2015-01-07T05:47:00.001-08:00

The other feature launched to Blogger in draft today is support for enclosure links. If you haven’t heard of “enclosures” before, they’re the bits of info in Atom and RSS feeds that make podcasting possible. With the new enclosure links UI, you can turn your blog into a podcast quite easily.

To turn on enclosure links, just go to Settings > Formatting and set the “Show Link fields” option to “Yes.” This will add the enclosure link fields to your post editor. From there, just paste in the URLs of your recorded media, and your blog will instantly become a podcast.

That’s all very well and good, but we’ve gone a step further by hooking enclosure support in to Blogger in draft’s flagship feature, video upload. Starting today, we’re automatically adding enclosure information for Blogger video uploads, so your blog with video has instantly become a video podcast. Your readers can watch your videos on your blog with the Flash player, or they can subscribe to your videos with their favorite podcatcher.

Videos are provided for download in MP4 format, so they’ll play great on an iPod (or iPhone, but we haven’t tested that quite… yet…), as well as tons of other places.

We’re not 100% versed in podcasting ourselves (those guys left), so this is an area where we’re really listening to you for advice. Is there more metadata you’d like us to collect and provide in the feed? How’s the interface? Slick or merely functional? Podcasting pros: any tips for people just starting out? Where do you host your audio or video?

Speak your mind in the comments!

(Of course, since we’ve been uploading these demo videos with enclosure support, that means that this blog is now a video podcast. Perhaps you’d like to subscribe in iTunes?)

Some technical notes:

Blogger supports adding multiple enclosures to a post, but for maximum compatibility with popular podcatchers, you may only want to include one enclosure per post.
By default, Blogger feeds are in Atom format. If certain podcatchers require RSS 2.0 format, have them subscribe tohttp://yourblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml.
We auto-detect the MIME Type for common podcasting file extensions. You probably want to leave this alone unless you’re really sure what you’re doing. (Did we miss a file extension that you use? Tell us in the comments.)
If you don’t have the enclosure links visible (i.e. “Show Link fields” is set to “No”), we auto-add and auto-delete the enclosure links for your video uploads. If you do have the enclosure links visible, we’ll auto-add but not auto-delete.
Due propers to my hometown pals at Ambrosia Software for adding Intel support to Snapz Pro X, which was used to record the demo videos.

Polls Page Element

2015-01-07T05:44:00.002-08:00

The Polls page element is one of the new features we’ve added to Blogger in draft today. With this new page element, you can add a poll to your blog’s sidebar that your readers can vote in. Add as many answer choices as you like, and even select a date that you’d like the poll to close on.

We’d greatly appreciate your feedback on this feature and the other features on Blogger in draft. Leave your thoughts in the comments!

All new features on Blogger in draft are works in progress. We’ve got some ideas on how to improve this widget — for example, we’re working on making its style integrate better with the rest of your sidebar — but we want to hear your opinions as well.

Technical notes:

You’ll need to be using one of Blogger’s new Layouts templates to add a poll. Still using a Classic template? Learn how to upgrade. (Caveat: it make take a bit of work if you’ve customized your template a lot.)
Polls are unscientific.

Polls and enclosures added to Blogger in draft

2015-01-07T05:41:00.003-08:00

Today we’re saving two more features to Blogger in draft: Polls and enclosure links.

The polls page element lets you add a poll to your blog’s sidebar. You choose the question and the answers, and let your readers vote. Learn more about polls.

Enclosure links let you turn your blog into a podcast. If you’ve uploaded your audio or video to the web, you can link to it as an enclosure so that your readers can subscribe and download it using iTunes or another podcatcher. We’ve also gone ahead and added enclosure information for all videos uploaded directly in Blogger, making video podcasting crazy easy! Learn more about enclosure links.

Still in draft is video uploading. We’ve got one or two more things for it before we’re ready to publish it…

How’s Blogger in draft treating you? The comment form is open!

