22-Jul-2021

A reminder about upcoming FeedBurner changes

From the shutdown mailbag: Hi Joe, As we announced earlier this year, we’re making several upcoming changes to support FeedBurner’s next chapter. Here’s what you can expect to change and what you can do now to ensure you’re prepared. Now starting in mid August, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure. This…

17-Apr-2021

Email of the week: “Upcoming changes to FeedBurner”

Hi Joe, FeedBurner has been a part of Google for almost 14 years, and we’re making several upcoming changes to support the product’s next chapter. Here’s what you can expect to change and what you can do now to ensure you’re prepared. Starting in July, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure….

01-Sep-2019

Make XML Sitemaps Easily with PHP!

I am a huge fan of simple solutions for the web. So many solutions require tons of tooling or a giant content management system and those things are brittle over the long haul of time. XML Sitemaps help search engines, notably Google but other search engines too. In October 2009 I created this code to…

20-Mar-2019

Farewell Google+: “Save your Google+ content before March 31, 2019”

Today in Google shutdown notices: You’ve received this email because you have content in Google+ for your personal (consumer) account or a Google+ page you manage. This is a reminder that on April 2, 2019 we’re shutting down consumer Google+ and will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in…

01-Feb-2019

Goodbye, Google Plus

Your shutdown email of the day: You’ve received this email because you have a consumer (personal) Google+ account or you manage a Google+ page. In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’…

30-Mar-2018

“your new Apple iPad doesn’t have the latest Google apps”

Boo, Google. This is pretty obnoxious. If I wanted those apps I’d install them.

01-Jul-2013

Adieu Google Reader

On July 1, Google Reader does indeed close. Reader has been a valuable tool for me for a long time. In 2006, I said: Holy cow but the new Google Reader is pretty darn good. Fully worth using to read your RSS and Atom feeds. And that same year, I wrote an extended piece that…

04-Mar-2010

Blogger FTP Migration Tool: Does not account for your images

Blogger has done work to create a migration tool for Blogger FTP users and is doing great communication. You can move to a blogspot blog, (which you could do before) or change from self-hosting to being hosted by Blogger/Google by changing the DNS to point at Google’s servers. This is similar to how tumblr handles…

12-Jan-2010

Google reviewing business operations in China

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing…

11-Nov-2008

Google: PHDs with Tanks

The other day I was listening to the Stack Overflow Podcast, which features two interesting bloggers who I’ve read for some time: Joel Spolsky of JoelOnSoftware, and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror. They tend to ramble a bit, and they’re not as funny as they think they are, but I enjoy it. On Episode 28…