Google has set up a page specifically addressing the redirects, and in their explanation, it also reveals their plans of country-specific censorship, something the redirection makes much easier:

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD. [Emphasis added]

It’s odd to see “free expression” and “valid removal requests” in same sentence, but here we are. Google’s page goes on to promise “the majority of the content hosted on different domains will be unaffected by content removals,” but the fact remains, they are positioning themselves to remove content that much easier.

Another feature appears to be of the circumvention of the country code top-level domains, at least in relation to accessing the content:

Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted “NCR” URL.

NCR stands for “No Country Redirect” and will always display buzz.blogger.com in English, whether you’re in India, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, or anywhere.

As for the content creators, it seems these blogs will be available via country-specific domains, which again, only helps Google when it comes to content removal requests. The question is, what constitutes a “valid removal request?” Would a blog post be removed if, say, local officials in Iran didn’t appreciate being criticized by an Iranian blogger and ran to Google with a takedown demand? Would Google comply? Or is this only in relation to foreign blogs that infringe on intellectual property?

They also recently launched a site called “Get More Out Of Google+,” which discusses ways to use Google’s social network with other popular Google products like search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps and Blogger.

And of course there’s a big old button to “upgrade to Google+” for those who aren’t already signed up.

In the search section, it just basically highlights all of the new integration from the controversial “Search Plus Your World” feature set.

The Gmail section talks about finding email from people in your circles, sharing photos and seeing what else your friends are saying.

The YouTube part talks about seeing the videos your friends are sharing, watching videos together with Hangouts, finding new videos to share, and sharing videos with “the right people”.

The Maps part talks about sharing directions with “just the right people”.

Finally, the Blogger part talks about sharing blog posts on Google+ whenever they’re published.

There’s not much in the way of new information on the site (at least at this point), but it is a good place to see Google’s various integrations with other products. Such integration will only continue to expand.

It kind of helps you look at Google+ more as a feature of Google than as a separate network.

Since you’re about to get started on your blog any second now, Pingdom wants to help you lift-off. They’ve rated the top five blogging services so you’ll know which blogging service is the most reliable (least downtime) and which one to stay away from (most downtime) all so you can have and provide the best blogging experience ever.

The blogging services included in Pingdom’s surveyed were Blogger, WordPress.com, Typepad, Tumblr, and Posterous. Over the period of January to November of this year, they monitored each service to assess the total amount of downtime each service had. They used their own the monitoring service to test the services from multiple locations in North America and Europe. From each blogging service Pingdom monitored four different blogs to measure the amount of downtime experienced by each.

And the winner is…

Google’s blogging service, Blogger! Pingdom found that Blogger was down only a minute and a half each month. That’s some incredible reliability. I’m a human being yet I consistently have more downtime than Blogger. The service actually came out on top last year in the same study, so Google’s got some pretty good longitudinal reliability to boast of now, too.

Honorable mentions go to WordPress and Typepad, both of which had a larger sum of downtime during the study but were still under a total of two hours. With WordPress down only nine minutes per month and Typepad down ten minutes, that’s still really good and I bet you would hardly notice the outage.

So do you see who ranked the most unreliable blogging service? That’s right: Tumblr. Tumblr had a median downtime of almost four hours per month with the single longest outage observed during the study at three hours. Three hours in Internet time is, like, it might as well just be a whole month. Have you seen how impatient people get when they try to load a page and it takes more than three seconds?

As you could probably glean from the above table, Pingdom ranked the blogging services in the following order, from best to worst:

Now carry on, my wayward bloggers, and enjoy the exquisite services offered to you by Blogger. However, if you happen to have already signed up for a Tumblr account, it’s not too late to jump ship and move on to greener pastures. Especially if you’re counting on Tumblr to help you get re-elected.

You can disable the prompt if you like. Just go to settings, and comments and posts. You can still share the post from the “share” link under the entry in the post list.

Google previously made it possible for Blogger in Draft users to connect their Google+ profiles to their blogs, but now that’s available to all Blogger users.

Google says the feature is just the first of many Google+ features to come to Blogger.

Google is having a Hangout on Google+ and other Blogger features on the Blogger Google+ page today at 3PM PST.

Should children, just because of their ages, be denied the ability to email and blog? What about if the parents are responsible and have given consent? In regards to Google’s platforms related to these actions, no. Children under a certain age should not be allowed access to these capabilities, even though they have an ad campaign promoting their services in exactly the same manner being discussed here.

Just ask Rich Warren, who posted his tale of Google inconsistency over at his Google+ account. Leading off with an ominous “Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry” greeting, Warren’s story is one that’s incredibly similar to the “Dear Sophie” commercial Google promoted on as many television stations as they could, except for a huge difference: Warren’s daughter was actually kicked off, denying her access to Google’s services.

The following snippet from Warren’s post should clarify:

Several years ago I set up a gmail account for my daughter so she could send email to her grandparents. At the beginning of this school year, she started using it much more actively to send messages to her friends and classmates. She also started a blogger blog as a class project.

Then, we woke up this morning to find that Google had disabled both her blog and her email account–apparently because she is under age.

Now, I don’t remember seeing anything about the age restriction when I originally set up her account. And I understand that Google needs to comply with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), but all of that is really beside the point.

My complaint is about the way Google has chosen to act in this matter–both the fact that they didn’t notify us at all–they simply turned off the account without any warning, locking up all her data, preventing us from accessing it… [Emphasis added]

So, a father starts a Google account for his daughter and as her exposure to the Internet increases, she began using it to correspond with her grandparents, and once she got into school, her friends. Apparently, however, her underage status was enough reason for Google to lock her account, as well as the content that was stored within.