How to know if you're using Blogger in draft

2015-01-07T05:39:00.002-08:00

If you’re looking around wondering where video upload or the polls page element are, make sure that you’re using Blogger in draft, not regular Blogger. You’ll know that you’re using Blogger in draft if you see the blueprint logo in the upper left of the page:

Blogger in draft is available only on draft.blogger.com. You’ll need to type it in directly (or bookmark it!). If you go to www.blogger.com, you won’t see the features that are still in draft (as of this writing, those are video upload, enclosures, and polls). Remember that if you follow links from your blog, you’ll end up on www.blogger.com.

Search Box

2015-01-07T05:37:00.003-08:00

We just added a new feature to Blogger in Draft, the Search Box page element:

It uses Google's Custom Search Engine to dynamically search over your blog's content, as well as anything you've linked to in your blog posts, and even your sidebar-based link lists and blogrolls. In other words, it's really nifty - you can find it in your blog's Template | Page Elements tab, in the "Add a Page Element" popup.

Many thanks to the CSE and Ajax Search API teams for their work on this feature. Comments are enabled for this post, so let us know how it works for you!

Gadgets for your Blog

2015-01-07T05:36:00.003-08:00

We’ve added some fun new functionality to Blogger in Draft: Google Gadgets for your blog. This feature lets you add pretty much any Google Gadget to your blog’s sidebar.

The Gadget directory is the same one used on iGoogle, which means there are thousands of Gadgets available for you to try. (Note: since most Google Gadgets were designed for iGoogle, they won’t all make sense for display on a blog.)

The Gadget directory is available directly in Blogger Layouts, in the Template | Page Elements | Add a Page Element popup:

This is an early version of our integration with Google Gadgets, so there will likely be some rough edges. Let us know what you think in this post’scomments!

OpenID commenting

2015-01-07T05:34:00.001-08:00

Blogger in Draft now lets you enable OpenID-based commenting, in your blogs' Settings | Comments tab:

(OpenID comments work in both the Anyone and Registered Users modes)

This means that users of OpenID-enabled services — such as LiveJournal and WordPress — can comment on your blog using their accounts from those sites, rather than with Blogger/Google accounts:

This feature is in Draft because we'd like to hear feedback about the implementation, and to test it further before moving it to Blogger's main site. We're also working on functionality to let Blogger's URLs (both Blog*Spot and custom domains) be used for commenting elsewhere on the web.

Let us know how this is working for you in the comments below.

Update, 12/3: We recommend Sam Ruby's OpenID for non-SuperUsers, which explains how to set up OpenID delegation. Delegation is a way for you to use your own URL for OpenID, but still sign in with AOL, LiveJournal, etc.

Subscription Links

2015-01-07T05:29:00.002-08:00

Our new Subscription Links page element makes it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog's feeds. We've added one-click subscriptions to six popular feed readers: iGoogle, Google

Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, NewsGator, and My Yahoo!. Since you can now put your feed links in your sidebar instead of just at the bottom of your blog, more readers will see them and subscribe to your blog.

In addition to blog posts, your readers can subscribe to feeds of comments. The comments feed on your blog's homepage contains all comments, while the feeds on post pages only have per-post comments.

We are launching this feature on Blogger in draft while we gather feedback from you. Are we missing your favorite feed reader? Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

OpenID Commenting Update

2015-01-07T05:27:00.001-08:00

OpenID commenting is now live for all Blogger users, not just Draft users. A few updates with this release:

OpenID icons now appear on Post Pages in addition to comment.g; they have their own CSS class (openid-comment-icon) in case you'd like to customize their display
Nicknames with "www" in their URLs are now correctly parsed
Comments from Blogger/Google accounts now have the Blogger favicon

If your blog allows anonymous comments, OpenID-signed comments are enabled by default. Otherwise, you can turn on OpenID signed comments by restricting your Who Can Comment? setting to Registered Users - includes OpenID. This will exclude anonymous commenters.

Blogger as OpenID provider

2015-01-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

As we hinted before, we’ve been working on making Blogger an OpenID provider. With our latest Blogger in Draft release, we’ve done just that. You can now use your blog’s URL as an OpenID URL on any website that accepts OpenID 1.1 authentication.

