Android, European Developers and ADC 2

My new role at Google hasn't left me with much time for bogging lately, which is a shame because there's a lot going on that's worthy of note.

The good news is that blogging is now a bigger part of my job role -- albeit not on this blog.

As part of Google's developer relations team I'll be writing regularly for the EMEA Developer Blog (like last week's post calling for European entries for the second Android Developer Challenge). We aim to include plenty of content with a local flavour for developers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Rather than do all the work ourselves, we're also hoping to reach out to the community and get regular guest posts from EMEAs developer community. Comments are open, so let us know what you think and what you want to hear about.

While I'm here, some Android updates:

• Andy Rubin has announced around 18-20 new Android powered handsets before the end of the year.
• The HTC Hero is available for order at Orange UK.
• The Samsung Galaxy is available from Bouygues Telecom in France and O2 in Germany (as the i7500).

Blogger Hosted Blogs on Your Domain

Blogger Buzz has just announced Blogger Custom Domains.

It's a new feature that lets you serve your blog from a custom domain without having to host it yourself. Your old Blogspot address will forward reader to your new custom domain so you don't lose any precious readers, links, or bookmarks.

This is much simpler and cleaner than using the FTP hosting option to serve your blog from your own domain, a very neat solution indeed -- particularly for small businesses who want a hassle free blog, but need it to be served on there company's domain.

I'm planning to take advantage of this new feature to host this blog, I'll update the post with progress.

UPDATE: Done! As of today the blog can be seen at blog.radioactiveyak.com -- all the advantages of Blogspot hosting without the stigma. Sweet. The transition was seamless, and the blog (and all post permalinks) redirect from the old Blogspot subdomain, so I'd have to classify it as a success. Slick move Google.

UPDATE 2: PageRank for the blog on the new domain is zero and straight after the transfer Adsense was displaying PSA. 12hrs later Adsense had figured itself out, but PR will likely remain zero until the next PR update. The question is -- will links to the old domain count towards the new one?