Weekly Review #2

This weekly review will be a little shorter than last week's feature as I've been so busy with other projects and simply haven't had the time to do as much research! Even so, I hope you enjoy these tidbits from the web and bloggosphere. Please feel free to contact me if there's anything you'd like to see included in next week's review.

Blogger Buster news

A cheats' guide to customizing Blogger templates

This installment of the Blogger Template design series seems to have been the most popular post this week. In the next few days, I'll release this as a PDF download with a few extra features which you can print as a reference when you're editing your own templates.

Invitation for Readers' Questions

As I mentioned in a previous post, another new feature I'm introducing here is the "Readers' Questions", where I'll answer your blogging related questions as a fully detailed post. This week I already have a great question to answer, but I would welcome future suggestions either by email or by leaving a comment beneath this post.

Join the Blogger Buster Community on MyBlogLog

You may have noticed the new Recent Readers widget I introduced in the sidebar. This displays the MyBlogLog avatars of Blogger Buster readers who have recently visited the site.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be making better use of MyBlogLog, so if you'd like to get involved, please join my reader community and soon enough you'll see your own avatar in place!

Also, those who are members of MyBlogLog can display their avatar beside comments. Simply choose to comment as "Other" then enter your nickname and URL. MyBlogLog will do the rest for you :)

Blogging News

PageRank changes

There seems to be a PageRank update in progress at the moment, as I explained in this previous post. This doesn't seem to be as major as the November update, though many sites are reporting changes in their rank. If you're concerned, you can check your current rank using the tool on this page.

Nominations closed for the 2008 Bloggies

The time for nominating your favorite blogs for the 2008 Bloggies has now passed. Next weekend, we should see the finalists in each category released, and will then be able to vote for the winners.

This week's links

Here's a selection of what I've been looking at this week on the web:

• Requires Flash (if you can read this, you have not enabled flash in your browser settings!)
  Badgr: This is such a great tool! You can embed a flash slideshow of your Flickr photostream as a badge (see right for an example). This is by far the prettiest Flickr photos tool I've seen to date.
• Ziki: Another fine way of creating your own online presence. This site aims to gather all of your web resources in one easily accessible place, to create a complete profile which can be used for for a resume or web reference. Currently Ziki guarantee top search results for Google, Yahoo! and MSN! This service is currently free, so be sure to sign up before a premium fee is added!
• Creating a custom MySpace layout: On my Techiboo blog, I wrote a detailed article about creating your own customized MySpace profile. You can take a look at my own profile to get a better idea of the concepts I covered. Eventually I will post a matching Blogger and MySpace theme pack to download, so be sure to keep updated for news if this interests you.

I hope you have enjoyed this weekly review. Next week I promise to have a better selection of news and links for you to enjoy. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the feed and be updated of new posts as they are published.