To enable OpenID for your blogs, just edit your profile on draft.blogger.com and enable the checkbox which says Enable OpenID for Blogs and you are all set!

After checking this box, you can use the URL of any of the blogs you are an admin of as an OpenID identity. When you use it to log in to another site, you will be taken back to Blogger where you can confirm that Blogger can tell the site that you own the domain.

You can find more information about OpenID and how it works at OpenID.net.

We hope you’ll try out using your blog as your OpenID identity around the web. Let us know how it goes in the comments! If you’re looking for things to do, take a look at MyOpenID’s OpenID Site Directory for OpenID-enabled sites.

Since this feature is still in draft, there are a few caveats:

We currently do not support OpenID for blogs that aren’t hosted on Blog*Spot or a custom domain, such as FTP blogs. However, the OpenID web site has a help page that explains how to workaround this limitation by delegating your FTP blog to a Blogger-hosted blog.
If you say “Yes, Always” to trust an OpenID site forever, you cannot now delete that trust. We will add this feature soon.

Update, 1/29: We have a quick HOWTO post for delegating to Blogger as your OpenID provider.

Using Blogger’s OpenID with any URL

2015-01-07T05:21:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things with our recent OpenID release is that you can use your own website, blog, or URL as your OpenID and still use Blogger as your OpenID provider. In the OpenID world, this is called “delegation,” and all it means is that you can use your own non-Blog*Spot URL as your OpenID identity, but still log in to OpenID sites with the Google Account you use on Blogger.

For example, if you have a blog at http://yourbloggerblog.blogspot.com/ but own the website http://www.myurl.com/, you can easily OpenID-enable http://www.myurl.com/. Just add this HTML to the <head> section of http://www.myurl.com/:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://draft.blogger.com/openid-server.g" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://yourbloggerblog.blogspot.com" />

(Obviously, change “http://yourbloggerblog.blogspot.com” to your own blog’s URL.)

Blog List

2015-01-07T05:18:00.002-08:00

Bloggers often feature a list of their favorite blogs, called a “blogroll,” in the sidebar of their own blog. Our latest page element, Blog List, helps you do just that, but we’ve mixed it in with Google Reader to make it even more powerful and useful.

At its most basic, Blog List displays a list of links to your favorite blogs, with an optional icon. If you link to a blog with an Atom or RSS feed, however, the Blog List can show the date of the blog’s last update or even the title and snippet of its most recent post.

You can set the number of blogs to show in the list and whether they should be sorted by update time or alphabetically by blog title.

You add blogs to your Blog List by entering blog or feed URLs directly, or by importing subscriptions from Google Reader. When you add by URL, Blogger will attempt to detect an Atom or RSS feed for it in order to show post and update information. If none is found, the blog will still be added to the Blog List, just as a simple link.

Please try this out! Add a Blog List (Or two! Or more!) to your blog and let us know what you think in the comments. We value your feedback, and will try to incorporate as much as we can before the Blog List goes big-time on www.blogger.com.

Remember: Like all features mentioned on this blog, you must log in to .blogger.com/ to add a Blog List.

Additional Notes

The Blog List writes all links out in HTML so that, unlike JavaScript-based blogrolls, you pass PageRank goodness on to the blogs you link to.
The icon next to a feed is taken from the favicon.ico file in the blog’s home directory. We currently do not support the “shortcut icon” link tag.
Adding and removing blogs may not invalidate our cached version of your blog. If you’re having trouble seeing your changes, republish a post or make a small settings change to your blog. Update, 2/29: This has been fixed.
Some blogs don’t link to their Atom and RSS feeds in a way that we can detect. In these cases, add the feed URL to the Blog List for best results.
Only the blog admin who added the Blog List may edit and configure it. Why is that? You’ll find out later...

Scheduled Posts

2015-01-07T05:16:00.000-08:00

We’ve often heard that sometimes you’d like to write a post now and have itautomatically published at some time in the future. We listened, and are pleased to say that this feature is ready for you to try out on Blogger in draft.

Publishing a post in the future is pretty simple: in the post editor, reveal the Date and Time fields using the “Post Options” toggle and enter a post date and time that is in the future. When you then click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, your post will be automatically published to your blog.

