Good news for Blogspot bloggers

Here's some good news for bloggers who use the Blogger/Blogspot platform. According to a post on the Google Operating System blog, a 'Scheduled Posts' feature is in the works for blogs hosted on Blogspot.

This new feature (which has been available to Wordpress users for some time) would allow a blogger to put a future date/time on a post, using the "Post Options" function on the Blogger user interface, then click on "Publish" -- but instead of publishing immediately (as is presently the case), the post will be queued to publish at the date and time entered.

This is a very welcome feature for those of us who travel, or whose commitments sometimes intervene to make it difficult to publish posts to our blogs at specific times. When this new feature is deployed, we will be able to compose one or more posts ahead of time, and schedule the time of their publication. Publication at the pre-selected date and time will be automatic.

No word on exactly when the new scheduled posts feature will be deployed, but you can try it out by logging on to your Blogger account via Blogger in Draft.

Want to see read what bloggers think of the scheduled posts feature? I started a discussion about it on Blog Catalog. Go and have a look.

UPDATE: This post was published using the scheduled post feature on Blogger in Draft. I wrote the post last night about 12 hours before it actually published, and scheduled it for publication at 08:00 AM on February 16, 2008. As you can see, it worked. Thanks you for this useful feature, Blogger.