All things Google...

Just a bunch of Google-related stuff...
Back up your Blogger blog!
About a year ago, I had lamented the difficulty of backing up a Blogger blog in comparison to a Wordpress one. As reported on the Blogger blog, this problem has now been solved. They have also added more capabilities for moving, merging, and cross-publishing blogs. Back up your blog today!

Google closing down six apps
As reported on various Google blogs, Google is terminating or otherwise ceasing to support Google Video, Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, Google Mashup Editor, and Jaiku. (There are also rumors that Grand Central and Knol may be next.) So, does this matter to you? I suspect it doesn't matter much since closing these apps indicates that they don't much matter to anyone. If you read this article, you will see that there are alternatives for just about everything. Personally, I have been using and appreciating Google Notebook. It's been one of the places I've stored random stuff I've wanted to save on the net. (If you click that link, you will see the web page Notebook was able to generate. It contains an eclectic bunch of stuff that I want to use for class or blog about. There. I just blogged about all of it, and they are off my list of things to do...) Another tool I use regularly for quickly saving pages on the web is the Taboo plugin for Firefox. I have a couple Taboo buttons in my toolbar, and I simply click to remember the web page, and Taboo builds a page of thumbnails for me. It's quick and easy. Another tool I use regularly is ShareThis. Another button on the toolbar, but it's very easy to save and share items either sending them as email to social networks or posting to a blog. (I have a private blog that I send a bunch of stuff to.) If I were a bit more disciplined to use it, I also like SimplyBox since it allows me to save selections on a web page and to organize into 'boxes' the stuff I'm saving.