Your scheduled posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.

Remember: Like all features described on this blog, Scheduled Posts only work when you’ve logged in to blogger.com/

Leave your feedback in the comments!

Additional Notes:

We know that some bloggers currently use future post dates in order to keep one post at the top of their blog for a while. Though we recommend that you use a Text page element for this, you can still get this old behavior with just one additional step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will publish it to your blog. Then, once it’s published, edit the post to change the date to the future and publish it again. We don’t re-schedule posts that are already published, so the post will stay on your blog but sort to the very top.
As with published posts, the post editor does not autosave scheduled posts if you go back and edit them. You wouldn’t want the post to publish while you’re in the middle of editing it! You can save the scheduled post as a draft to remove the scheduling and this will turn autosave back on.
In some testing we’ve found that schedule posting is not working for some FTP blogs. If you run across this, please let us know in the comments so we can try to track it down.

Unified Gadget Page Element Directory

2015-01-07T05:12:00.002-08:00

As part of our roll-out of Google Gadget support, we’ve unified the gadgets and page elements directories on Blogger in draft. Just click on the “Layout” tab and then click an “Add Gadget” link to see the new look.

How is it working for you? Does the new presentation, and the new icons, make adding stuff to your blog easier?

Let us know if you find good gadgets, or especially if you make some of your own.

Old Blogger in Draft Bug Fixes

2015-01-07T05:10:00.002-08:00

Scheduled Posts

Scheduled FTP publishes now work.
Posts published via scheduling will trigger BlogSend emails.
General reliability improvements.

Please try these out if you were having trouble with scheduled posts. We’re aiming to take this feature out of draft in the fairly near term, so we’d like to make sure that everything works.

Blog List

Improved Blog List update reliability.
Fixed bX codes on Blog*Spot when certain sites are added to a Blog List.
Removed bolding of blog titles.
Usability and cosmetic improvements to the Blog List configuration dialog.

NEW Blogger in Draft Bug Fixes

2015-01-07T05:07:00.000-08:00

We’ve made a handful of fixes to improve Blog List:

A “See All” link when you’ve truncated the list
Icon loading is deferred for better page responsiveness
Post title now links to post’s permalink
Newly-added blogs are highlighted on the configuration page
More reliable adding and removing of blogs, and better feed and title detection

If you’ve customized the Blog List widget template at all via Edit HTML, you will need to reset the template to get some of these new features.

We’ve also made some visual and reliability fixes to the new Gadgets directory, particularly around adding custom gadgets.

Note: we’re looking into reports of bX-e441ek errors for some people who have added Blog List to their blogs. We hope to have a fix out for this presently.

Blogger in Draft Bug Fixes

2015-01-07T05:04:00.001-08:00

Today we have a couple of new features (more on those later in the day) and some bug fixes. We’ve also published Blog List, so it’s now available to everyone on the main Blogger site.

Here are the highlights:

The Google Gadget page element configuration has been greatly improved. We’ve fixed a number of cosmetic and functionality issues in this area. Try it out with the new unified Gadget and Page Element directory.
Adding feed URLs to a Blog List directly now works reliably for all supported feed types.
Adding a blog with no detected feed to a Blog List now triggers a warning dialog and icon.

Everything working ok for you? Let us know in the comments.

New Dashboard

2015-01-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

Our old dashboard was getting a little cramped, so we reorganized things and gave everything a fresh, new look. You can see this now by logging in to Blogger in draft.

The new dashboard contains all of the same information that the old one did, but rearranged to emphasize the most important content and changes (and with a little more room for future goodness).

By default, only some of your blogs are shown in the dashboard, although there’s a link you can click to display all of them. The blogs we show by default include the two blogs you most recently published to, as well as any with unmoderated comments or ToS/spam warnings.

Please try this out and let us know what you think in the comments! Your feedback is an important part of our design process and we’d like to know what you think before we release this re-design out into the wild.

Remember: Not sure where some of your blogs went? Click the “Display all blogs” link at the bottom.