Even though Google is essentially asking their followers to do the exact same thing in “Dear Sophie.” Observe:

My observation is, at least regarding “Dear Sophie,” comes from the idea that the father in the commercial would, at some point, give Sophie access to all the content he’s been sending her, in essence, turning the account over to the person he made if for. Otherwise, what’s the point of making the account in the first place? Why would you send all of this content about Sophie’s young years if you aren’t going to turn the account over to her at some point?

In Warren’s real life scenario, he did turn over access of the account he created to his daughter, and because of her young age, Google decided to block access to her account without any warning, or, well, provocation. Or, as Warren puts it:

Google could have made other choices–choices that are more customer friendly, more child friendly and more parent friendly. But they didn’t. They’ve chosen to act in a dogmatic, inflexible way. They’ve chosen to ignore parental consent and opinion. They’ve chosen to act apparently without ever considering how their actions might affect the people who use and rely on their services. Damn the consequences, they did what they wanted to do and ignored everything else.

Pretty much.

The next question is, did Google overstep their boundaries with these actions? Furthermore, did Google show off a hypocritical side, one that flies in the face of the company being promoted in the “Dear Sophie” commercial? Thoughts? Reactions? Let us know in the comments.

Readers can look at Blogger blogs in several different templates like Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot, and Timeslide. The following video shows what these look like:

Now, Google updating the feature some more. Now, bloggers have the ability to customize the Dynamic Views. You can use the Template Designer to modify the background, fonts or colors, and add a custom header. There are also suggested themes provided.

“To begin personalizing your blog, log in to the Blogger dashboard, select ‘Template’, choose from one of the seven Dynamic Views, and then click ‘Customize’ to access the Template Designer,” instructs product manager Bruce Polderman.

Earlier this week, Google revealed that Blogger bloggers will be able to start using their Google+ profiles, bringing the first (of more to come) integration of the two services. It will be interesting to see what direction this goes in, particularly as Google also integrates Google+ into more of its products in more ways.

Google announced a new way for Blogger users to use their Google+ profiles (apparently the first of more to come). You can simply replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

“In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you’ve shared the post,” explains Google software engineer Vardhman Jain.

“Plus, bloggers who switch will automatically get access to the Google+ integrations we’ll be rolling out in the future,” Jain adds.

Google recently said they would allow pseudonyms on Google+ in the future, after being pretty strict in its policies on this (despite apparently not been all that strict in its enforcement of these policies). Google makes it a point that those with Blogger blogs who blog using pseudonyms may not want to integrate their Google+ profiles, so the switch is optional.

Currently, the integration is available through Blogger in Draft (the Blogger feature testing ground), and will be available to all Blogger users in the coming weeks. More info is available here.

So there’s Blogger and Picasa Web Albums integration. When are we going to see more on the YouTube front?

The seven views are: Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot and Timeslide. The following video shows them off:

“Dynamic Views is much more than just new templates,” says Google software engineer Antin Harasymiv. “With just a couple clicks, you’ll get infinite scrolling (say goodbye to the “Older posts” link), images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, lightbox-style posts for easy viewing, keyboard shortcuts for quickly flipping through posts, and one-click sharing to Google+ and other social sites on every post.”

“No two blogs are the same, so you can choose from seven different views that display text and photos differently,” Harasymiv says. “For example, if you have lots of photos on your blog, you may prefer Flipcard or Snapshot. If your blog is more text-heavy, then Classic, Sidebar (what you’re seeing now on Blogger Buzz) or Timeslide may be preferable. Here’s a quick description of each of the new views, along with links to some of our favorite blogs where you can check each of them out in action.”

To add dynamic views to your blog, you can find them in the Template tab on the dashboard. Readers will be able to view it in whichever they choose, because they’ll have access from a pull-down menu at the top-left of the screen.

I’m not sure all bloggers will be willing to give up control of how their blog looks to users, but it’s kind of cool for users. That said, messing around with the different views on the Gmail Blog presents some pretty horrendous options:

Google says more ways to customize Dynamic Views are on the way.

“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,” says product manager Chang Kim. “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,” adds Kim. “You can also add labels and location to provide more details about the post.”

According to the App Store, the app will let users:

* Select account/blog if you have more than 1.
* Include pictures from the gallery or by taking a picture directly from the app
* Add labels
* Add location information
* Save as draft or immediately publish
* View list of saved/published posts

The app is available for iOS versions 3.2 and above. The UI is only in English right now, but it supports posts written in all languages.

Now, users can create or edit posts with one click at the top of the screen whether they’re on the dashboard or settings page of blogger.com. The post editor has been expanded and simplified, and users get a larger canvas (see pic above).

There is a new “overview” section on the dashboard, which lets users see quickly how people are reacting with the blog through a graph of traffic numbers, comment activity and follower counts. There is also al ist of links, a feed of Blogger updates and a showcase of other blogs.

“It’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics,” says Blogger Product Manager Chang Kim. “We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time.”

“Throughout the design process, we conducted user interviews to help identify how to make Blogger even easier and more enjoyable to use,” adds Kim. “We also watched users try our new interface and made many refinements based on their feedback.”

Google is letting bloggers opt in to the new user interface starting today. Over the next few days, the company says, users will see instructions via a pop-up announcement on the dashboard.