WotW: Google may or may not be stalking me (Hi, Google!)

That’s right, you heard it here first — Google is quite possibly stalking me, watching my every move.

image borrowed from here and edited a bit

Flattering, eh?

What makes me suspect this?

March 16, 2011 — 1:42 pm
I publish this post about the pros and cons and how-to’s of email subscriptions using Feedburner.

March 16, 2011 — 4:02 pm
Google publishes this post about a new Blogger feature: integrated Feedburner email subscriptions via the new Follow by Email widget.

Just TRY to convince me that I’m imagining this…

Anyway, since obviously the powers that be at Google are watching, they must know that I’m a big fan. So, I figure I’ll throw them a bone yet again and talk up their newest Blogger feature, the Follow by Email widget:

Why?

Reason #1: The widget is MUCH better looking (i.e., simple) than the widget code you get from Feedburner.

Simpler, easier to make match your site, and a significantly smaller chunk of sidebar real estate. Win-win-WIN!


Reason #2: It’s automatic. Just a few clicks to add the widget (instructions in Google’s article) both sets up the Feedburner email subscription for you AND creates a Feedburner feed for you, using the whatever part of your http://whatever.blogspot.com address to become the http://feeds.feedburner.com/whatever. If you want a different Feedburner address, then set up your Feedburner feed first (like I talked about here) and the email subscription will follow that feed address.

So, Google PTB (powers that be), while I’ve got your attention… I’d like to make a few more requests:

Can you add a little checkbox to my link window that will include the target = ” _blank ” in the specific links I create? I’ve detailed my reasons here.

I like having the easy small-medium-large image size options — but can you make it simpler to set those sizes to be what *I* want, so that the difference between large and extra large isn’t so huge?

And while we’re talking images, I *love* the new image uploader/insert box and its options. I’d love to see one more option added: sorting my Picasa albums in the image insert box by the most recently updated. I can set this in Picasa Web Albums, but that doesn’t carry over to the image insert box, so I still end up scrolling through my many albums to find just the right one.

Let’s face it: WordPress (and Co.) has you WHIPPED with the whole comments thing. On a WordPress blog, I can be part of a conversation where it’s easy to reply to another comment in a threaded series AND see the author’s comments/replies highlighted. Get with the program. Err, I mean… can we please…? 🙂 And if my reply to a comment via email (as a blog author) could also be put into the comment thread on the post, that would just rock.

I love Blogger Pages — but I’d love more than 10. If that can’t be arranged (and even if it can), I’d really love to have nested labels, so I can use categories and subcategories to help organize my blog posts. And it would be really awesome if I could choose from a couple different layouts for my label pages (you know, the pages that show all the posts for that label), such as as-is (the full post shows), just the title of the posts with that label, or the title/blurb/thumbnail from the posts with that label.

Thanks, Google PTB… I can’t wait to see what you do with my suggestions. And thanks for paying attention to lil ol’ me. Oh, and I’m sure my readers here have some of their own suggestions…

(Go, readers, go! Google is LISTENING…)

Lu (or Lorene if you prefer) is the mom of one squirmy boy and the wife of a singing and dancing elementary teacher. She is the proud author of this weekly Wednesdays on the Web (WotW) segment here on Housewife Eclectic and spends the other days of the week blogging about crafts and whatever else comes up at just Lu.