Introducing custom mobile templates

(Cross-posted from the Blogger Developers Network Blog)

Many Bloggers put a lot of time and effort into creating a unique look for their blog, so today we’re excited to announce that custom templates are now available for mobile devices.

Side by side comparison of web and mobile experience.

If you have a custom template for your blog and want it to appear on mobile browsers as well, visit the “Template” tab of your dashboard, click on the gear icon beneath the mobile template preview, and select “Custom” from the “Choose mobile template” pulldown.

For more technical details and sample code, head over to the Blogger Developers Network blog.

We hope you enjoy creating your own custom mobile templates and sharing them with your readers.

Posted by Brett Morgan, Developer Relations Engineer

Google+: 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107...

We started the Google+ project to help make online sharing more like real-world sharing. Of course, in life we increasingly share on the go, so over the past ~90 days we’ve developed Google+ apps for Android, iOS and the mobile web.

During this time we've made lots of improvements to the project, and in fact, the team just announced its 100th new feature overall (open signups). But our work is far from done, and today we're bringing seven additional Google+ features to your mobile device.

Hangouts on your mobile (a.k.a. feature #92) 

Seeing someone face-to-face is one of the most important ways you can connect with them. Unfortunately we're often too busy, too far away, or too unpredictable to make meetups a regular occurrence. That's why we're making Hangouts available on phones with Android 2.3+ and front-facing cameras (iOS support coming soon). Just find an active hangout in the Stream, and you can join your friends face-to-face-to-face:

Hangouts on your phone: Stream View (left), Green Room (center), Portrait View (right) 

101, 102, 103. You asked for it 

We take your feedback very seriously, and we do our best to deliver your most-requested features as quickly as possible. So today we're launching three more things you've been asking for in Google+ mobile:

• Improved SMS support. Users in the US and India can now post to Google+, receive notifications, and respond to group messages via SMS (with more countries on the way). To start texting, just verify your phone number in Google+ settings. 
• Improved +mentions support. To add someone in your circles to a conversation (or simply get their attention), you can now +[their name] inside a post or comment. 
• +1’ing comments. When you read a great comment in the Stream, you can now +1 it directly from your iOS device (with Android coming soon). 

SMS (left), +mentions (center), +1’ing comments (right)

104, 105, 106. Giving you more choices 

The most important part of Google+ is you, so we want to make sure you have meaningful ways to personalize your experience -- from selecting just the right people to share with, to switching between the app, the web, and SMS as you see fit. Today we're excited to bring three new options to mobile users:

• Edit your profile photo. You can now put your best face forward, from where you happen to be. Just visit your profile, click edit, and you can choose or take a new picture. 
• Customize your notifications. Some notifications may be more important than others, especially when you’re on the go. Now you can decide which ones you see (or not) on your phone. 
• Make some room. If you’re taking lots of photos, or installing lots of apps, then internal storage can sometimes shrink. That’s why you can now move the Google+ app to SD storage on Android devices. 

 Edit your profile photo (left), Notification settings (center), Move to USB (right) 

107. So long Huddle, hello Messenger (and hi there, photos) 

As we move from limited field trial to open beta, we’re renaming Huddle to Messenger. More importantly, we’re adding new functionality to Messenger that makes group communication even more fun: photo sharing. So now when you’re sitting down for a meal, or kicking back on vacation, you can show your circles what’s happening, right this second:

Messenger: Homescreen (left), Choosing a Photo (center), Posting a Photo (right)  

We hope you enjoy today’s round of Google+ mobile features. There’s plenty left for us to do, so we’ll keep listening, and working to make your mobile experience that much better. In the meantime, you can try the new app (on Android and the mobile web today, and on iOS soon), and let us know what you think.

 Posted by Punit Soni, Google+ Mobile PM

Announcing the Blogger app for iOS

Today we’re excited to announce the new Blogger app for iOS. With the Blogger app, you can write a new blog post and publish it immediately or save it as a draft right from your iOS device. You can also open a blog post you've been working on from your computer and continue editing it while you're on-the-go. Your blog posts are automatically synced across devices, so you’ll always have access to the latest version.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and the Blogger app makes it easy to add photos either by choosing from the gallery or taking a new photo right within the app. You can also add labels and location to provide more details about the post.

Download the Blogger app today for iOS versions 3.2 and above in the App Store. Although the user interface is only available in English at this time, the app supports blog posts written in all languages. If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can download the Blogger app for Android from the Android Market.

Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager

Announcing Blogger Mobile Templates

Posted by Jiho Han, Software Engineer

A few months ago we introduced mobile templates to Blogger in Draft. Today, we’re excited to announce that not only will these templates be available to everyone, we’ll be supporting all 27 Template Designer templates. We invite you to make your blog smartphone-friendly by going to the Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab and enabling the mobile template option.

Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.

Some of our feature highlights:

• Preview: Get a glimpse of how your blog will be displayed by clicking on the Mobile Preview button. You can also see it on your smartphone by scanning the QR-code.


• Automatic redirection: Viewers will see the mobile version of your blog when accessing from smartphones*.


• Template support: We are now supporting all 27 templates. Some gadgets are also supported**.


• Mobile ads: Mobile AdSense ads will be displayed at the top of the post pages and at the bottom of the index page if the blog has an AdSense gadget or in-line blog ads.


• Comments and videos: Viewers on smartphone devices will be able to make comments and watch videos.

We hope you enjoy the mobile templates. As always, we would love to hear from you so please let us know what you think through our feedback form, and stay tuned for future improvements.

*WebKit-based mobile browsers are supported for this launch.
**Supported gadgets/elements in this launch: Header, Blog, Profile, AdSense, Attribution.

New Smartphone User Study and Webinar

79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices and finding more product info to locating a retailer, 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, and 88% of those who look for local information on their smartphones take action within a day.

These are some of the key findings from “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” a study from Google and conducted by Ipsos OTX, an independent market research firm, among 5,013 US adult smartphone Internet users at the end of 2010.

Check out our post on the Google Mobile Ads blog for more of the study’s findings, or join us in tomorrow’s webinar where we’ll present the full research findings. In the meantime, enjoy this research highlights video.



Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Updates to the Google Reader app for Android

(Cross-posted from the Google Reader blog)

Today we’re excited to announce some updates to the official Google Reader app for Android. Over the last couple of months, we’ve added some of your most-requested features:

Unread count widget - choose any feed, label, person, or “all items” and get the unread count on your home screen. Clicking on the widget takes you to straight to that stream.

News ticker widget - if you prefer a bit more information, you can add a larger size widget that cycles through items on any stream you want in Reader. Clicking any headline will take you to the article, while clicking the folder will take you to that stream.

Mark previous as read - if you’ve used the mobile version of Reader before and missed this feature, it’s now back! As you scroll down your reading list, hit “Mark previous as read” at any time to only mark things above the screen as read.

In addition to these new features, we now have an official Russian translation as well.

We hope you enjoy the update - give it a try! You can download the app in all countries from Android Market. The Google Reader app is available for devices running Android 1.6 or higher, with widget functionality available for devices on Android 2.2+. 

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager