Google Calendar‘s feeds are not the most useful in the world. They are sorted by edit date instead of when they’re happening, and they’re only available in ATOM.

No longer. Using the extended feed information Google tacks into their calendar feed it is possible to create a clean, sorted feed with the start date as the pubDate. Just go to the Google Calendar Feed Cleaner and enter the URL to your calendar’s feed, select the format you want (XHTML for testing, RSS 2.0, or JSON(P) ), and enter the max items to be in the results (default 5). You will get a nice, clean feed of your Google Calendar data.

I have released version 0.15 of my YubNub LocationBar Firefox Extension. There are some minor changes to the look and feel (the location bar shows the YubNub URL and icon while processing, and the YubNub icon shows on blank pages). It also extends the local firefox keyword bookmarks to allow for switches. If switches are added to the bookmark’s URL (using YubNub ${name} syntax), then the bookmark will accept switches according to normal YubNub syntax.

Update: I forgot to mention — it also stores up to 50 commands from your command history between sessions now.

Blogger BETA has launched and with it comes many new features and challenges for us as hackers. I’m slow on the draw for this one. I was on a trip when the whole thing came down and am just now catching up. FreshBlog, as always, has the scoop extrordinaire. Much good stuff over there… I wish they had some sort of ‘blogger-beta’ tag for all of it (or tagged it all both blogger and beta) so I could link to the category list (hint, hint 😉 ).

I’m not going to give a rundown of all the new stuff, but instead am going to give a ‘so what’ as relates to my stuff.

Busted Hacks
I’m going to be creating a test Blogger BETA account soon and trying to fix up hacks that don’t work there. However, from what I’m hearing it seems that there is no HTML editing in the new template system, and I don’t want to spend work making the old hacks work on the old template system for the new Blogger (that’s a mouthful!). I’d rather wait until hacks can be implemented in their own right on the new system. More on this when something happens.

Blogger Recent Comments
Is dead. Full stop. No question there. Blogger BETA has comment feeds. I will keep the app running, however, for people who have not upgraded yet (like me!) and just for reference.

FreshTags
Both the main FreshTags and my version are far from dead. Just as FreshTags features are useful on WordPress, where there was already a category system, so they will continue to live on here on Blogger. Since it’s not my baby, I won’t say too much, but we are certainly discussing the best way to move forward in this area. For now, I have upgraded my version to support incoming ?labels= from other blogs, and also to use that locally (still supporting ?tags= from old FreshTags and FreshTags for WordPress). If you are on Blogger BETA and want to use FreshTags ‘as is’ (provided you can get the script to work…) the following code will use the proper label display page instead of the ‘fake post’ for post display:

<script type=”text/javascript”>var freshtags_tag_url = “/search”;</script>

Upgrades to the Greasemonkey script should also be forthcoming.

Update
Have created a BETA test blog and I have a mixed reaction. The new templates interface is nice, and as long as they get HTML editing working for it, it should be über cool. Some of the new button graphics are uglier, and the post published page doesn’t seem to have the details on it anymore (because of the dynamism), which will cause problems for the GM world… the JS/XHTML module funcitonality is nice though — hacks will make use of that! (perhaps even FT?)

A way to organise our microsphere, if only a little. A compendium of blogger hacks blogs. A social blogroll, which can also double as a blogring. A wrink. I’ve created it and put it in my sidebar, you can see it under the heading ‘Blogger Hacks’. I’ve opted to include it in ‘ring’ mode, which means you get next, previous, and random links that let you navigate the list. Click the title to see the full list, or add your own blog.

If you go to the wrink page you can use the ‘Add Site to Wrink’ link to suggest your site for inclusion on the list. It will be help pending my approval, but I should be monitoring regularly for new entries. Then use either the ‘Get Ring Code’ link and select JavaScript (to add it as you see on my page) or the ‘Get Roll Code’ link (again select JavaScript, this will display the full list as a blogroll) and paste the code into your page.

Weekly traffic stats across the whole list will be monitored, and the whole thing is available in JSON(P) format for custom implementations. Drive traffic to your site while also giving your visitors the ability to find other blogs about blogger hacks!

Feature suggestions and bug reports are, as always, greatly appreciated and anticipated.

I have updated my YubNub LocationBar FireFox Extension. There was a minor glitch that caused typing local IPs (for router setup, etc) to be interpreted as YubNub commands. This has been fixed. I have also added a new feature. If you have any FireFox keyword ‘quick search’ bookmarks defined, these now work, and are considered a higher precedence than YubNub commands. Thus if you have a FireFox keyword bookmark defined for ‘g’ that does something other than Google search, that will be done when you type ‘g blah’ instead of using YubNub’s command.