What's your take on Blogger/G+ comments integration?

(Largely) cross-posted from my Google+ account.  See Alex Chitu's breakdown on Google Operating System for an in-depth look.

Photo credit:  Google Operating System.

I'm very interested and also see what +Dan Jones said about his concern for restricting this to Google+ users:

Only allowing comments from people with Google+ accounts is a terrible idea. I want as much discussion on my blog as possible. I would never want to limit comments to only people who happen to use my favorite social network.
Thank goodness this new commenting system isn't mandatory for Blogger (yet), because the whole idea is awful.

Maybe Google really wants to get people onto G+.  How do you feel about the development?

New in Blogger: Post Albums

Hats off to my wife for pointing this one out to me:  Yes, F-Word, now that the wife has beaten me to a tech news scoop, I have (once more) relinquished my man card.

So, here's the story.  My wife's basking in the warmth of some pictures from one of her recent, private posts, only to realize there're some kind of Google+-like thumbnails at the bottom of the screen . . .  After some investigation, I've concluded each Blogger post now has it's own album of post-specific photos.  Observe:

Blogger post albums:  Who knew, right?

An added bonus (in addition to the album-style rendering, I mean) seems to be that I can now access post pictures, absent having to open up/reload a new tab.  Nice.

How much does or will this have to do with Google+ integration, as I originally assumed?

New Text Completion Tool in Bloger?

While writing another post, I came across what I believe is a new feature in Blogger: Text completion suggestions.

See the blue pencil next to the red dictionary with the Aa on it?

First of all, let me point out that you can show single suggestions or multiple suggestions.  I far prefer the single suggestions, as I seem get really distracted with the multiple suggestions, while the single suggestion almost seems like a convenient spell checker when I'm typing fast -- it can get annoying when it misinterprets my intentions.

How do I accept the suggestions?  Just press the space bar.  I'm unsure how I felt and about this functionality.  I feel a little wrong-footed with it.  On the other hand, I think I might really grow to love it.  What do you think?  Please sound off in the comments below or on my plus post: https://plus.google.com/u/1/110524638589641892271/posts/71FVRTtuRfr

Scratchpad Gets a Makeover

I was hoping this day would come.  The Chromium team has given scratchpad a makeover.  Now all we need is offline Docs . . .

I'll give you a sprinkling of what I've seen and let the big guns give you the full run down.

Polished interface

I'm impressed with how slick the new interface looks.  Before, with the red, green, and blue dots, I felt like I was jamming on something a 1st grader put together.  Sorry, devs.  Also, the previous version just listed the given notes, while this release gives a date.  Nice.  See the turning throbber icon next to my NEW NOTE?  I was impressed with how fast notes would automatically sync up with my Google Docs.

Old v. New

More Old v. New

I like how the new version gives more formatting options, including font type, size, strikethrough, color, and highlighting.  Looks like the new version lacks a quick delete button . . .  I wonder if people were accidentally deleting their notes?

Scratchpad opened with new Panels flag turned on in dev chanel

I'm less than a huge fan of the new Panels flag, with the Scratchpad app, although I did see a comment or two in the app installation page that sang its praises.  Seemed pretty glitched out, to me.

Oh, three other awesome new features are the ability to search for notes, sort them, and open notes/list in full-tab view.  +1.

Hopefully, I'll avoid anyone hacking my system via this app:  thechromesource.com/chrome-os-hacked-via-scratchpad/

Now if I could just get some keyboard shortcuts (other than ctrl+b for bold, e.g.) . . .

Blogger Gets a Facelift!

Just as I'm about to send this news to Alex Chitu and others, I see Alex already knows about it.  Sheesh!

New post editor.

New Interface

I suggest you check out Alex's review for a detailed look.

For now, I mainly really like how clean and newfangled (futuristic) it looks.  I'm sure I'll develop a deeper opinion, soon.  [After writing this, I also learned I can, finally, edit photos in Blogger.  Too bad Picnik's crazy slow (for me, anyway) and lacks a lot of common features that free screenshot tools have, like blur.]

As another tip (I'm in a tipping mood), if you hate having your blog load on your slow machine (hey, my Cr-48's got a pretty cheap processor) and you just want to get straight to a new post, open the New Post link and then bookmark it, and use the bookmark whenever you want to quickly get to a new post, bypassing your full, published blog.

What do you guys think?

How to Ctrl+End on a Chromebook

If you're like me, you live off keyboard shortcuts.  Also, if you're like me, you have a Cr-48 or other chromebook and have been irked that they lack a true way to get to the begging/end of a document, which can normally be done using ctrl+end/home.  The Chrome OS team knows about the issue and is working on it.

Many of my docs are a lot longer than four words . . .

This morning, I stumbled upon a workaround:  Just press shift and click on the bottom/top of the scroll bar.

That's it!  I hope this tip helps those of you (if any?) who have been agonizing over this on your chromebook.