Making it easier to manage pages on your blog

Making it easier to manage pages on your blog

Hardik Gandhi   March 12, 2015

Adding pages to your blog can be a great way to organize content - like ‘About me’ or ‘Advertise’ sections. To make managing pages easier, we redesigned the ‘Pages’ tab in the Blogger dashboard to make it look and feel more like something you’re already familiar with: managing posts.

The new look for the pages list on each blog

With the new design, you can:

• View important details about your pages like view count and comments
• Manage multiple pages at once with new selection tools
• Easily see whether pages are in draft, imported, or published states

The new look for the summary of pages on each blog

Linking to your Pages

Managing the Pages Widgets for your blog is now done through the Layout UI. Multiple Pages Widgets can be added, if you want different pages linked to from different areas of the layout.

The 'Pages' widget as it appears in the list, after clicking 'Add a Gadget'

• For a Horizontal list, add a Pages Widget under the Header (e.g. "Navigation Pages" below)
• For a Vertical list, add a Pages Widget to a side column (e.g. "External Pages" below)

A layout with two Pages widgets, titled 'Navigation Pages' (horizontal) and 'External Pages' (vertical)

Adding external links

To add a link to a URL which is not one of your pages, when editing or adding the Pages Widget, click '+ Add external link' at the top of the 'Pages to Show' list.

Dialog for Pages widget configuration

 This will show a dialog where you can set the title and URL to add to the list.

Dialog for adding external links to the Pages widgets

Happy blogging!

Custom domains for your blog made easy

Custom domains for your blog made easy

Hardik Gandhi   March 12, 2015

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You invest a lot of time in your blog, making sure it fits your personal brand and style. And a big part of making it your own comes from what you call it and where it lives. Blogger has long let you host your blog on a custom domain, so that you can give it any URL you choose. To make that process even easier, starting today, we’re integrating Blogger directly with Google Domains, allowing you to purchase a custom domain for your blog right from Blogger with just a few clicks.

If your blog is itching for a new home, you can grab one via Google Domains by popping open Blogger and heading to the Publishing section of your blog’s Settings tab.

If you purchase a new domain from Google Domains, it’s also easy to create a new blog for that domain right there.

Interested in learning more about Google Domains? Read on.

Happy blogging!

Sony's Smart B-Trainer puts your workout routine in your headphones

Sony's Smart B-Trainer puts your workout routine in your headphones

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2015

Headphones haven't exactly jumped on the "internet of things" bandwagon — for the most part, they're thankfully still just meant to get audio into your ears. One exception to that is the workout space, where headphone makers are adding new tech to their devices to make them more useful when you're out for a run. Take Sony's new B-Trainer headphones, for example — on the surface, they look similar to many other Bluetooth workout headphones, but Sony has developed them to include a host of features for those doing more rigorous workout training.

From the companion Android or iOS app, users can load specific workouts over to the headphones and also store music locally, so you can go for a run without bringing along your phone. And as you run, the headphones can measure your heart rate and then give you voice commands for your training program — it'll also change the music to slower or faster songs, depending on whether you're below or exceeding your recommended heart rate threshold. Unfortunately, we couldn't try them out (not that we're really up for a run at this point) — they're still strictly a prototype, with no price or release date forthcoming just yet.

Nissan and NASA are helping each other develop self-driving cars

Nissan and NASA are helping each other develop self-driving cars

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2015

NASA and automaker Nissan have inked a five-year deal to work with each other on automated driving tech, Wired reports. That might not seem like a natural fit — Nissans don't traditionally go into space, after all — but there's the whole matter of rovers that need to be able to navigate semi-autonomously on other planets. Thanks to the delay in signal propagation, humans can't control interplanetary rovers in real time.

TEST CARS ON THE ROAD BY THE END OF THIS YEAR

As a part of the deal, Nissan will be testing self-driving zero-emission vehicles — possibly Leafs — at NASA's Ames Research Center. First, though, it will be adding a map of Ames to its existing self-driving simulator, a system in use at Nissan's Sunnyvale research facility (close to Ames). Nissan hopes to have a car in testing on the road by the end of this year, and in dealerships by 2020 — a time frame that's been echoed by many in the auto industry over the last couple years.

It might seem like Nissan is getting more out of the deal than NASA; access to NASA's enormous catalog of research and the Ames campus is a big deal, after all. Still, the company notes that NASA will get "expertise in innovative component technologies for autonomous vehicles, shared research to inform development of vehicular transport applications, and access to appropriate prototype systems and provision of test beds for robotic software."