I've Gone Beta

...which I guess is pretty obvious from the new sidebar.

I didn't have a problem with the old blogger, but they said they were moving everyone over to Beta eventually, so I figured I might as well get it over with. In fact the only reason I waited as long as I did was because they didn't give me the option until yesterday. I assume this is because I'm still using the old no frills Sand Dollar Template design. (I know most of you have switched over to something more fancy, but I like the simplicity of plain old black text on white background).

Anyway, I guess one of the benefits of switching over later is that I've been reading all your reviews of the new Beta Blogger, so I knew what to expect.

There are a few new toys with Beta. I like the accordion style archives, the labels of course, and best of all, that annoying ".comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}" message that used to pop up on the screen for a split second before you accessed my blog has disappeared. (That started happening a couple years ago when I was messing with the template settings, and I never figured out how to get rid of it.)

I've read a few bloggers who are really excited about the "Label" system (or who, in the days before Beta-Blogger, switched over to wordpress because of the Labels). Personally I don't have any delusions that anybody is going to spend a lot of time tracking down every single post I ever wrote concerning "Book Reviews" or "Politics" or whatever. In this day and age of blog explosions, when everyone and their dog has 2 blogs, I feel like I'm lucky if my friends take time out of their day just to read my front page.

Nevertheless, for us blogging geeks it is a fun toy to play with, and as you can see I've already been fooling around with it a little bit.

But most of the benefits of the Beta-Blogger are the behind the scenes stuff. It is incredibly easy now to customize templates and re-arrange the side bar without learning how to do HTML coding. Plus no time delay on posting new entries.

I have a couple quibbles, but at present they are so minor as to not be worth mentioning.

I know Whiskey Prajer had problems with images disappearing from his blog, which led some of us to wonder briefly if Beta-Blogger was a way to Trojan Horse some new restrictive image copy right programs. But as far as we can tell, it looks like it was just a fluke.

But actually that does bring me onto another subject. For a long time now I've been unsure how Google is making any money out of this whole blogger thing. When I first signed up 3 years ago, there used to be little ads at the top of the bar. Cheesy as those were, I felt like I at least knew why the blogging was free. Now I feel like I'm waiting for someone at Google to say, "Wait a minute, we're not getting any benefit from running these blogs. Shut them all down."

I've heard that Blogger is all part of Google's plan to collect information and connect it with an internet IP address and then sell it to advertisers. But I haven't been contacted by any advertisers yet. The whole thing seems very mysterious.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
When animation company Hanna-Barbera licensed the animation rights to the DC Comics characters and adapted the Justice League of America comic book for television, it made several changes in the transition, not the least of which was the change of name to Super Friends. In part, it was feared that the name Justice League of America would have seemed too jingoistic during the post-Vietnam War Era.

Link of the Day
More Japanese Music

A collage of Japanese music from 1947 : "Tokyo Boogie Woogie" "Kan Kan Musume" and "Kaimono Boogie Woogie" (shopping Boogie Woogie).