Download Official Blogger App for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad

Wait no more, bloggers. If you’re using Google’s blogging platform, well, you should be happy to hear that the official Blogger app for iOS devices has already made its way to the App Store.

The new Blogger app which is compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad running at least iOS 3.1.3, brings similar features as its Android counterpart including publishing of posts with photos, labels, and location information.

Blogger app will allow you to: Select account/blog if you have more than 1. Include pictures from the gallery or by taking a picture directly from the app Add labels Add location information Save as draft or immediately publish View list of saved/published posts

Though the UI is only available in English, the app supports blog posts written in all languages. The app doesn’t have some of the features available on the web-based version including video upload, stats, comment moderation, as well as formatting tools – but I’d guess Google will bring it all very soon. I can say though the app is still great after all. Go check it out here and do let us know what you think about it.



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How to Embed Facebook Videos in Websites or Blogs

I believe the one who sent this in through our Ask Cebu Tech Blogger section is also a blogger trying to uncover that little trick to embed Facebook videos on webpages.



This post may not be of the interest of some readers here, but yeah – CTB is committed to share some of those technical stuffs in blogging. Here’s the question:

Hi Bert, I’m subscribed to CTB and I noticed you embed videos from Facebook within your posts. I’m a blogger too and I want to know how you do it, particularly in Blogger / Blogspot platform. I highly appreciate if you can consider my query. Thanks

So there you go. She doesn’t want her name to be published so we’ll keep that way. But first, thank you for subscribing!



Okay.



Basically, Facebook allow sharing videos just within the social network but didn’t provide any simple way for users to embed those videos on other websites. Embedding Facebook videos is practically useful especially when a web publisher, for example, wanted the videos to be played right on their own websites. Without any further ado, here’s how to do it.



First, get the URL of the Facebook video. It should be like this:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2086427714794



Copy the code below and paste it in your webpage or text editor (of course in HTML format).



<object width="520" height="334" >

<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />

<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />

<param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/xxx" />

<embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/xxx" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="520" height="334">

</embed>

</object>



Note: I’ve tested this in WordPress and Blogger / BlogSpot, but haven’t tried yet in other CMS like Drupal, Joomla, and etc.



From the code above, I highlighted “xxx” characters in red. Just delete “xxx” and replace it with the video ID. Video ID is the combination of 13-digit number located in the URL of the video. In the example URL above, it’s 2086427714794.



So the resulting code would be like this:



<object width="520" height="334" >

<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />

<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />

<param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/2086427714794" />

<embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/2086427714794" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"

allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="520" height="334">

</embed>

</object>



Now, you can already have Facebook videos embedded in your website or blog through this simple trick. You can find sample Facebook videos embedded on this blog here, and here, and here.



I hope you like it, and if you have related questions – just send us one through this link.



Update: Looks like Facebook already has an "embed" option added on video links. Just go to the video, on the bottom-right, there is an "Embed video" link which generates the link seamlessly. However, this is only available if you're the owner of the video. Or else, you still have to follow the steps above. Thanks Raymond for the heads-up!



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Blogger and Picasa to Get a New Name: Google Blogs and Google Photos

To unify the brands of its products, Google apparently has plans to rename Blogger and Picasa into Google Blogs and Google Photos, respectively.



Blogger is a free blog-publishing service created by a company named Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Picasa on the other hand is a free image organizer (both offline and online) originally created by Idealab in 2002 and also acquired by Google in 2004.



Mashable is said to have learned about the move from two reliable sources, saying the rebranding is coming in the next 6 weeks. Blogger and Picasa users don’t need to worry about the services though as both aren’t going away.

Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.” Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though our sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded.

This early report seems to be true. CTB did a quick Whois Lookup for domain names googleblog.com and googlephotos.com, and both points to Google Inc. as the registrant of the domains.

DNS Records of GoogleBlog.com

DNS Records of GooglePhotos.com

Records of both domains got updated just in the past couple of months. Though it appears both domains have been registered 7 and 9 years ago, the recent updates may indicate Google has plans of using it anytime soon. Surely we’ll try to find out, so just stay tuned for more updates. [via]

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